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An SSD wont make any difference to rendering. One exception is during the loading of the textures from disk to RAM. This is a poor reason (imo) for choosing an SSDs.
... Well there is another way that SSDs will help rendering, but if this happens there are issues. If you machine is using System Swap memory (Disk space is used for RAM), then an SSD will help a little, but as the fastest SSDs are much, much slower that GPU and main RAM, it wont help much. If swap is being used, then not only is it likely that your scene has dropped to CPU from GPU, but you are out of Main RAM.
...now imagine using Dual Rank memory in a 4 instead of 2 channel configuration.
Greetings,
So...I'm going to throw a little bit of a wrench into this and hopefully tap into folks knowledge; what if I wanted to stick with Intel as my processor? What decent (& decently priced) MB's support the Intel processors, and provide two good PCIe slots?
To explain... My current MB (which is older, and doesn't support current CPUs) has two PCIe slots, but the second is at the bottom of the MB, and the two-slot-height 1080 collides with the chassis plugs for USB ports and such, and so can't be pushed in all the way. So I have an older GTX 750Ti being my 'active' video card in the bottom PCIe slot, and the 1080 serving as pure render power. I want to get a 1080Ti to use as active video + render power (and continue to use the 1080 as pure render), but I also need to upgrade my CPU so it'll be powerful enough to control a Oculus Rift. (I've decided to try and do a bit of VR development for fun.)
So I need to upgrade my CPU (and CPU cooler, I guess?), motherboard, and RAM. My power supply is solid, as are my video cards, my case, my monitor, etc., etc...
What's it going to run me to get something that is i5-4590 or better, has a solid 2-card-capable motherboard, and 32GB of reasonable speed RAM? I'm happy to do the legwork of putting it all into my existing case, and such, but I've not had to buy those basic parts in a really long time, so I don't know who's the go-to for a good balance of price and performance.
-- Morgan
Asus X99 motherboards are going cheap now. Or X79 with a Xeon processor and DDR3 RAM.
Many offload hardware after 2 years these days. There is so much to choose from if you don't mind buying used parts.
I just built a Ryzen 5 1600 computer. I have a MSI PC Mate B350 MB, GTX 1070, 4x8gb Team Dark DDR-4 2400mhz 14.16.16.32 RAM, DIY 5 fan mid sized case, 520 watt PSU and a 500mb HDD. It works great for DAZ3D rendering. The new BIOs has my RYZEN build humming along with one click XMP profiled over clocked RAM (2667mhz) and when I want overclocked CPU (3.85mhz) auto voltage. Total cost after rebates $860.
I would suggest a minimum of 32gb of RAM, especially if you are going with a 1080 GPU. RAM usage seems to triple when your CPU is throwing the scene information onto the GPU. So if your scene is at 10 mb sending it over to the GPU will take at least 30mg of RAM usage. test it yourself, setup a small scene and have a the RAM usage monitor open then hit render.
What would I change with your budget. A GTX 1080 any version (+$300) A larger hard drive 2TB (+$70). Instead of 4x8 RAM I would get 2x16 RAM so I could expand if needed(+$50). A x370 motherboard only if I thought having 2 PCIe lanes at 8x was important(+$100). Right now with my PC Mate I can have 2 GPUs but I think they will be PCIe 8x and 4x. In my opinion that wouldn't be a big enough deal to spend over 100 dollars more. Of course you would need another PSU, at least 700 watts (+$40). Approx $1,480...
One plug to pick AMD Ryzen over Intel is that the Architecture will be supported on the motherboards for the next 2-3 generations of CPU production. So if I like the next Zen 2 Ryzen CPU better and want to upgrade I wouldn't have to change my motherboard. There are plenty of good reason to pick either one. Right now the Ryzen 5 1600 is considered the best value chip price/performance level out there today.
Hello again: Thank you to those who helped out with my "save another $1,000" comment with suggestions to spend more money on memory, GPU, etc. That's precisely what I was thinking when I wrote that, but something happened (phone, text message; not sure), and I got distracted from my task. But I appreciate my peeps here helping out.
I would wait until I knew more about AMD's Threadripper, which might me just in time for November Black Friday. I already have my GTX1070. I came across good deals in cases, power supplies, and SSDs, I would purchase.
As a beginner, this has been an invaluable discussion. I read a similar thread which discussed the importance of adequate PSU, that was helpful too.
PSU is even more important if you have more than one GPU.
You're comparing mid range basic Ryzen with performance or commercial grade CPUs.
If you want to compare like-for-like, wait and see what AMD's new offerings are like, but I'll be going AMD in some format I expect.
The dual-, triple-, and quad-channel architectures work by increasing the number of data wires available in the memory bus, doubling, tripling or quadrupling the available bandwidth, respectively.
It is very important to notice that this performance increase is achieved only on the memory subsystem; doubling the theoretical memory performance does not translate into a computer that is twice as fast. Only a small percentage of this memory performance increase will be reflected on the overall system performance.
The Intel 6700k skylake CPU is an awesome chip. Has a great single core score and comes close to Ryzen 5 1600 in multicore. It is also $130 dollars more than the R5 1600. For the same price you can get a Ryzen 7 1700x which just trounces the Intel equivalent in price in multicore scores. You could get a Intel Core i7-7700K for around $350 which gets better single core marks but poorer multicore marks than the R7 1700x. The i7-7700K multicore scores are equal to the R5 1600 and is why most PC enthusiasts rate the AMD chip one of the best bargins out there. I think many people are excited about Ryzen because the future is multicore processing. As software creators incorporate more multithreading architecture in the coding Ryzen chips are going to be even more enjoyable. Or at least that is the hype. I can't complain, I went from an old i7-920 CPU with terrible float/integer scores and slow 1024 ram. Anything was going to be better.
Y'know it's kinda funny...I've been doing computers since back before Windows was even born. Many many computer upgrades over the years. And honestly I can't remember one where I was "WOW this is so incredible !!". Instead, mostly it was an old computer that was getting just frustrating and annoying, and a new computer just erased the mounting frustration. But it seems the demands on computers increase greater than the hardwares' abilities. So for me at least, a new computer just means some relief from the frustration over old computers that can't keep up with the software.
For example, I mentioned the Ryzen machine I just built. All kinds of processor power, and nice GPU, tons of memory, big power supply. But as I use it I haven't once said "WOW this is INCREDIBLE!!". In fact it's not much different from the old machine. Just fewer frustrations. Actually the only difference I seem to notice is the speed of my new SSD. Occasionally I'll say "wow, that was quick" when I load something.
Maybe I've become too jaded over the years.
...again, as I also render in Carrara and Vue Infinite (even sometimes 3DL) the more CPU cores and memory channels, the better.
If I was primarily just doing Daz/Iray, a Skylake 6700K along with a 1080 Ti could then be sufficient as most rendering would be handled by the GPU. Where the breakdown would be occur is if the process for some reason dumps to the CPU, then then it goes from a couple thousand threads to only 8 and two memory channels instead of 3 (which my current system has) or 4 (which my proposed system has). When rendering on the CPU, any speed boost is a benefit.
This is why I am still pretty settled on dual Haswell Xeon E5-2630 v3s (8 cores/16 threads ea) For one: they each consume less power. Second: they are designed to handle high loads for long periods of time. Third: they support four DDR4 memory channels. Finally: they have soldered heat spreaders whereas Skylake-X went to using thermal paste which in evaluation tests has been shown to offer poor cooling performance even when not overclocked.
Yeah, still waiting for Threadripper to see what it has and can take but not holding my breath as much since Ryzen only supports W10 and most likely the same will be the case for Threadripper (and again, I have my reasons for avoiding the "latest and greatest" OS).
Amazing!
Ryzen 7 1700, single 1080, 32 Gb RAM. New install of DAZ.
Rendering a scene with 2 characters and the Medd passage took > 15 m.
Compared to previous computer, this is fast.
Cool, looks like you took the plunge and came up with a very nice system.
You might want to download (if you don't already have it) something like CPUID HWMonitor to make sure your GPU is running flat out when you're rendering. Just to make sure your settings are good and you're benefitting from the GPU. It will tell you % utililzation for all the components (CPU, GPU, etc.) as well as temperatures.
Also, to make sure your system is tuned, you also might want to check the thread about the reference scene where everyone downloads the reference from SickleYield and posts their render results. You should be in the same ballpark as others with GTX 1080's.
Here's the link...
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/53771/iray-starter-scene-post-your-benchmarks
Looks like GTX 1070's and 1080's are both rendering it in around 3 minutes (with Optix ON).
Not all i7s support quad channel, though. the 7700k for example only supports dual channel despite having 4 DIMM slots. You'll need to use an X99 or X299 motherboard to get quad channel memory support, and even then only some i7s on the X299 chipset support it.
@CypherFox
I'd say a good 500-600 bucks. You're looking at the i5 7500 and a Z270 motherboard basically, which is around 350-400. RAM is expensive right now, might be even more than 600.
I get the love for intel, but the Ryzen 5 1600 costs the same, give or take 5 or 10 bucks. 12 threads instead of 4 is a big deal.
Greetings,
I have, in fact, done almost exactly that. You nailed the parts I ended up getting pretty much perfectly! And yep, it ran me $604.86 for
You're probably right that getting an AMD'd have made a difference, but I've been dealing with AMD and some weird behaviors (mostly from their software/drivers) for a really long time, and just wanted to go Intel for the next few years and see if it worked better for me. My previous system was an AMD A6-3650 'APU', fwiw, so it was pretty much time to move on.
The GIGABYTE motherboard isn't perfect for me; I'd have preferred more PCIe video card slots, but it hit my price range pretty much exactly, and all of it was 1-day shipping. The RAM made me happy, since I have two more slots to expand out to 48 or 64GB should I feel the need.
I've since put it all together (and the obligatory 2am call to Microsoft to get my Windows 10 re-activation sorted out when I changed my motherboard, CPU, RAM, etc., out from under it... :-( ) and it works nicely; the place that I notice the most in DAZ Studio is the delay between starting a render, and when the GTX 1080 starts putting pixels on the screen. Especially when I have subD high, that time is a LOT shorter. It also makes VWD run its simulations a bit faster, which makes me happy. :-)
After I did the upgrade, I realized that my C drive was actually an ancient 200GB IDE (my D drive is a modern 1TB SATA and it's where all the 3D items, scenes, and renders are stored), using a SATA<->IDE converter, and was essentially not cresting 5MB/s of data transfer. I went out and replaced it with a $170 500GB SSD (thankfully Windows didn't complain again after I cloned the old HD to the SSD) and both Windows and DAZ Studio now launch VERY quickly and, with the new CPU, DS performs very nicely.
So for ~$780, maybe a bit more with tax, I upgraded a 6-year-old system. It's not a new build, and obvs. I don't include the video card in that, but it's a really good base for a system. Add $600 for a GPU, $70 for a 2TB 7200RPM secondary drive, and re-use your existing case, power supply, keyboard, mouse, monitor and it kinda fits the price range at $1450. If you have to replace all that stuff, it's going to go over though. You could probably afford a decent power supply and tax before you're at $1600. (Edit: Or, duh on me, you could skip the SSD C: drive, and use the 2TB for everything, which would save enough to get a decent case, and cheap keyboard and mouse. Monitor's still a sticking point, though.)
So that's my upgrade...hopefully I won't have to do anything like that for a few more years.
-- Morgan
Nice! Sounds like you're happy with your rig, that's most important. Awesome that you were able to fit a cooler and the unlocked i5 within that 600 bucks. if you don't mind my asking, which PCIe slot is the Gen 3 x16 slot? It looks like the top slot will run into the Gen 2 slot, but the third one doesn't have the lock mechanism...is it the bottom slot where you installed your gpu? You still using your 750 ti also, or just the 1080?
I was looking at some comparisons between the AMD Octa-Core RYZEN 7 1800X and the 7th Generation Intel® Core™ i7-7700K, 95W processors, and it seems the ryzen is the better choice. One thing that I don't understand is the i7-7700K has integrated gpu. Can anyone explain what that means? Looking at a computer with either option and the ryzen build is about $125.00 cheaper.
@Mechaven
Good question. The integrated gpu is a Graphic Processing Unit that is part of the CPU. It's on the same silicon die. It does graphics stuff...run the monitors, very very light gaming. So the motherboard will itself have an HDMI port on it, so you can get a picture on your monitor without a graphic card.
You could drive your monitors with the integrated gpu and let your graphics card be reserved solely for rendering. I don't think that advantage is worth $125 though.
Also, don't overlook the Ryzen 7 1700. You'd save about a hundred bucks, it comes with a cooler, and almost all review outlets have reported that it can be overclocked to achieve the same performance as the 1800X. I have an 1800X and I'm kicking myself a bit. If you don't want to fiddle with any settings or overclock your CPU, any of the Rayzen 7 cpus will do the job.
Greetings,
That's a good question... I believe the bottom one is the x16 slot, but I don't have the manual in front of me. {...hold music plays for a few minutes...} Ah; in fact, the PCIeX16 that's actually running in x16 mode is the top one. Sad day. :-)
I've got my 1080 on the bottom slot, because I wanted to make sure it could fit there. Because the card is double-height and boxy it collided with a few of the motherboard outlets for USB ports that connect to the front of the case, so those aren't plugged in right now. The 750 Ti is in the top slot, and is acting as my default video card. (I'm running a 27" 4K Dell monitor on it, so the built-in onboard video really doesn't cut it; wish I could have gotten a larger monitor, but the price doubled to get just a few inches larger.) I don't game (Civilization and small indie titles don't count as they don't really stress the GPU) so the 750 Ti is enough card for me for now. When I get a bonus at work or something, I'd love to replace the 750 Ti with a 1080 Ti, figuring that the 3GB of extra memory can be presumed to be my actual video memory, and then I just have to keep my scenes under 8GB to use both of them.
In retrospect, it's not that bad...when I upgrade to the 1080Ti it'll go in the top slot, which is the faster slot...so...in the mean time, the 1080 doesn't get the top speed port, since I don't wanna mess with internal hardware for a bit. :-)
Actually I was doing a test render of a Genesis 6 character recently, just a few clothes and her, and it ended up small enough that GPU-Z claimed it was using the 750's GPU as well, which I found amusing.
My kids have been bugging me to get the home office cleaned up so we can install the sensors for the Oculus Rift, as they're super-curious about what VR is like, so I'm working on that today. I understand the tracking tech is a little better on the Vive, but I really couldn't resist the recent price drop on the Rift. It let me finally pick up a VR system, so...hopefully I'll be able to play with writing some simple software for it.
You might notice a theme ('a good price', 'not the best, but at a price that works for me', etc..); I have a long-standing theory of computer hardware, that if you buy pretty much one step down from the best, you get a lot more for your money than if you chase the absolute peak.
-- Morgan
As I understand it, W10 will still reserve RAM even if you aren't using that card to drive your monitor -- it's reserving RAM based on the number of monitors it could be driving.
@ JCThomas - Thank you for that explanation. I think I have a pretty good understanding now.
@ kyoto kid - Wow!, That seems like a significant amount. GPU rendering isn't my primary concern for this computer, but it is one of the main ones.
Greetings,
That is not correct. I have two cards in mine with a 750Ti as the display driver on Windows 10, and according to GPU-Z the 750Ti reserves between 235MB and 512MB for display purposes under normal use, and 4MB of the 1080 when DAZ Studio is closed, or ~130MB when it's open but hasn't rendered yet. (Presumably Iray preloads some stuff on there when DAZ Studio starts up.)
-- Morgan
Or you could look at either the 12 or 16 core AMD Threadripper CPU's which are not far away both will come with Liquid cooling solutions and are a lot cheaper than the Intel counterparts.. For instance the 16 Core Threadripper at around $999 is much better value than the 10 Core 7900X, also from seeing reviews and so on people are not that impressed with the X299 platform..
The other thing is that soon we will see the release of the Intel Coffeelake 6 core CPU's which according to some will become the new mainstream CPU and come in a number of different variants..