New desktop advice.
retiretomaui
Posts: 392
I'm seriously considering getting a new desktop to go along with my nice new 34 inch monitor. The Ryzen 2 is due out next year, and the performance specs (leaked) are mouthwatering, if true. Anyway, I was wondering what you all would recommend? I do some moderate DAZ rendering for fun and illustrating the odd book cover and the like, CAD work and 3D printing. My preferences would be:
- some form of Ryzen, 1800X or Ryzen 2 when available. I could go 1700 and save some cash and upgrade later since they're using the same socket, I suppose. I'm sort of an AMD fanboy so while I wouldn't say no to picking up a high end I7, the price, cpu and socket upgradability over time really suggests that AMD is the better choice here.
- 16 GB RAM.
- 2 TB HD with an SSD. Maybe a second HD, cash permitting.
- Optical drive (yeah, I'm old fashioned!)
Now, here's where things get dodgy - the graphics card. What do you all think is best? I can't afford a 1080 TI, but I do some light to moderate gaming and as I said, the CAD work and rendering does come in to play. How much VRAM is actually required? I man, 11GB on that monster 1080 would be awesome assuming I could afford it, but for what I'm doing is it really required? How much faster or better would renders be with a newer video card over, say, a 1060 or 1070?
Thank you for any advice here.
Bob
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Comments
Iray won't take any advantage of a super speedy CPU, as long as your scene fits in the memory of your GPU. Does the CAD work push the CPU, or do you do 3Delight renders (which are CPU-only)? If not it may be better to spend more on the GPU, especially if your scenes are complex enough that they may push the 8GB card.
What do you have now?
As Richard said, the CPU won't impact the Daz performance much. With Iray most important is the GPU. I wouldn't look at anything less than the 1070. With some of the pre-made scenes in the Daz store and a few late generation figures it's not hard to push an 8GB card. There are tricks and a product or two to reduce the amount of video memory used, but why when you don't have to?
Are you using AutoCAD? You might want to check the Autodesk website for GPU or CPU requirements. Or whatever CAD software you're using. And I imagine it also depends upon what CAD modules you're using for your particular work. Like if you're doing some of the fancy 3D architectural stuff, it might have some big GPU requirements.
...well if you don't have a big enough GPU to hold your Iray scenes, then CPU cores do matter as the process will dump to the CPU (at least it won't crash like Lux does). That said, just having the scene open in Daz takes up memory as well so to cover this happening, you need enough physical memory for both the render process and having the scene open (basically about double the scene load) or the process will dump to much slower swap mode. Rule of thumb, subtract about 1.5 GB from your total memory as that will be dedicated to the OS and system utilities.
I would suggest considering 32 GB just to have the overhead particularly if you plan on doing other things while rendering.
Keep in mind that W10 (Ryzen doesn't support W7 or 8.1) also reserves a noticeable amount of VRAM on your GPU card (about 19%). For example if you have a 1070 you will actually have about 6.5 GB for rendering instead of nearly 8 and for a 1060 you'll have about 4.8 instead of 6. If you plan on doing "big" scenes, this could be an issue.
Render speed improves with more cores but the bigger benefit of a 1080 Ti is the extra memory If you can keep most of your scenes from dumping to the CPU you are ahead of the game. Once a render process drops to the CPU, even a million CUDA cores would be of no benefit as the GPU is no longer part of the process. With the 1080Ti you'd have about 9.1 GB available under W10. There are some tricks to get around this like dedicating the Ti only to rendering and using a second smaller GPU card or the integrated chipset video on the MB (not sure what setup AMD uses) to drive the monitors .
And here's a list of different GPU Iray benchmark numbers as well as some prices and price/performance.
Regarding GPU VRAM, I'm not sure what you're running now, but you might want to run a GPU monitoring app like GPU-Z to see how much VRAM your scenes are taking now. Unless you're planning on some big monster scenes, you might not have to be too concerned about VRAM. It's never been a problem for me with my GTX 1070, but my scenes are generally 1-3 characters and a building interior. I'd have a hard time trying to build a scene that broke the bank, but you maybe different.
And if you look at the top of the attached chart, I post the benchmark time for the same scene running on just my Ryzen 7 1700 with 8 cores, 16 threads. And it is painfully, dreadfully slow. Like it takes 5 times as long as with my GPU. And it locks up my computer the entire time. So yeah, I'd avoid doing any CPU rendering if you can, even if it means breaking up your scenes into parts and running them separately.
I'm using an HP Envy laptop (Win 8.1) with an I7-5500u, 16 GB RAM and a GTX 850 card. It's a very nice laptop but more or less incapable of doing large scenes and the render times are... Horrid.
...years ago I used to work on a Toshiba Satellite so I understand the frustration. Notebooks really are not really made for this type of work as they do not have sufficient cooling and other than one of those cooling pads (which helps a little) there are no other after market solutions.
GPU-Z gives the total load the system is placing on the GPU (including Windows video and any other programmes that use VRAM as well like a Net browser or Daz), Checking the Daz log will give a better picture of how much VRAM (as well as physical memory) you really have available for rendering (this is how I discovered I only have 10.5 instead of 12 GB of system memory available without a scene loaded).
A good gaming laptop / mobile workstation will be able to render all day long without overheating. A medocre laptop will render all day, but will throttle down the clock speeds of the CPU/GPU to a level that the cooling setup can handle. And finaly a crappy laptop will get very hot and throttle the CPU/GPU under normal day to day tasks. (Notice that none of these options include overheating). Generaly the thing that will cause an overheat is blocked intake/exaust vents or dust bunnies built up over time beween the fan(s) and heatsink(s) blocking the airflow.
Here are a few simple rules about Gaming laptops and Mobile Workstations:
My Envy has never overheated despite being pushed a lot, and I mean a lot, when I was gaming a fair deal while home on disability. There is a nice cooling pad underneath, so that certainly helps.
I bought the Envy before I got into DAZ. As a laptop, it's great, doing everything that you'd expect a laptop to do. As a rendering machine, nope. It is also very buggy when running DAZ, and only DAZ, crashing quite a bit. No other progam has these issues but DAZ so I suspect there's a resource issue, that the Nvidia card or the CPU or whatever just can't drive the program and other processes at the same time. It slows down appreciably during rendering, to the point where other programs become unusable and that's become a major issue. I can't be productive when rendering and trying to do other things, even word processing.
So, is the general consensus that a 1070 is the minimum? With Ryzen 2 coming out in a few months, I'm hoping that prices will really fall.
I rendered fine with a 4GB 960. It really depends what you can fit on the card.
So far you're getting great advice here.
Even though GPU is more critical than CPU, I still would advise any new computer builder/buyer to consider getting an i7 if the budget supports it. As Kyoto Kid says, sometimes GPU processing will get shunted to the CPU, and if you've "cheaped out", well where does that leave you? Not in a bad place. But not in a fast place, either.
If you do decide to go for a gaming laptop, that can be a great choice, especially if you just want to do posing and modeling in the library, at your favorite Denny's (I recommend the big omelettes!), or at your boyfriend's/girlfriend's house while waiting for dinner or fun (heh!). But if you're thinking you'll get heavy into rendering, then you may want to consider a desktop with a fast i7, 64 GB of RAM (or more!), several hundred gigabytes' worth of SSD space, and one or two 1070s or 1080s. Gaming laptops sometimes come in 17" or 19" form factors, and often have room for scads more hard or solid state drives, as well as big heatsinks and separate exhaust ports for both CPU and GPU, a plus whether you're gaming or rendering.
If I where buying right now, I'd be looking at Asus, MSI, Sager, Dell, and others.
Did I miss what your budget is? If not...what's your budget?
In the "for what it's worth" category, all of the images in my gallery here were rendered on a "real" gaming laptop. I've never had any problems with over heating, and I follow rules very similar to those posted by JamesJAB above.
Eh...couldn't wait to hear waht the budget was...I'd recommend trying to fit in a 1080ti, even it means dropping down to a quad core Ryzen 5. As you say, the AM4 socket will be around for a few more years anyway, so if you're gonna upgrade anyway, why upgrade from high-end to high end? The Ryzen 5 1500 will more than do the job. And, while I know others will disagree with me, the B350 chipset is completely adequate for iray, including running two gpus. If you were planning on X370 with an 1800X, you could save sereval hundred dollars by going B350/1500.
Edit: meant Ryzen 5 1400.
Right now, I'd like to go no higher than $1500. THe HP Omen is looking nice as it has both external and internal swappable HD bays, so tossing in an extra 2-3 TB spinning drive just to handle DAZ renders and runtime stuff, and another just for my CAD stuff would be great, and affordable. That would leave the factory installed C drive just for the OS. I also get a nice discount ordering from them, and as far as gaming rigs go, Alienware is far too overpriced. Origin PC would be my choice were I to win the lottery, though. I'm hoping that when the 1090 and Ryzen 2 come out in the spring time that prices on the existing Omen 1700-1800X and the 1070-1080 families will drop enough to make buying a rig featuring them far more affordable
@retiretomaui
Most important thing to look at if buying a factory box is if the power supply is adequate if not getting the video card you want. If it does come with the card, ignore. With a $1500 budget without a monitor I think you could squeeze a 1080 Ti in there.
Worth it? Only you can decide. Depends on how much Daz stuff you do and size of scenes, and your value on it.
Great ideas, everyone, and thank you. Ebergerly, that's a great point. It looks like HP has to different Omen boxes, a more or less standard rectangular one which doesn't have externally mounted drive bays and the super monstrous looking one (I mean that in a good way) that does. For example:
http://store.hp.com/us/en/pdp/omen-desktop-pc---870-210se-z9m85av-1?jumpid=ma_omen-gaming_desktops_2_Z9M85AV
http://store.hp.com/us/en/pdp/omen-by-hp-desktop-pc-880-015rz
Were I to go HP, I'd be getting some form of the second "monstrous" box. I had a Micron PC back in the day that took only proprietary Micron components, which was a pain when the machine started failing and I couldn't get parts to replace it. That's another consideration to research.
Bob
While I think most of the big names have stopped doing it, it's entirely possible that some models still use proprietary designs.
Thanks everyone, again. I've tentatively decided on some form of Ryzen, preferably a 1700 or greater, a 3TB HD plus SSD, and at least a 1070. It doesn't make sense to spend money on a 1060 or 1050, as you all have pointed out. I likely will get the Omen if only because it has two external hard drive bays in addition to a spar internal bay so one could really load up the storage without clogging up the C drive. It's just a matter of waiting for prices to drop, perhaps the day after Christmas.
Thank you again!
Bob
...indeed, I'm at the opposite end of the scale as I often create "epic" level scenes. Like I mentioned I have scenes that would choke a 1070 or standard 1080 (and that's with Win7). 4 GB is fine for "character proof" rendering and smoother viewport operation, but that is about it for my purposes.
...when I bought my Toshiba, there were few if any dedicated gaming notebooks (there were professional engineering notebooks with mobile Quadro GPUs but those were frightfully expensive). I also purchased it about a year and a half before I became involved with 3D. The only graphics work I did with it beforehand was photo manips using Gimp and PSP, as well as creating fonts and vector graphics in Inkscape. Mostly I wanted it for writing and it's video features (it has the Media Edition of XP).
It soldiered along pretty well for the 6 years I used it for my 3D work before I built the current desktop however some of the key switches on the upper part of the keyboard no longer work and the built in speakers burned out due to being subjected to the constant heat of rendering all those years. This was not a notebook designed for that kind of punishment.
...that's one of the issues with finding DDR3 server memory.
From viewing video Omen reviews, HP apparently doesn't do that anymore, which was a nice plus to learn last night. Their memory could be faster, but at least its readily replaceable, and they come with a stock liquid cooler on the higher end models, plus a basic overclocking utility. The only negative is that when it comes time to upgrade the cpu, it will require a new liquid colling solution, but that's a bridge I'll cross when I get there.
That's a najor concern for my Envy. It's a great laptop, really powerful for what I need it to do, but when it renders uder heavy load man, you can feel it! Even with a cooling pad it's quite noticeable.
If you're building instead of buying, the most annoyting thing right now will be getting RAM. Prices are just plain silly. (I built my system - Ryzen 7 1700, GTX1080 8Gb, DDR4-3000 16Gb RAM) planning to get an additional 16 Gb a little later. The price has jumped $30-40. (And that's avoiding shiny-flashy things.)
Also Ryzen's more stable now with MB bios updates, driver updates, etc. under its belt. Which is good to see.
More than likely buying instead of building. My dream would be to rebuild some old IBM Aptiva cases in storage into Ryzen power machines, but I'm cocerned about the cooling with those old cases. Also, the current Omens have those great external drive bays for added storage, so there's that. I really would like to build my own, but the scenario augers against it. I'll likely turn the old cases into Athlon X4 machines at some point just to use as general purpose beaters, either for me or as gifts.
...I watched a 24 GB DDR3 1333 kit go from 115$ in Dec of 2016 up to a current price of 228$.
...and this is last generation tech.