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Unless you have an AMD threadripper, most modern CPUs will still slow down a render also. I tested an i7 8700 8th gen CPU with a 1080Ti and a 1070Ti with DAZ running from an M2 samsug solidstate SSD with 32 gig of DDR4 ram. The CPU slowed down the benchmark Sickleyield and outrider42 scenes by about 5-10 seconds.
Takeo: It's okay. I can wait for another year until my new PC arrive to get the optimum experience. For the short term, I need a super big discount on render time. And I agree with you on the viewport. I want to use squeeze my AMD for another year. Just like I squeezed my 10 year old laptop. It died 4 weeks ago. Use it to the max!
DustRider: There's no feature or equipment to know how big our render will be prior to rendering is there? I think the closest thing we have is GPU-Z. Hey... great scene you have there by the way.
bk007dragon: I'll be careful when swapping the GPU. I replaced my PSU 2 years ago, so I'm sure it would do well for another year until new PC arrives. El cheepo special ? NOTED!
There is the Iray Memory Assistant in the store here that may help. I don't have it so I'm not sure how well it works. I have 32Gb of system RAM, so I just add stuff, and if it dumps to CPU, then I start trying to conserve memory. Since your system is leaner on RAM, that might not be the best option, as it might start swapping RAM to the hard drive, so the Iray Memory Assistant might be well worth the investment (and will probably go on sale sometime over the next month).
Oh ..... thanks for the compliment!
When Kyoto is talking about the CPU slowing things down, its not the actual render, it is the loading time. The time it takes for the scene to load into the GPU. It may take a minute or so, and it seems you are already quite aquainted with this. It shouldn't take any longer to load than you are already used to. Your PC will run basically like it already does now, except once it loads up the render it will blaze through faster than you have ever seen in your experience. You might be going from hours long to 10 minutes long for some of your scenes. maybe even faster. Considering you have just 8GB of RAM yyou can't be making very large scenes, so a number of them may render in just a few minutes. I think you'll be able to load pretty much every scene you have created so far, since those scenes already had to fit within your system RAM.
So a 1060 will get you quite a nice lift for now, and you'll be able to focus on saving for the future. Considering how little you are used to, this is entirely up to you.A 4 core 8 thread Ryzen can be pretty cheap, and easily upgraded because AMD has supported the same socket with Ryzen 1 and 2, and the next one will as well. You can also start with 16GB RAM and add more in later. RAM is the easiest upgrade there is, and given your history, you may not even need more. SSD's are nice and they are getting cheaper, but if you have been ok with long load times, one isn't all that necessary. Standard hard drives still offer the best overall value. Though you can get a small SSD dirt cheap to run your OS and a couple programs. I think 256GB SSDs have been dropping under $30 US. I think running your system on a SSD might actually make you cry. I know I couldn't stop giggling to myself the first time I got one. 8 second boot times! And when I installed an SSD in my laptop, it felt like a completely different machine. You can also use the SSD as the paging file location, which can speed up the system a lot when RAM is low compared to a regular drive in the same situation.
Well. its nice to see that things have settled down a bit in this thread and the voices of reason have prevailed. There was quite a bit of FUD flying around there early on.
I agree completely with those that have said that as long as you have an adequate power supply and the correct connectors there is no reason to believe that the 1060 won't work and you will experience a significant performance increase when it comes to rendering. As for the claim that your Windows 7 is "no longer supported", that is not exactly true. It is only mainstream support that ended a while ago. I suspect that many Windows users don't even know what that means without looking it up. Essentially it means that Microsoft will no longer provide direct support, nor will they be adding any new features. I suspect that most users are not in the habit of calling Microsoft to solve their issues anyway, and new features tend to be few and far between at the best of times, so the end of mainstream support probably passes largely unnoticed. What will be ending as of January 14, 2020 is what we have now, known as extended support. The latter means that we still receive security updates, which is the lion's share of updates all along, but a little more than a year from now that will end. The sky won't fall, but Windows 7 machines will become increasingly vulnerable thereafter. So you should try and target your upgrade for sometime in the new year a year from now, if possible.
When it does come time for a new PC, if you are going to have it prebuilt for you, you want to be able to reuse your relatively new 1060 card in that machine, so either ensure that the new one has additional PCIE slots or get one without an addon card and install the 1060 yourself. It is important that whatever money you are spending to upgrade your older machine can be put to use in the new one. Otherwise, you seem to me to have your ducks in a line and your head screwed on straight.
DustRider: Memory Assistant... THAT'S IT!! Wishlist: clicked. Thanks Dusty.
Outrider42 : Now you dig it. I'm used to 'hard-living' when it comes to PC performance. 10 minutes boot time, 2 minutes scene loading time. That's a good 12 minutes to make breakfast. 8 seconds boot time? What am I gonna do with 8 seconds?
Thanks for the new PC tips.
SixDs : Thanks for updating the W7.... I mean information update. And thanks for the new PC tips. Yes, I intend to re-use what can be re-used. Use it to the max.
If you can put up with the performance that using built in graphics will give you, then do so, because you then get more resources on the 1060 for rendering.
My biggest concern is your PSU, whilst they don't generally take other components with them when they go, they certainly can do.
Rendering is going to push all components, and all those components will push your PSU.
My advice, if you must just upgrade the card, see what's available second hand - not always a good idea but worth considering. A 980ti would be decent and still give 6GB of RAM. I wouldn't accept less than 6GB unless the price was rediculously low - and if it is so low, then I'd be even more wary of second hand.
...if you know how to manage your system, have an excellent firewall, along with up to date AV, and andi-malware utilities, W7 will be fine after 2020..
If you are concerned, 8.1's extended support lasts until 2023.
There are critical systems today, like ATMs, that still run on XP.
nicstt: I will never touch second hand GPUs. Ex-mining GPUs are flooding the second hand market. And besides, new GPU prices are coming down.
Dragon: Even worse, occasional blackout at my place. I have a UPS so I can stop the render and shutdown. But one time I had to do that when rendering was 85% complete.
Kyoto: How about this. I still use W7 for several more years after all supports are gone on my new PC but the new PC is dedicated for DAZ only. I'm sure there are no virus or mal-ware DAZ site right? Just a thought. I'll be doing other light stuff with this ancient AMD A4 like browsing.
Coming down for maybe 6 weeks. Then the new tariff hits. If you live anywhere that the graphics card might be shipped into or through the US buying used might look very appealing after mid January.
Buying used is not that big a risk. crypto miners mostly used mid range cards. Avoid 1060's and 1070's and you should be fine and the Radeon cards and you should be fine. Also even if they were running at 100% 24/7 the miners had a vested interest in making sure they were running cool and dust free, that was how they kept their power cost down and kept from needing to buy new cards. So likely enough the cards are in pretty decent shape compared to some kid who never cleaned his PC after putting the card in after buying it the day the card came out two years ago.
Indeed, including NHS; anyone remember the debacle earlier this year?
A properly managed W7 system is likely to be more secure than an improperly managed W10 system.
This, however, isn't something I could reccommend.
As previosly stated, the question was about doing the right thing - my answer is still no. That others are running older systems, can produce great renders has little bearing; yes it can be done. But is the user capable of doing it? Do they want to spend the time?
No idea. Nor do I have any idea on their financial situation, or indeed, any other aspect; on such an old system, catastrophic failure could loose them important work - and this is without knowing what thoughts they've given to backups. New systems can of course fail - and do.
Personally, this question has been answered.
I agree with this statement, and I double-down on it and on my prior comments, even in the face of having been accused of spreading FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt). I do think that comment wasn't very fairly applied, but that's what that commenter felt in his heart, and everybody should have the freedom to speak his/her mind.
All in all, there were a lot of good comments and good information given, even from people who disagree with me. I think the OP has options, some more temporary than others, and it sounds like he's probably made up his mind what to do. He could even keep using Windows 7.1 for another year without changing too much of what he does/knows. I wouldn't do that, but I've already made my case and I do feel good that we've done right by him here.
...already had that happen last month. Lost roughly 3 years of work (found all my scene files prior to 2015 on USB backups) and a huge number of freebies (some no longer available).
Unfortunately I would need a reasonable sized windfall given my meagre fixed income, to get a new more up to date system, so the only choice I have is to keep patching up my oldsystem when it needs it, as best as I can afford to.
...or quit 3D art altogether which is not an option that I care to take.
Stash your irreplaceable assets and finished renders on a cloud storage service like Mega, DropBox or OneDrive. That way you can't lose them due to a local drive failure.
...I now have backup media for that.
If I could afford it, I'd go for one of the more secure cloud services.
Well... it's been around five months since I opened this discussion, and I bought myself a 1060 6GB immediately after that. I'm happy to say that I'm very happy with the result. I can't believe combining 1060 6GB with my ancient CPU actually works. Iray renders that took me 9-11 hours only take 45-60 minutes now. The upgrade is already more than 4 months old now, and I've done hundreds of renders sometimes in batches for the whole night.
There were minor technical glitches during the installation and initial operation, but after that, it's going very well. Thanks for the inputs guys.
Hey, just FYI, but if you or anyone else wants to upgrade to Windows 10, you can still do it for free as long as you're running a legal copy of Windows 7 or 8.1. I just did it a couple of days ago. Directions here: https://www.geeksinphoenix.com/blog/post/2018/11/29/how-to-get-a-free-windows-10-upgrade-for-windows-7-and-windows-8-1.aspx
Congrats on the 1060!
Yeah, most of what you hear for tech/computer recommendations is, sadly, nonsense. The 1060 is a great card, as evidenced by the fact that it's the most popular GPU out there based on ownership statistics. Not everyone is desperate to have their renders happen in less than 0.13 seconds or else they're miserable.But strangely, I don't think I've ever heard anyone ask "what's an acceptable render time?" when someone asks for GPU recommendations...
And no, you don't need a huge power supply for a card like the 1060. It's only rated 120watts, and by far it will probably be the largest power draw in your PC. And it's very rare that it will ever even get up to 120 watts in a render. I have a 1080ti plus 1070 and I can barely get above 400watts doing a full render.
And CPU's are getting pretty much irrelevant for most software, so no, you don't need a huge monster CPU. Unless you do stuff like video editing.
That's because that is as subjective as many statement and more so than many. :D
For me, an acceptable render time (when buying a new card) is at least halving the render time over what I get now. The more I spend the further improvement I expect.
I've been considering a Titan. I just object to spending that sort of cash. So I've also been looking at Octane.
And how do I get the word [SOLVED] in the title?
Do I just type it in 'edit'?
Yup
The best backup methodology is called "3-2-1". This is well-known and widely used. Here's a blurb I peeled off of the Carbonite website (I'm not affiliated with them in any way, nor do I even use their service):
Actually, I think this is a slight typo. It should read "Keep at least three BACKUPS of your data, not including the original." The original is NOT a backup and should never be thought of as a backup.
And I'll add a 4th one:
4. Periodically review your backup process, rotatation strategy, and retention periods. Be sure you're still backing up what you've intended, and that you're still applying the proper retention periods (especially if you have new backups coming into rotation and old backups getting overlaid).
Changing your partition layouts can inadvertently result in your backups suddenly grabbing a different partition, not the one you originally set up to be backed up.
Retention perioids and rotations are also key, and simply changing a backup frequency from monthly to weekly or weekly to daily will require a review and adjustment of your settings. For example, if you keep 4 copies of backups for a monthly backup job, and now you decide to go to a daily strategy, not adjusting rotation cycles or retention periods could result in you keeping no backups for longer than 4 days! Changing to a 3-incrementals-per-day strategy (like I've done with my OS and App partitions) could result in a mere 2-day retention period for something that I really want to keep for a minimum of 4 weeks. Not good at all, but could be easily fixed with a review and minor adjustment in my backup software.
Wow. In the real world nobody but a business whose livelihood depends on their data should even consider all of that. Let's face it, most users don't do any backups, even though they should. And most users don't have REALLY critical data, other than maybe sentimentally critical.
Most people only need to do these simple things:
That way, every day your computer automatically copies all your new/changed files to the backup drive in the background, and from then on you never again have to worry about backups, it's all done automatically. And if something happens you have all those files ready to go without having to decode them or use special software.
That is a minimum. Some of us go even further and have a duplicate/almost identical computer on the network where if once computer dies you just swivel around in your seat and start the other and it's like nothing happened.
Don't fall for what backup software vendors tell you that you need. As someone who has had a hard drive failure, and couldn't even remember what software he used to do the backups years ago, much less couldn't install it on a dead main system drive, I learned the hard way. I looked at my backup USB drive and didn't even know what was on it, when it was backed up, and how to restore it.
"Real men don't do backups. Real men also cry alot"
I agree that for data files a simple copy to another drive is probably the simplest and best solution. I prefer to encrypt my data drives though (partition encryption), so that if they get stolen no one can access the data. I never notice they're encrypted other than when I boot up I enter the password, then they act completely like any other drive in all respects. I've done this for over 15 years now and never had any corrupted data on these drives or lost anything, so with the right software (I use DriveCrypt) it's completely safe. It's not only for my own sake I encrypt them, DAZ and other content providers will probably appreciate that my several TB of content install files don't end up in the hands of the wrong people if the drives are stolen, so will the people I communicate with by email, etc..
If it's a backup of your system drive however the far easiest is to create an image of the system drive/partition as soon as you have installed and configured everything, and before it starts to degrade as Windows usually do over time. Then you can restore the whole thing and be up running again in no time on a fresh and reliable system, if something goes wrong. You can also encrypt the images if you like, and with good imaging software you can access and extract any file in the image even if it's encrypted. If you only install your software on the system drive and keep all other data on separate drives which is the smartest in any case IMO, the image doesn't take up a lot of space and can be made and restored quite fast (less than an hour for most systems). Install imaging software on a boot CD or USB stick, then it's a piece of cake to do.
Why would anyone want to create an image of your drive??
If you get a virus or other problem, the last thing you want is to start up another drive that might have the same problem. Just save the important data files, INCLUDING DOWNLOAD FILES OF ALL INSTALLED PROGRAMS, and if you have a problem just go down the list of downloads and re-install from scratch. It's surprisingly fast. And keep a USB ISO of Windows if you must.
If something happens, start up a new blank drive, install Windows via .iso file, plug in the data backup HD, re-install the important software, and you're ready to go.