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New Computer Decision- Paralysis by Analysis

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  • JamesJABJamesJAB Posts: 1,766
    Spit said:
    JamesJAB said:
    Spit said:
    Starkdog said:

    Well, my 5-year old Dell is running out of room, will max at 16G RAM, and not enough power and physical room to put in anything larger than a GTX 1060.  So, I've been looking at upgrading to a new system, but have been waffling over several issues:

    Video Cards- I've looked at a nice Dell system, but it only supports up to 225 Watt Video Cards.  It comes with 32GB of RAM and a GTX 1070 8GB GDDR5, but I can spend $150 more to upgrade to the GTX 1080 8GB GDDR5X.  With the 2060/70/80 RTX cards, does it make more sense to get the base 1070, and save the cash for a later upgrade to an RTX card, provided that it fits the case, and meets power requirements?

    https://deals.dell.com/en-us/productdetail/29x0

    I've also looked at the Alien-Ware gaming desktops, and although they come with an RTX 2070 card, the card has 8GB GDDR6 RAM, the box only has 16GB RAM, but I'd have to spend quite a bit more to upgrade RAM.  I also don't need the disco-lights.

    https://deals.dell.com/en-us/productdetail/29we

     

    I've had good luck with the computers I've had, and want to stick with Dell.  I'm leaning towards the first option, as it seems more bang for the buck.  Any thoughts on options or other upgrades?

    Thanks,

    -David

    I hear ya and agree re Dell. Been using them since '94 when I was forced kicking and screaming away from my Amigas. I just got a new one last Fall. The previous Dell (i5) lasted 7 years and, honestly, was still fine for everything I did except iRay.

    In the new Dell I have an i7 8700k and a GTX 1080 and 32 gigs of ram. I use intel for video which leaves my 1080 free for iray. On Win 10, however, ms reserves 1.4 gigs of my 1080 which I can't use. Bummer.I have 6.64 G for iray.

    Dell GTX 1080 uses less juice than some of the other names. In fact Dell uses the basic spec with no boost clocking as do more than half of the manufacturers. The supplied power supply can handle it easily. As for upgrading you can fill the connections available (ie, add an extra hd and utilize your usb) but ram might be a problem.

    If you're comfortable and experienced with Dell as you seem to be, don't be afraid to continue with them.

     

    You might want to try this trick to free up vram since you are not using your GTX 1080 for a display.
    Go into your Nvidia Control Panel
    -3D Settings
    -Configure Surround, PhysX
    -PhysX Settings
    -Processor = GTX 1080
    -Check the box for dedicate to PhysX

    Now when you look at the card in the task manager you will see something like 16MB of VRAM in use and the GPU will sit at its minimum clock speed when not rendering.

    Thanks for the info. But I can't access the nVidia Control panel because it's not attached to a display. (That's what the message says anyway when I select it from the context menu on the desktop)

    Spent some time researching and all I can say is 'It's always something' and I think Windows 10, though nice on the surface, is a maze of rabbit holes, tunnels, and mazes.

     

    Try doing a fresh install on your nvidia drivers?

  • kenshaw011267kenshaw011267 Posts: 3,805
    edited April 2019

    That "trick" doesn't actually free up any VRAM. Every consumer grade GPU has a certain amount of VRAM taken by the OS. Quadro's and I think Radeon Pro's allow you to disable that for GPU's not connected to displays but you cannot do that with consumer grade cards.

    Task manager is infamously bad at displaying GPU stats so if you actually care about that sort of thing get GPU-Z.

    Post edited by kenshaw011267 on
  • StarkdogStarkdog Posts: 176

    Well, I made the jump!  I bought a Dell XPS 8930, with 8th Generation Intel® Core™ i7-8700 6-Core Processor, 32 GB DDR4 2666 MHz RAM, NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 1070 8GB GDDR5, and WHOA!!!  What an improvement!  After spending almost a day re-downloading over 2600 items via DIM, I put the machine to the test.  I rendered the image below in less than 11 minutes, and it is way crisper than what I was able to get via CPU on my older machine.

    beachblues.png
    1600 x 900 - 2M
  • rrwardrrward Posts: 556

    Dell Workstations are very good systems. For rendering I wouldn't get anything but a Precision workstation. But make sure it has enough PCIe 16 slots and a PSU pwerful enogh for your cards. Also be aware that you're not going to be putting any of those extra-tall cards with gigantic fans as the cases are not big enough. You're going to want to stay with something the size of Nvidia's Founders Edition cards. As for power, make sure you upgrade the PSU at purchase. Dell's workstations use non-standard PSUs and you can't just go off to Corsair and buy a 1500 Watt PSu and slap it in there.

  • namffuaknamffuak Posts: 4,411
    rrward said:

    Dell Workstations are very good systems. For rendering I wouldn't get anything but a Precision workstation. But make sure it has enough PCIe 16 slots and a PSU pwerful enogh for your cards. Also be aware that you're not going to be putting any of those extra-tall cards with gigantic fans as the cases are not big enough. You're going to want to stay with something the size of Nvidia's Founders Edition cards. As for power, make sure you upgrade the PSU at purchase. Dell's workstations use non-standard PSUs and you can't just go off to Corsair and buy a 1500 Watt PSu and slap it in there.

    I second the note on the strange psu - I had a T7400 server class with a 1000 W psu that claimed 90 A for the 12 V. What they didn't say was the 90 A was 5 separate 12 V feeds at 18 A each and therefore not capable of the 25A that the nVidia cards want.

  • kenshaw011267kenshaw011267 Posts: 3,805

    The XPS 8930 isn't a workstation but a standard PC.

    I'd have still made sure to get a decent sized PSU.

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