Upgrade Advice
Amy_Bone
Posts: 45
I have a limited upgrade budget but am planning on upgrading over the next 3 months. What I'm after is advice on what to prioritize. These items are at the upper end of my budget but manageable.
What I got now is a Ryzen 3 with 16gb Ram and Windows 10 and a GTX 1060ti with 4gb
What I'm planning to buy is:
Ryzen 5 2600X (6 Cores @ 3.6Ghz)
Upgrade to 32gb RAM
GTX 1660 ti (this is the most expensive I can afford right now so please don't recommend an GTX 2080ti or similar, 'cos I can't afford it and I'll cry).
Ultimately the plan is to get all of this, but any recommendations on what I should get first? I suspect the 1660 might drop a lot of my scenes onto the CPU anyway so I'm leaning towards the CPU/RAM first, but to be honest I am a total IRAY noob, so I don't really have a scooby.
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Comments
If this is for Iray then I'm not sure the CPU upgrade is worthwhile - if you scrap that can you get a GPU with more on-board memory? Do you actually need the system RAM increase, 16GB isn't an enormous amount but it isn't ridiculously little either. Really, no-one will be able to give you solid advice without a better idea of where you are currently hitting limitations, and what sort of scenes you are rendering, and what other software (if any) you are using.
The thing is I can only afford £200-250 per month. I have tried saving but, honestly, I'm rubbish at hanging on to money. Full disclosure I've tried and burned through the reserved money with content purchases. I realise that is a personal flaw but I have to live with it. I used to have a GTX970 ti but sadly I cooked it and the Graphics Card market still hasn't corrected from all that bitcoin nonsense. To be fair the GTX1660 ti has 6gb and 1536 CUDA cores for around £250 the next step up is @ £500-700 for a GTX 1070 ti with 8gb and 2432 cores. If I had the money to throw at it I would get the latter. It benches around 20-25% up on the GTX 1660 ti on most sites.
I also use Poser Pro 11.1 which has the ability to hand use CPU and RAM alongside the GPU regardless of texture size. I understand that if the GPU can't hold all the textures in Studio it refuses to get involved and the CPU has to do everything.
Basically my issue is with render times:
I can render a simple Gen 7 figure with an HDRI in around 6-8 mins. Anything more complex seems to be 1-3 hours, including a single Gen 8 figure with HDRI. The attached pics took @ 1 hour 40 and 7 mins respectively. With Poser much more complex scenes take 30-60 mins. If the 1660 will handle a scene with say 5-6 Gen 7 characters or 3-4 Gen 8's with some scenery and props without dropping it I guess I should do that first. If it is still going to drop scenes of that complexity I may as well accept I'm rendering mainly on CPU/RAM for the time being. Not ideal, but as far as I can tell a viable option if the CPU has the necessary horsepower. My concern is that if a 4gb card will drop one Gen 8 character, how much more will an 8gb card support?
Wait until after July 7 to buy anything. By then we'll know if Nvidia is dropping prices on Turing cards. You might be able to swing a 2060 or 2070 once that happens.
After that I'd look at the Ryzen 2600 not the 2600x. The chips are essentially identical and the lower performnce in the 2600 is easy to overcome with a very basic overslock that any 2600 can easily sustain on the stock cooler.
For RAM, keep an eye on the tech news. RAM prices are expected to drop throughout the rest of this year at least. Wait to buy until RAM prices bottom out.
Thanks, Ken. Lot's of helpful advice there. I hadn't thought about O/C the 2600 but it makes sense. I noticed RAM prices dropping, I'm seeing 32gb for less than I paid in Jan for 16gb. If I hang fire on the RAM I might be able to stretch to a 2700. I get paid on 1 July so it shouldn't be hard to hang fire for a week or two.
On saving: could you buy yourself a Gift Card at a store, if they support them, then you can't spend the money of content (or fripperies like food)? it would also let you build up a larger amount over a long period, letting you keep some content etc. money in play (though I can understand, in current circumstances, being wary about tying money up in a store's credit for an extended period).
That's not a bad plan, thanks.
If you don't mind looking at used GPUs on ebay (ebay.co.uk).
GTX 1070 8GB start around £175
GTX 1070 ti 8GB start around £234
GTX 1080 8GB start around £280
Thanks. I haven't been on ebay in donkey's years. I am a bit leery about buying second-hand tech, but I guess if I can find a reliable reseller it's an option. It is probably still worth holding on until July to see what the prices do.