rigs for rendering? ..anyone with an HP Z800 w-GTX 1080Ti?

bsheers2003

some older posts in here back in 2018 regarding lower price points then available for these GPU products.   Even lower now in 2020, as RTX takes hold.   Anyone out there now with an HP /  1080Ti rig for rendering in IRAY?   .... and wondering if anyone also added a 2nd GPU for a dual GTX 1080Ti ?   (most Z800 's have 1110W power supplies.)   If so, have some specific how-to questions.  thxs ...

outrider42

I have two 1080tis running with a i5-4690k. The CPU hardly matters when it comes to Iray, as long as it can run the Daz Studio application itself. A number of people have or had two 1080tis.

The 2080ti is basically as fast as two 1080tis. We have a benchmark thread going here, check it out. Pay attention to the 4.12 results where Iray gets full RT support. Any times before that are not going to reflect that.

https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/341041/daz-studio-iray-rendering-hardware-benchmarking/p1

We have quite a few cards posted there now. Keep in mind this is just one scene, and while CUDA rendering scales very predictably, rendering with RT cores scales a bit differently.

Depending on how complex your scenes are, RTX can actually be much faster, so the 2080ti can really pull ahead. Rule of thumb: the more complex geometry you have the more the RT cores will make an impact. So the 2080ti can actually be a better buy than two 1080tis depending on what the prices are. Back in 2018 when people were discussing this, Daz Studio did not have RT support yet. So while prices have dropped, RT support has changed things a lot. Just ask anyone who has a RTX card, they are very happy.

Another thing to consider: Used 1080tis will be going out of warranty around March 2020, while a brand new 2080ti will of course have its full 3 year warranty. That to me is a big factor. I bought my 1080tis used, but that was before the 2080ti released so I felt fine with the time left on my warranty. And cool story, I used that warranty. I had a lightning strike kill my EVGA 1080ti. I contacted EVGA, sent the serial, shipped it back and got my replacement 1080ti in just a week and half to two weeks. And that is with me shipping to California from my East Coast home, EVGA shipped my replacement the same day they received my dead card. And this was a used card. That warranty matters!

Two 1080tis eat a lot of power, and while that workstation has plenty to offer, lots of power equals a lot of heat. My concern is how much airflow that workstation case has, I really don't know. It might be fine for a single card, but how well does it work with 2? Using 2 cards can really effect temps, from airflow to how much space is between the cards. My case has good airflow thanks to two 200mm fans sucking in air, and I use MSI Afterburner to control my GPU fans so that they kick in harder. This keeps temps down by quite a bit versus not using the fan controls.

If you want to know how, it is as simple as popping it in and doing the drivers. From there Daz will recognize that you have them and you just make sure to have both checked as rendering devices in the Iray settings. You do not any SLI connector or anything, if you look, I do not have one.