I need a system upgrade...
Malandar
Posts: 776
I need to upgrade my rendering machine. Currently I have an Intel I5 with a 1060 with 3 gigs of video ram. What I have to figure out (because I don't know this stuff, is to increase render times in IRAY, do I need a faster processor or a beefier vid card? (I keep seeing people talk about render times in seconds and minutes when my renders take hours on end and I want to up my productivity since I am starting to render a story and I don't want to be stuck at a render a day, once I have the scene built.)
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Quick answer is: IRay rendering is helped most by a good modern NVidea video card with as much onboard video memory as you can afford. 6GB at least.
Caveat: If your current system has a relatively modern motherboard and has enough space, power, and cooling for a good video card you might get away with just a video card upgrade. HOWEVER, the motherboard's CPU type should have at least 4-cores, preferaby more, should be clocked at at least 3.0Gb/sec and using enough medium to high speed DDR4 RAM to avoid causing the system to substitute temporary disk storage for inadequate program RAM when running DAZ Studio or other graphic heavy applications.
Long answer: is probably avalanching into this thread from more knowlegeble people now.
The 1060 3Gb is, to be as nice as possible, a terrible card for iRay.
You will benefit most from a better GPU. Which one is best for you will depend on your budget, unsurprisingly it will be the one at the top end of your budget.
It's actually a gaming computer I have had for a couple of years, but just out of curiosity, what makes the 1060 so bad for rendering?
The computer I am using for rendering is a couple of years old. It's my gaming computer at the moment. It is a 4 core, the speed is set at 3.29 I only have 16 gigs of ram though So I definitely need more ram, but then I knew that, just didn't think about doing anything about it until now.
...most scenes will not fit in 3GB and the process will dump to the CPU. If system memory is exceeded it then dumps to virtual memory on your HDD (what is usually termed "swap mode") which is even slower. I have a 4 GB GPU in my assembly system, and it is good enough to render a single figure with a simple background ( I use to "proof" characters as I create my own custom ones with custom skins created in Skin Builder Pro as well as the strand based hair tool at times). My main render system has Maxwell Titan-X (12 GB). If you can afford it I would suggest an RTX 2060 Super which gives you ray tracing and 8 GB of VRAM. it will not only give you a good amount of VRAM for rendering but better performance for your games as well. 6 GB is usually the suggested bare minimum for rendering and since you say you are looking to create illustrations for stories [which is what I also do] that may not be enough.
How much memory do you have on the MB and what is the output of your PSU?
Also what OS are you using?
I upgraded my desktop in 2015 with a 1060 6 GB and only 4 GB RAM. I could render complex scenes in few hours. I remeber completing a whole picture story of 15 imgaes in 3 days. The time was consumed in setting up the scene each toe as per client requirement. In few scenes I had close to 10 G3 figures, 8 of whose textures were reduced by scripts. Only the main characters were full Textured. The last story I did on my desktop had 4 G3 characters in full texture mode, also the scene with no reduction scripts. I never had to render through CPU. When I used my desktop I mostly had 4 full textured G3 characters. At times it took me few hours. But never days....
In your case, its the 3 GB one which may be falling short. If you really have the money, then go for the RTX 20 series. You can even get the RTX 2060 Super which can be a huge boost. Its Ray Tracing technology can boost the Render Quality too adding a bit more reality to it. I got this 1060 at the same price that this 2060 is being offered now. But you may need an adequate PSU too..
Windows 10. And I just looked at the box the computer came in and turns out I only have 2 4 gig sticks of ram 8 gigs of the 16 I have is on the MB. And it looks like my PSU is crap lol only 300w
EDIT: typos
My previous computer, it had the PSU go out because the idiots at the factory put the QA sticker over part of the vent holes and it burnt out so I went and bought a new PSU and got a new vid card to go with it, but the PSU was a 420w PSU and it wouldn't fit in the case, so I have it sitting out beside the computer lol. Though I think that if I get a nice beefy Vid card I will just buy a high power PSU to go with it just to make sure. I have been looking at video cards on new egg and damn but some of them are sexy as hell. 24 gigs of ram on one vid card lol. But the cost...
And the computer was built with a 300w PSU, came that way, I haven't changed a thing since I bought it two or three black Fridays ago.
Regarding power useage. I have a modern motherboard with a 600w PSU, an i5-8xxx CPU, 32GB RAM, a 1660 video card with 6GB graphic memory, 3.5TB internal storage (SSD & HD) plus a 4TB external HD, and the monitor all connected to one of my UPS. My 1000AV UPS display registers below 150w while the computer is rendering and below 65w when idle, and below 25w when sleeping (including DSL modem, a wireless audio switch and an 8-port network hub) Although my system has a 600w PSU.
My old system has an i3-3xxx CPU, 8GB RAM, a cheapo ATI graphics card that came with the system. It's on a different but similar 1000AV UPS. With no external devices (except monitor) powered, the system runs at 130w while rendering (CPU rendering, not GPU rendering). When idling it draws 95w. When sleeping it still draws 14w. Both my UPS's usually forecast at least 30 minute up-time if power fails.
Granted, the powersupply is not there only for steady-state usage but to also be able handle momentary high power draws (such as spinning up hard drives). Also, to some extent, higher power PSUs have more stable power output during fluctuating power needs. I've upgraded all my old 300w PSUs to at least 500w and my new system (above) uses the 600w. Maybe it doesn't need it but I feel better and it gives me a little room to grow in the next few years.
Added note: If I ever build another system for DAZzing, I'd go with a bigger graphics card. 8GB for bigger scenes. The 6GB is ok for scenes with one or two Genesis1,2,3,8 characters and some simple clothes, props, sets, and lighting but right now I don't need that power.
...yeah you will want to increase the memory to 16 if you can 32 would be preferable. That PSU is pretty minimal (the 2060 Super calls for a minimum of 550W). I have a 750w PSU in each of my systems and an auxillary 850w for future updating (never scrimp on the PSU because if it goes south, it can take the whole system with it).
I had 12 GB on my render box and before I got the Titan (it now has 24 GB of RAM). At the time I was rendering on the CPU as I had a GPU with only 1 GB (GTX 460). I often had the render process drop to swap mode as having the scene open took up a major portion of system memory, On that system (W7 Pro) at least 1 GB went to the OS and system utilities so I actually only had 11 GB to work with OIne scene was 8.7 GB in size when open so that guaranteed it would dump to virtual memory on the HDD. . For example, if you are rendering a scene that is say 5GB in size when open, which dumps from the GPU, that means you only have at best 2 GB of from the the 7 remaining to render with and it is definitely going to the HDD for virtual memory. Also with W10 you actually have access to around only 2.5 GB on that GPU ) due to WDDM which reserves a portion of VRAM (about 15% to 17%) on GTX/RTX cards. The only way to bypass it is to have a more expensive Quadro or Titan GPU which can be set to TCC mode (compute only) however then you would need a secondary GPU to drive the display(s). So W10 makes it even more important to get the most VRAM you can afford.
That PSU is pretty minimal (the 2060 Super calls for a minimum of 550W that also includes memory, CPU, coolers, fans, etc). I have a 750w PSU in each my systems and an auxillary 850w for future updating (never scrimp on the PSU because if it goes south it can take the whole system with it).
The Titan? This one?
https://www.newegg.com/nvidia-titan-rtx-900-1g150-2500-000-sb/p/N82E16814132084?Item=N82E16814132084
...no. Maxwell Titan X 12 GB (2 generations ago). Still, quite a hefty step up from rendering on the CPU.
While I'd love an RTX model, the price for one is two and a half months times my monthly income. By the time I could save up for one, it would be old hat (and granted, probably cost less).
Ah okay. I am just here trying to figure out if going whole hog is worth it or not, or if going Titan RTX would just be overkill lol I mean hell having one of them would be great because I doubt I would have to worry about games any time soon and pretty sure rendering would be pretty quick, but if there is not a huge difference between say an 8 or 12 gig 20 series, what's the point?
If this is a hobby and you're not swimming in cash something like the 2060 Super or 2070 super will be fine and both are great gaming cards.
...if I had the resources, I wouldn't hesitate to plop a Quadro RTX8000 into the render box as then I'd rarely if ever have to worry about scenes with multiple characters and lots of detail dumping to the CPU.
It's too bad Iray doesn't support out of core rendering. I looked at the details of Octane 4 and said "nope", working in the cloud is not for me.
Oh I forgot to ask earlier, how does that titan work for you? how heavy a load content wise can you put on it and do you game much with it? (curious to see how good it is compared to the newer ones.)
...nothing of real "substance" yet. I had a scene that was 8.7 GB that took something like 6 -7 hours on a 4 core/8 thread i7 930 CPU (at the time I only had 12 GB of RAM on the system [less 1 GB for Windows] so it easily went into swap mode) which I would have loved to test but it was lost in a drive crash. Been primarily occupied with recreating all the characters for my stories (using G3) that were lost, and been learning some new processes to boot, so resurrecting the scene is not a priority at present I would also probably do it a bit differently as I created it when Iray was still fairly new and we were all flying by the seat of the pants with it. Since then there have been a number of new environmental effects and utilities that were released which likely would significantly reduce the memory footprint. To be a fair test I'd have to rebuild it exactly as it was as all the characters were G2 (which had a higher polycount than either G3 or G8).
Attached is the original scene.
That's a nice render.I'll have to do some figuring, I may see about building a dual vid card rig (I think I have to go new system if I go that route, as I don't think I have a second PCIe slot on this MB, but then again that would let me get a MB with 4 ram slots instead of only 2.
@Malandar " just out of curiosity, what makes the 1060 so bad for rendering?"
It doesn't have many CUDA cores and only 3GB VRAM.
More CUDA cores = faster renders, more VRAM = more complex scenes that will be rendered using GPU instead of CPU (i.e. faster renders).
...thanks.
Even though it was an early Iray work, it was a tonne of work . Lots of render tests while designing the individual characters in neutral lighting (taking 30 - 45 min a pop) numerous test renders of the setting to check surfaces, lighting, atmospheric effects, etc, (usually at least an hour or so before halting them). Some kitbashing. Inserting and placing the characters in the scene (which took forever as the OpenGL viewport was so overloaded)
Here's just one of the characters. Click on the image to resize and you'll see on the smartphone screen is the Iray version of my "girls at the bus stop" scene (attachment #2). When I could finally get a GPU capable of handling the scene, I was going to re-render it at a much larger resolution.
The important question here is what is your budget? As others have pointed out, by far the biggest bang for the buck will be a beefier Nvidia card with more VRAM. To be honest, I think having more VRAM is more important than having faster CUDA cores, as the VRAM is what limits your usage of the video card in the first place.
CPU based rendering takes a long time, so you want a card that can hold your scenes inside of the GPU only, so as to allow a GPU only render. GPU based Iray renders are MUCH faster, sometimes on the order of 10x or more depending on your other system specs.
As others have pointed out, there are some 6GB cards out there (the GTX 1660 Ti's for example), and if you have a bit more money to spend, yeah the 8 GB Nvidia 1070's/2070's or 1080's/2080s are nice to have. The 1080 Ti/2080 Ti's have 11 GB of VRAM, which is even nicer, but even used those cards can get pricey. Not as much as the Quadro cards of course, but as far as 'bang for buck' they are the next best thing to the quadro cards.
With multiple characters and a somewhat involved scene, I can still exceed the VRAM of a 1080 Ti, but of course there are things you can do to optimize your VRAM usage. With multiple (say 6+ characters) I may do a scene in two or more passes, with just 3-4 characters in each pass, keeping how the shadows are cast in the scene in mind of course, and then merging them in Post with Photoshop.
Of course, you do need to have a power supply of sufficient capacity for the beefier cards, but 600-700 watt power supplies are priced pretty reasonably if your current power supply is anemic in that regard.
You may find some good deals on older cards, and of course there is Ebay, etc. (roll your dice, take your chances). An older card with more VRAM will probably be more useful to you than a newer card with lesser VRAM. It'll all come down to how much you are willing to spend.
I just checked, Nvidia DOES have drivers for their latest RTX cards for Windows 7, in case you are on an older OS, so that's good news if you aren't using Windows 10 for some reason. Windows 7 and 8 do allow you to use more VRAM than Windows 10 for rendering, Windows 10 only allows you to use around 81% of your total VRAM for one program, unless you have one of the more expensive quadro cards in 'headless' mode. But that's another story.
So yeah, shoot for the a Nvidia 'CUDA Core' GPU with the most VRAM you can afford. If you have a question about an older card you may find,there are probably a lot of people around here that can share their experiences with older cards.
Note that if you prefer 3Delight for your rendering, that is CPU based Daz Studio rendering so that's an entirely different situation. In that instance, yeah faster CPUs with more cores are the order of the day. Most people around here are on the Iray bandwagon these days thogh, and I'm guessing you are doing Iray rendering.
Again nice renders and great attention to details, most people would not have bothered to put an actual picture on a phone screen, let alone the screen of a phone you can't even see in the render.
Again nice renders and great attention to details, most people would not have bothered to put an actual picture on a phone screen, let alone the screen of a phone you can't even see in the render.
I put a few real tablet screen pictures of an app for a client who was supposed to start a restaurant. There were like few tables and each table had some sort of tablet, showing the app and it's features. This had to be replicated in all the visible tablet screens. So I had to put those. It was easy though.Yeah I am running Windows 10, and technically at this point, I could go nuts and buy two current titans and a system to put them in, but I don't think I want to spend that much, even though I don't think I would ever need a gaming or rendering upgrade for the rest of my life if I did. Do you know if DAZ Studio uses both video cards on a dual card system? because if it does I might just go with two 8 gig cards for a total of 16 gigs, or maybe two 11 gig for a total of 22, though that would start getting expensive (Like I said I could buy the best out there, but I am hesitant to actually spend that much money on it I mean two Titans is 5k two of the 11 gig cards is something like 2600. With some of the videos I have seen about people buying video cards off ebay I won't do that myself.
Keep in mind that the VRAM for having multiple cards doesn't usually stack, but having say double the cores will cut your render times by almost half. NVLink supposedly can allow you to 'merge' your VRAM, but I'm not sure if that's supported in Daz Studio as of yet (others can comment). Most lower end cards can't do NVLink in the first place...
I made do with dual 8 GB GTX 1080 cards for about a year before upgrading to a GTX 1080 Ti (due to a hardware failure). 8 GB of VRAM on each card is definitely doable, although you'll find yourself optimizing scenes more often to fit inside of each card's VRAM. Again multiple render passes, Scene Optimizer, etc. can help with this. A 1080 Ti is roughly 50-60% faster than a single 1080, so dual 1080's is definitely faster than a single 1080 Ti, but yeah having that extra 3 GB of VRAM is nice if you like making more involved scenes. I believe the dual 2080 vs single 2080 Ti situation is similar.
The RTX Titan is definitely worth a looksee as well, if you are looking to spend a lot of money on a graphics card. But if you don't mind optimizing your scenes, 3 2080's or even 3 2070's might be faster... assuming your motherboard can fit 3 GPUs. BTW, running the GPUs at 8x or 4x PCIe speeds isn't that big of a deal when rendering, as most of the calculations happen 'on card'. So multiple cards easily offsets the lower lane bandwidth if you are PCIe lane constrained, depending on the cards we are talking about.
There isn't one simple answer to that question. Without any special actions by you two, or more, GPU will work in iRay but do not pool their VRAM. So if you have an 11Gb and 8Gb card the scene would need to be less than 8 Gb to render on both. Scenes between 8 and 11 would only render on the one.
However on some RTX cards, the 2070 Super, 2080, 2080 Super, 2080 ti, RTX Titan and the RTX Quadros you can get two matching cards and an NVLink bridge, a more expensive SLI bridge, and pool VRAM, at least to some extent. At least that is what the Daz devs say. I've yet to see anyone say they have it working or post any benchmarks.
...yeah she was originally going to be walking towards the platform from the stairs but I opted to put the punk girl there instead. As I mentioned this was also eventually going to be rendered in a much larger size for printing so many of those small details would be easier to see.
...the benefit of the RTX Titan and Quadro is they can be switched to TCC mode (Tesla Compute Cluster) and thus no longer are subject to W10 WDDM while the consumer RTX cards cannot. This means the Titan (or Quadro) would be dedicated to just rendering which would require a secondary smaller VRAM GPU to run the display(s). The benefit is you get all the VRAM available instead of about 83 - 85%. Given that, a single RTX Titan could be more cost effective and give you more overhead than dual RTX 2080 Ti's plus the NVLink bridge. 24 GB of VRAM is nothing to sneeze at.