Hardware Tests - CPU VS GPU VS RAM VS TWO GPUs
VitalBodies
Posts: 161
What Difference Does It Make - Hardware Tests:
I bought some new graphics cards, but before I replaced my old card I thought it might be fun to run some tests.
All the intial tests are done on the same machine (A pyramid computer I built called VitalBodies).
I rendered the same exact file in each test with no changes other than hardward (graphics cards and ram) with one exception.
The one exception was checking or unchecking the box to include the CPU for rendering or not.
No changes in settings, updates or anything else.
I wanted to first see the difference between the old card and new.
I also wanted to see the difference if rendering with the CPU in addition to the GPU mattered and how much.
Additionally, it seemed fun to try two GPUs at the same time in the same machine.
As long as I have gone this far why not see how much difference doubling the RAM might make?
I learned a lot doing these tests, including that by unchecking the CPU box the computer stays way cooler.
I hope you find these results informative.
DETAILS: Windows 11 and the latest DazStudio. The new cards are Two EVGA RTX 3050 8GB - my cost $250 each. The old card was an EVGA GTX 760 that is too old for GPU rendering. I did some additional tests on other computers that I can add to this post later. The simple 4K render is the one shown minus the data banner I added post - the image was reduced to load on the forum..
Speaking of loading images on the forum, how long does it take to load images? This is super slow - well over 3 hours 20 minutes PLUS for 3 photos...
In case the banner is to small to read for some:
IMAGE (Distant Figure - 1 Figure):
Pyramid (VitalBodies) Ryzen 9 5900 - 16GB RAM - GTX 760:
GPU ONLY: Totally Black Render.
GPU & CPU: 4 hours 19 minutes
Pyramid (VitalBodies) Ryzen 9 5900 - 16GB RAM - 3050:
GPU ONLY: 1 hours 20 minutes
GPU & CPU: 1 hours 4 minutes
Pyramid (VitalBodies) Ryzen 9 5900 - 16GB RAM - 2x3050:
GPU ONLY: 0 hours 38 minutes
GPU & CPU: 0 hours 35 minutes
Pyramid (VitalBodies) Ryzen 9 5900 - 32GB RAM - 2x3050:
GPU ONLY: 0 hours 37 minutes
GPU & CPU: 0 hours 34 minutes
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Comments
I did a bit more testing with the same exact file on different computers.
it seems that upgrading the CPU or ram does not matter nearly as much as the GPU.
NOTE the small differences between a 3060 vs 3050 vs two 3050.
Clearly if I was going to build a computer for DazStudio I would spend less on the processor and ram and invest more in the GPU.
While this might be fairly well known it is nice to see it in real numbers.
IMAGE (Distant Figure - 1 Figure):
Pyramid (ROG) Ryzen 7 5800X - 16GB RAM - 3050:
GPU ONLY: 1 hours 16 minutes
GPU & CPU: 1 hours 4 minutes
R10 (Energy) Ryzen 9 5900 16GB RAM - 3060:
GPU ONLY: 0 hours 51 minutes
GPU & CPU: 0 hours 47 minutes
R10 (ART) Ryzen 9 5900X 32GB RAM - TWO 3050:
GPU ONLY: 0 hours 38 minutes
GPU & CPU: 0 hours 35 minutes
What did you pay for the 2 3050?
I jumped the gun and paid about $300 for the first two I bought on sale down from $329. Then waited and bought the next two at $250. Note that I bought them all directly from EVGA. There are two versions of the 3050 thus the price difference. The $250 version comes an goes faster from there Website so you have to be watching.
On a Computer I call "Art" I noticed these times on rendering tests (art work I called "help desk") involving three g8 figures.
With three figures in the artwork having the CPU turned on makes a greater difference in time.
Ultimately two $250 cards is better by far than one 3060 at $400.
IMAGE: (Help Desk - 3 Figures):
R10 (ART) Ryzen 9 5900X 32GB RAM - TWO 3050:
GPU ONLY: 5 hours 33 minutes 31.47 seconds
GPU & CPU: 4 hours 34 minutes 8.96 seconds
Except that on the 3060 you have 12GB's of VRAM and on the 3050 just 8GB's, doubling the amount ot 3050's does not increase the available VRAM for Iray rendering, which is about 5GB's for an 8GB RTX card on W10
We have a benchmark thread in the forum if you want to compare your numbers to other users. Two 3050s is a pretty unique set up, so it would be cool to see them tested on that scene, as well as one 3050 by itself. I think we only have one person who put a 3050 time up. The scene we made uses only assets that come free with Daz. It is fairly light with a cap on iterations so it will probably only take about 6 to 8 minutes to run on a single 3050.
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/341041/daz-studio-iray-rendering-hardware-benchmarking/p1
There is a big difference between Daz 4.20 and previous versions, with 4.20 being quite a bit slower. So you cannot directly compare your numbers to all the others posted depending on what version you have. Sadly the chart on the first page as not been updated in a while, so not all the numbers are on it, but they are in the posts if you know how to search for the key words. I may try to build a chart one day that puts all the numbers together, but that is a bit of a project and I am hesitant to jump on it.
CPU has never matter much for Daz, only that it is enough to run the application itself. Beyond that it is pointless to spend for a high end CPU if only for Daz. Even outside of Daz most CPUs can handle the jobs just fine unless you are really doing some CPU intensive software.
RAM only matters so much in that you have enough of it. The speed is almost negligible. If you run out of RAM, you crash Daz, and possibly your PC. So it is important to make sure you have enough RAM to do the job, just like having enough VRAM on your GPU ensures you can render with the GPU. 16GB is kind of small, and if you have any desire for some larger set pieces than just one or two people, you will very likely need more. RAM needs scale with VRAM, so with a 8GB 3050 if you actually use that 8GB you will likely go past 16GB of RAM. Iray compresses texture data for the GPU, but the data in RAM is all uncompressed. This is why there can be such a wide gap between how much VRAM and RAM you use in any scene. By default Iray compresses a lot of data, you can find the compression settings in the Iray Advanced Settings tab. By default it compresses any texture over 512 pixels in size...so yeah, it basically compresses every single texture that modern Daz assets use! Change the compression settings and watch your VRAM sky rocket. However, your RAM use will remain the same. Also, any items that you "hide" in the scene tab will still take up RAM.
So yes, that leaves the GPU as the most important component by far. If the budget is tight, you can skimp on most of the other things, but save your budget for the best possible GPU.
When building for Daz, you want to look at the GPU, and make sure you have power supplies that can handle them, and it is good to consider a motherboard that has options for expansion. It can skimp on RAM at first, who knows, maybe 16GB is enough for what you want to do. But you build the PC in a way that makes it possible to add more RAM later on if needed. Basically...don't buy tiny RAM sticks. Buy larger size sticks of RAM so you have enough RAM slots available to expand them later. Otherwise if you use all the RAM slots and only have 16GB, then if find out you do need more you are kind of screwed. You would need to replace your RAM, instead of just adding to the RAM you already have.
The CPU just needs to be good enough to tie everything together. Even the lower end current generation CPUs are good enough for most users today. Daz Studio is single threaded (not counting rendering). So while building your scene, you only use one thread. That means Daz benefits most from CPUs that are strong single threaded. For GPU rendering, the CPU uses 1 core per GPU to direct traffic. Since most people don't have a ton of GPUs, and also most CPUs have at least 4 cores, this is not really a problem. If you actually use the CPU to render, then yes, it will use all the cores if you allow it (this can be changed in the Iray settings to leave some cores free). However, as you have probably noticed, even a powerful CPU pales in comparison to any mid or even low end GPU. The 16 core CPU knocked some time off the render, but if one wants to optimize for Iray, they could have bought a cheap CPU and put that into a more powerful GPU like a 3060ti.
I have heard that the amount of VRAM needs to exceed ones scene. From the best I could tell my scene size is 2GB. Do you determine scene size by the log file under troubleshooting? My scene actually has 7 figures in it although not all on camera. Which brings up the question that outrider42 might have partly answered, do hidden or off camera figures count into the scene size?
The log file used to have information about the VRAM usage, but Nvidia removed that in DS 4.16.
7 figures sounds a lot for 8GB GPU if they have clothing and hair on them.
Hidden items/figures do not use VRAM, but they still reserve RAM, if they are just off camera, they use RAM and VRAM just as much if they were on camera.
Outrider42, I appreciate what you wrote and how you wrote it.
When I built my systems I did not really know what I was doing at first and have been learning along the way. I started out with an Alienware R10 with a RTX 3080 that of course I did not build. That system ran pretty hot but was nearly all you could buy back then that had a RTX card in it. I sold the card which gave me a nearly free computer. Since then I have been experimenting. I built a pyramid computer with all hand picked items - mb hd ps ram etc. A fast drive really helps for some things. Knowing what I know now I would focus more on two cards than one.
For DazStudio at this point I would spend less on CPU and skip liquid cooling, turn off cpu rendering and go with two graphic cards if I was on a budget. You definitely need liquid cooling for the higher range CPUs if you are rendering. On the R10 for example the temp is about 80-85 rendering with CPU on and 60-70 off with the stock single fan liquid cooler. The 3050s are usually around 50c. With the 5800 and up a three fan liquid cooler is the way to go. The challenge with the R10 computers is they are so so so proprietary that you really need to go out of your way to do a case swap. The pyramid computer in the photo is a case swap from an R10.
Do you think that off camera figures add to the scene size while rendering?
What is the best way to know scene size?
After Nvidia removed the information from the log, there is no good way.
You can monitor the VRAM usage with GPU-Z https://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/
Have you looked at the performance tab of the task manager in Windows? Does that tell the same tale at least for VRAM?
Task manager does give some information, but none of these seperate memory used by windows, the program or the scene, just a total of all GPU memory used.
(I've also got MSI Afterburner running which gives the same total value.)
Yes, everything that is visible in the scene is using VRAM and RAM. So if you have people out of camera view, it is best to hide them. The exception may be if the people are casting shadows or reflections into your camera view, then you might want to keep them visible. Besides saving VRAM, the other benefit to hiding unseen items is speed. Without those things in the scene there is less stuff for Iray to calculate. So you can save a lot of rendering time hiding stuff.
I still have Daz 4.15, so I can get the VRAM data from the help log. Otherwise, you don't have many options since they removed it for some unknown reason. You can only use monitoring apps to report VRAM, but they do not report exactly how much Daz is using, rather they report the whole system. But this is fine. Reporting your total VRAM is helpful, because then you know for sure if you are going over your capacity. Your VRAM is being used by everything, after all, so if you have a bunch of browser tabs with Youtube videos in them that will eat some of your VRAM and RAM that Daz might need. You may be fine if you are just making small scenes, but your larger scenes will need all the resources they can get.
That is the one and only advantage of CPU rendering. With CPU rendering you do not need to worry about VRAM at all. But since CPU rendering is so slow, you will want to avoid it at all costs.
If you want to use 7 people in a scene with a 8GB card, you will likely want to learn some tricks to optimize it for rendering to stay under your VRAM cap. It also depends on how large a render you want. The resolution size of the render scales up the VRAM needed pretty quickly.
So you can see how important VRAM can be. There are times where having more VRAM is better than just pure speed, because if you run out of VRAM, the GPU will not render at all. This is why the 3060 is a solid card for Daz. It is the cheapest 12GB card you can get, and you do not get 12GB until you go all the way to a 3080 12GB or 3080ti. The good news is that next gen is rumored to see some increases in VRAM. They are only rumors right now, so it may not happen, but the 4070 is said to get 12GB, and the 4080 is said to get 16GB.
But remember, again, the more VRAM you use, the more RAM you will also need. That is where building a PC with room to expand RAM comes into play. I have 64GB in my machine, and so far it has been enough. But I have not pushed my 3090's capacity, either. There is a video on youtube of a user testing out his 3090, and he crash Daz Studio while only using 17GB of VRAM. He then realized he was running out of RAM, which was 64GB. So he was not able to use all 24GB of his 3090 with that scene.
However, you could still say the 3090 was benefitting him, since he was using 17GB of it, no other gaming card offers more than 12. So if he had a 3080ti with 12GB he would have ran out of VRAM first and had a smaller scene.
Aha, I found the video.
There are programs that allow you to change fan speed according to any temp or set of temps that the system can read. I use Argus monitor, it's cheap, can be used on two PCs and works well. It also does monitoring and alarms. I used to have it set to CPU package and GPU VRAM temp. I've since water cooled the GPU so I run the fans off the water temp sensor.
Any yet it's still a common recco at DAZ forums to have about 2-3x ram vs vram. Based on my past tests, decided on a 3090 and 128 gb ram.
And sadly still avoid SBH. DS changelog hasn't shown any big SBH changes AFAIK. And i read most of them pretty close. Too bad. Some nice SB hairs out there.
Prixat, that looks like a complicated scene! How long does that take to render? I would love to understand the render settings better.
The screen captures you uploaded tells the tale that is not told... That we still don't know our scene size. I get what you are says. Does DazStudio take plugins or the like? Is it something someone could write up a bit of code for? I am not a programmer but some things are pretty easy for the right person. Guessing it might take Nvidia to bring it back....
Outrider42, I hid all the extras. Do you still have to pay the extras if they are hidden? Ha ha, probably so.
I am actually not trying to use 7 people in one scene. I just setup up one scene then basically added the assets for another scene. I figured I could reuse some of the lights, cameras and settings and just hide what I was not using or point the camera a different direction. Sounds like it is better to break it into different files.
I get the impression so far I choose a fairly challenging path of trying for minimalist scenes with low light. I figured initially that my equipment should be able to handle that until I learn more and get better/smarter at all this. My figures do not have clothing yet and there is no background. They do have hair though. I wanted to get the lighting right first before adding more load. So far my renders tend to suffer from graininess on the back side and ok in the front where brighter lights are. Most of what I am trying to create deals with low illumination and some low luminous forms and shapes.
Imagine a single figure only illuminated from the front by a low lumin amber light, let's say an 8" orb. Maybe they are holding it, Imagine the camera being able to circle completely around the character/figure viewing the character/figure. There are no other objects of any kind in the scene. The background is black. A floor is optional. Sounds simple? Yes. Perhaps no with iRay. Or, I just don't have my settings right. I wanted to start with this as my beginning point.
I have been using various lights to compensate and messing with the environmental settings and "tone mapping" camera settings. I might have that phrase wrong.
Outrider42, you still have a version of DazStudio that tells the tale on VRAM.
What does a single G8 and enough light(s) to light it with hair consume in VRAM? If you care to test. How much more does another figure add?
Camera headlights turned off. No worries if you are too busy to test. It just seems like it would give some idea.
The type of artwork I am attempting deals exclusively with luminous, luminousity and illumination rather that scene assets like walls, spaceships and trees etc.
It is tough to give hard recommendations on something like this, since everybody is different. The amount of VRAM and RAM used can vary wildly between users, and even scenes that might look simple can be big memory hogs.
How much data G8 uses can vary a lot as well. First is what subdivision you use. Subdividing stacks vertices dramatically. The base model has less than 20K, but after a few subdivisions you will hit MILLIONS of vertices. And that in turn hits your memory hard as well. Mesh data is not compressed, either, so this hits your VRAM really hard given the premium VRAM is. Texture data is compressed, and again, this depends on your settings, too. There are just too many variables at play here.
I actually did some testing way back when. My goal was to test normal map rendering speeds versus using the HD morphs for Daz Originals. It was a very interesting test, because most people didn't realize what was going on at the time. This was Daz 4.12, and it was different than it is now. My finding was that rendering Genesis 8 at subD 2 with normal maps took longer than rendering G8 at subD 3 without normal maps. Even worse, the HD morph at subD 3 used less VRAM, too. That is not supposed to be how it is! Normal maps are supposed to save time on rendering, that is the main purpose, as well as some memory since high poly meshes can eat memory. Yet Daz 4.12 Iray somehow failed on both counts. After that the next version of Daz had an update that made normal maps more "efficient". The timing on that sure is funny, LOL, but if that thread helped bring it to their attention so they could improve it I am glad it may have helped.
Anyway, one other thing I looked at was VRAM use. However I did not look at RAM. The character has no hair, but hair is far, far to varied to make a general statement about how much memory it uses, plus it was not what I was testing. Some hairs are extremely light on memory. Some hairs are extremely heavy. We have even had hairs that caused users PCs to crawl because it was so complex it slowed their PC down. Zelara is a Daz Original, and her material setup is similar to other G8s of the time. But Daz uses different PAs for different Daz Originals, and other G8 and 8.1 characters can have very different materials.
And last, these images are high resolution. All are done at 5000 pixels vertical. That alone pushes memory up, too. All of this stuff matters, so nothing is set in stone. If you render smaller, then you will use less memory. If you use characters with simpler skin materials, you use less memory.
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/425546/hd-add-on-vs-normal-mapping-brawl/p1
The good news for you is that what you describe sounds less memory intense. Though I don't know how much memory the lights use themselves, I would assume it is less than the complex shaders seen in skin. Foliage from trees and plants can also be a massive memory hog, both in geometry and texture, though again, it can vary product to product.
One other thing, if you are working with light and want the light to be accurate as possible, you will probably want the Guided Caustics enabled. There are 2 caustics now, the old Caustics and this much newer Guided Caustics. Do not use both! Caustics is a little more accurate, but seriously hits render speed, possibly doubling it or even more. Guided Sampling is a now take on caustics, and it is much faster than the normal Caustics option. It still takes longer than rendering with no caustics. But if you are working with light, it sound like you might want this on. The other setting to look at is spectral rendering, which simulates the breakdown of light into the colored spectrum, like in a prism test. This setting also jacks up render times though. By default Iray does not enable any caustics or spectral features.
Outrider42, I see what you are saying on variables. And variables upon variables...
I have been exploring emissive settings like for a spherical energy field. I have wondered if using emitters to create luminosity in energy is what I need but hoped I could find simpler answers. For example to create an amorphous luminous plasma field of various densities and internal velocities might be fairly physics heavy. But a simple luminous spherical energy field should be easier. So far I can get a field yet it does not look that much like a spherical field, more like a circle. I am hoping a small amount od SSS helps.
I have generally gotten the impression that iRay needs enough light or enough light bouncing off things to function. Thus low light with few objects is difficult. To rise above grainy renders one has to either include the environmental dome or have a lot of light and objects. I am just learning though and the program keeps evolving. Or is it matter of lots and lots iterations?
It is fun you tesing revealed what it did!
That set is Glowing Beach: https://www.daz3d.com/catalogsearch/result/?q=glowing+beach
I loaded it because it 'appears' to max. out a 3060 but I'm sure there's at least a couple of GB of VRAM that windows can be claw back making space for a couple of G8 figures.
A render is running right now. Using the 'Night Preset' with 'Camera 2' and Acescg and Guided sampling.
I'll to report back when it finishes.
EDIT: that scene took 34 minutes
EDIT: There was room for four G8 figures (no instances used). Studio had to be closed and restarted as it claimed it had no more VRAM on the first attempt.
Prixat, It is hard to imagine a modern program shutting down because of not enough memory. Apparently that can be the case. Did you have CPU on or on fall back? That first render seemed fast.
I only caught the GPU not being used since the monitoring software was running, otherwise the fall back to CPU is silent.
Maybe DAZ should add something subtle like a Klaxon sound and have the screen start flashing.
...on paper the 3060 is quite a step up from the 3050, and very easy to overclock. The benchmark scene would be the best way to compare, as outrider suggested.
Sometimes Daz when runs out of VRAM it will properly drop the render to CPU mode like it is supposed to, but sometimes it will crash in doing so. I've certainly seen it happen. It seems to happen more with multiple GPU setups, at least in my experience. Also, sometimes if Iray does drop to CPU mode for a render, you will not be able to use the GPU again, even if you clear the scene or delete objects to make memory. Sometimes it will, but sometimes it wont. I don't know why, that is just how it is. So when that happens, you have to restart Daz. It is a good idea to save your scene frequently to avoid losing work in case of a surprise crash. It is almost like memory spikes or something, because the more memory I have, the less these crashes happen. Like right now, with a 3090 24GB and 64GB of RAM I get less crashes than I used to with the 1080ti 11GB and 32GB RAM. I did not update Daz or my GPU driver when I got my 3090, so it is not Daz making their program more reliable, it just hardware brute force. Most of my crashes these days come from dforce or enabling 'smoothing' on a mesh.
I forgot to mention that my VRAM numbers from those tests were actually not reported by Daz, but I had 2 GPUs. What I did was use the 2nd GPU that had no monitor plugged into it. Without any monitor attached the 2nd GPU is only getting used by Iray, and otherwise sits idle. The memory it reports to MSI Afterburner (the app I use) is a fairly close report of the VRAM number. Since you have two 3050s, if one is not connected to a screen you can get pretty accurate info from those apps that report such information.
There is an alternative to grain, use a denoiser. Daz Studio has one built in, and it is ok. For your purposes it might be perfect. You can turn the denoiser on and off during an active render, too. Don't freak out when you first see it enabled, just like a normal render, the image improves over time. At first it will look like a strange painting...which sometimes is a pretty cool effect. The denoiser can only use the data it has access to, and over time the more pixels Iray renders the more data the denoiser gets. This denoiser also uses a little VRAM to work. It depends on how large the image is. It is very convenient, since you can toggle off during a render if you hate what you see, and because it is working real time with the renderer, you can decide when your image looks "good enough" and stop. Which could potentially save a ton of time if you stop before the convergence hits.
You can also use any 3rd party denoiser on an image you have rendered, but most of them are not built for 3D works. The Intel denoiser is free and very good. The downside is you cannot use this on an active render. You need to give it an image file. A forum member made a script for Daz that makes using the plugin very easy from Daz. You run the script in Daz, browse to the image file, and let it do its thing. Very easy. But before you can use it, you have to download the denoiser and another image program and set these all up. Follow the instructions, and you will have a fantastic denoiser. This denoiser is purpose built for CG images and the noise that is specific to them. Most Daz users will say it works better than the denoiser built into Iray. The downside is that since you can't use it on an active render, you have to decide when to quit the render, or just let it render all the way.
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/334881/a-i-based-open-source-de-noiser-for-daz-studio-pc-and-macs/p1
I have one 3060. Since my tests were fairly informal and time consuming I did not pull the 3060 and put it in the test computer. Instead I left in it a different computer which is very similar to the other. Same motherboard, ps, but different ram (although the same 16gb), case, cooler and processor. It is an R10 that was NOT case swapped so it is a stock computer.
IMAGE (Distant Figure - 1 Figure):
Pyramid (ROG) Ryzen 7 5800X - 16GB RAM - 3050:
GPU ONLY: 1 hours 16 minutes
GPU & CPU: 1 hours 4 minutes
R10 (Energy) Ryzen 9 5900 16GB RAM - 3060:
GPU ONLY: 0 hours 51 minutes
GPU & CPU: 0 hours 47 minutes
R10 (ART) Ryzen 9 5900X 32GB RAM - TWO 3050:
GPU ONLY: 0 hours 38 minutes
GPU & CPU: 0 hours 35 minutes
I have not attempted overclocking yet on these cards although I think the Alienware software is setup for that.
I am pondering attempting the benchmark scene. I am starting to gather the necessary details of my system. I might also try an experiment where I hide and unhide off camera stuff to see if it effects time in the scene I have been using too.
Outrider42, what do you think about two cards in one system? I have heard where one might want to use the old and a new. Perhaps the person that does the videos mentioned that in one or more of their videos. Yet, does that drop the new card down to old in anyway? Are the limiting factors? I have, for example a EVGA Nvidia 760. Is there any value in adding that to a system with a 3050? I remember that someone used the extra card for denoising.
I would like to try the Daz denoiser to start. Do you know off hand how to turn that on? Otherwise I will try to investigate. I get the impression I have missed a whole set of settings.
Also you mentioned you did not update Daz even though you are using a 3090? Is there a story to be told there if you care to share?
Found the Denoiser under filtering in the render settings. Checking it out. Seems nice so far.