5 year old HP i5 laptop with 2nd Gen i5, Intel HD Graphics 3000, 8 GB RAM
nonesuch00
Posts: 17,929
Hey everybody,
I have a 5 year old HP i5 laptop with 2nd Gen i5, Intel HD Graphics 3000, 8 GB RAM and prior to today I had never used DAZ except to export for old Poser toon products I have licensed as FBX files or render one or two of those on occasion using 3DDelight.
However today I started teaching myself new things in DAZ Studio and so I was loading Genesis 2 characters and trying different hair, hair mats, skin mats, eye mats, clothing, and poses on them and I quickly ran low on memory with only one Genesis 2 character in the viewport. And when I tried to render using 3DDelight in a couple of cases DAZ Studio 4.9 crashed (twice so far).
These aren't extremely complex characters (OK, they are but they are the DAZ Studio defaults) or alot of them I'm trying to work with so is DAZ Studio generally to 'modern' a software to use with my 5 year old laptop? I want to wait and replace it with a Mac Mini based on Skylake CPU and the build-in Intel GPU that come with that Skylake processor but with that be insufficent for DAZ Studio 4.9? I will be having a dual boot os X Bootcamp and it will run Windows 10 and fully supports DirectX 12 in the CPU/GPU.
Attached are renders of what caused the crashes. As you see, not complex. Genesis 2 characters with Genesis 1 fitted hair.
Oh, and when I buy a new computer since it will be an Apple product HW upgrades are very expensive. Will 16 GB be enough. I can't imagine paying more money than to upgrade to 32GB RAM, I'd prefer 8GB if these crashes are GPU related rather than out of memory.
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Comments
I render fine, though slowly, on an 8gb windows tablet without a dedicated GPU. Have you tried updated your drivers lately? You shouldn't have any problems with your listed resources.
Well, unfortunately, Intel abandons support of it's GPU HW much earlier in the product lifecycle than nVidia or ATI, but you are right, I occasionally have video driver crashes triggered even by browsing. That makes me leary on depending on Intel driver support for their latest generation of GPUs in the Skylake line of processors. I hope that the next version of Mac Minis has an option for an ATI or nVidia video card.
I'm not going to bother filing bugs for these crashes as it's sort of EOL HW/SW but it is a bit disappointing, I hope it doesn't hinder my trying to learn to use DAZ Studio more than just exporting my old Poser toons to FBXes. Luckily in Blender and Unity I don't use the real fancy rendering stuff although choosing the wrong shader is still the fastest way to make Unity crash.
Thanks.
Well, one of the problems is Intel's OpenGL support for Windows has always been lacking/spotty at best (more concerned with getting decent DirectX performance than OpenGL). On the other hand, for Apples, it has been much better. Another problem...HP's version of the drivers is worse than the Intel reference version (Apple's may actually be better, but I don't have any personal experience, so I can't say for sure).
16 GB of memory should be looked at as the 'modern minimum'. Between having the OS do more and more (especially in the eye-candy area) and most programs being 64 bit and loaded to the gills with even more eye-candy, 8 GB is pretty thin, especially in an onboard video/shared memory setup (with the size/resolutions of displays, the shared video can eat 2 GB off the top and couple that with 1 to 2 GB for OS you can see that 8 Gb isn't going very far).
I use a Samsung laptop; i5 four core processor; 16 GB of memory and Intel 4000 graphics; see my gallery for the renders I can do with it. It crashed a lot when I started using Iray but I eventually got a non-samsung 4000 graphics driver to load into the machine and it has been fine since. The OpenGL version in the Samsung drivers was too old. It took a while and a lot of Googling to find a way to get around the Samsung 'not a compatible driver' issue where it wouldn't let me load anything other than Samsung drivers, I got there eventually.
OK, thanks. It seems that this Intel HD Graphics 3000 and older Intel intergated GPUs is the problem more than memory and it's not upgradable. I tried demo of Subtance Live suite and it did nothing but crash. I have nothing but Microsoft and Intel drivers, nothing from HP.
I will have to wait for new mac mini and although I will buy if even all they offer only Intel Skylke integrated GPU but I hope they have external ATI or nVidia option.
The HP and Microsoft are probably the same...except maybe version number, so you aren't really missing anything.
FWIW currently Apple offers NO 4GB (or larger) NVIDA OPTION in any of their computer line at this time. While you can do it 3rd party it requires a GPU PSU to connect directly to your TB2 port and the cost of this device is that of a halfway decent GPU to begin with, then you will need a GPU to populate it, if you choose to run a Titan card there will be an additional cost of having the card flashed by a 3rd party vendor to make it Mac compatible. On top of that Apple may have damaged the OpenCL tool set for 10.10 - 10.11 and at this time it has not been fully restored from what I'm reading. While Mac was THE go-to system for designers years ago they appear to be smitten with tablets and phones and have really fallen off the core user base of artists and musicians. If you buy a Mac Laptop with 16GB RAM you can no longer upgrade the RAM later, it must be done at the time of sale and Apple tacks on a premium for the upgrade. It's soldered so even if you can open the can of snakes and get in the chassis you're not getting the RAM out to change it. I bought my first non mac computer in 10 years and for a 1/3 of the cost it runs circles around the PB line - and I'm on a Mac Pro 5,1 as I write this - the last of the real macs.
Oh, I am not buying Mac Mini for greatest SW/HW but because with the Skylake architecture I will have a small, quiet computer that will run DirectX 12 / Vulkan / Metal complient graphics SW for both Windows and Mac. I will divide my 1TB SSD that i hope comes standard or as option on the new Mac Mini one quarter osX, one quarter Windows, one half DAZ / Poser / Unity / Blender, and so on, hobby files...
Despite the claim Mac is better for artists for a long, long time it hasn't been that way but that is my opinion not as an artist but a UNIX programmer who doesn't even like programming on Windows. Part of being better for artist is availability of tools from competitors and Mac loses by a country mile.
Yes, I am hoping Apple stops with this overly greedy business model of non-upgradable desktop & laptop computers. They must feel if people keep upgrading their ultra expensive phones they'll keep upgrading their ultra expensive computers...but personally I only got rid of my 2007 Mac Mini only at the end of 2015. So can I hope for user upgradable RAM, SSD, Video Card but it's their sales or lack or them of non-upgradeable Mac desktops & laptops that will make the case. It's astounding to me that people are teaching themselves to solder and such to avoid being price gouged by Apple from what you describe above. I was taught how to do those things in AIT but I did not want to fool with that, but I know there is a big market for the upgradable Mac and they sell for almost new prices if they are 2011 or later and have non-Intel GPU, I think only ATI but can't remember for sure.
Oh, Apple :-(