16GB or 32GB RAM - or more?
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Looking for feedback what you all have for your system. I just started using DAZ Studio, was using Poser 2014 (background info - I don't want this to be a DAZ/Poser debate though). I have lots of V4 clothing I'd like to use, which I bought the Wear-Them-All product for.
I am doing a render with Modern Room Bedroom, 2 Genesis 3 ladies, and so far just two pair of V4 stockings. The sockings I did render subd level 2 (I know this can add up vertices quick!) My system is using 100% CPU! An i7 6700K and 16 GB of RAM.
The Wear-Them-All readme said 50 smoothing and collision iterations, but with just two pairs of stockings that killed my computer. Took 17-20 minutes for it to start rendering. I started out with all the outfits (stockings, dress, shirt, skirt) and I killed Daz after a half hour or so! Guess those iterations are too high. 
Keeping in mind I'll probably be using V4 items for a while until my Genesis library builds, upgrade to 32 GB? More?(!)?
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Comments
My system struggled with 16gb ram. With 32gb now it can handle nearly anything I do, specially with Iray.
Ram: Genral Rule: More is better... Not always going to help, as many other factors apply, but in 25 years of dealing with computers, Not once have I heard "you have too much ram", at least not in a serious context.
I jumped from 8GB to 32GB and it was a huge difference. If you are only running DS then 16GB should be sufficent for most scenes, but if you have many other applications running at the same time then 32GB is better.
My experience is that Iray uses more memory to render than 3Delight did. I recently upgraded from 16 gb to 32 gb and big renders now start more quickly. The DAZ process is frequently using 20-28 gb of RAM now. I could do these same renders with 16 gb, but it took a lot of page faulting before Iray would really start rendering. If I used the NVIDA Iray draw style to preview lighting and shadows, it would take a long time to draw and after I turned it off, the GUI would be very unresponsive for a while until it got page faulted back in. That is much better now with 32 gb. I am frequently doing scenes with ~6 or so characters with clothing and big sets.
If you have a big NVIDA graphics card to do the render, maybe it will not use as much RAM, but I don't have a graphics card I can use for rendering.
I did just fine for a long time with only 16 GB of ram, but most of my scenes were fairly low poly beginner scenes. Then my scenes got more and more complicated and I was trying out a lot of different techniques and my engine of choice is Iray and I'm CPU only which complicated things. My best scene to date, kept crashing my system because it included too many resource heavy products for 16 GB. I really loved the scene as is and I debated getting more memory or reducing or eliminating some products. Luckily the price had come down from when I had bought my first 16 GB so I ended up buying more. I think the extra memory has been worth. In the end, I ended up with an outstanding render that I could be proud of and had the bonus that so many others thought it was great, too, so getting the extra memory was definitely worth it. Changing the scene because I only had 16 GB would have really impacted the scene and I don't think it would have turned out as good as it did without the heavy resource setup that I had.
More memory may not help with speeding up rendering of most things (it will if you are doing CPU or 3DL renders...to a point) but it will definitely smooth out and speed up most everything else.
There are actually a number of ways of reducing the memory needed by a scene. For example using instancing where possible, dropping characters to base resolution when they are not foreground characters, turn figures into props, and removing some high resolution bump and spec textures from things further away. A lot of these memory saving methods have no effect on the quality of the final render, but obviously take effort to use. Now I have 32 GB I am too lazy to use these techniques, but this has the effect of me bloating scenes to the point of the memory I have available, without thinking of ways to be more sparing with its use.
Thanks for the feedack, I ordered more RAM.
An additional 32GB. I have 2 open slots, but I checked the RAM won't fit in one slot due to my oversized CPU cooler.
The cost of 16GB + finding a new cooler vs 32GB isn't that much. Grr.
go watercooling, get rid of the bulky air cooler...
as for Ram, I've not used more then 16gb, so if I had less I'd prolly have problems...
I do notice that saving/closing daz/reopen to render actually will clean out the ram by like 4-8gig's on occasion.
currently running 32gb.
that's what I do, fo my 2gb of memory I have to work with
but soon a new machine, was debating 16 or 32, thought maybe 16 should work, for what I'm doing, then after reading, I should had went 32. I still have some $ left , might go 32 still
Ditto! I love my watecooled setup. Super quiet and takes up way less room!