whaz the cheapest nvidia card for iray renders?
Mistara
Posts: 38,675
in The Commons
i'm wondering if my iray renders are dark cuz i'm using cpu instead of an actual nvidia.
is their such a thing as cheap nvidia card that supports iray? basically to test theory.
Thanks 
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I rendered with a GTX 660 for quite a while. It had 2GB memory and brought quite some speed boost if you got to fit everything onto it. I have no idea what it cost nowadays.
Using a nvidia card should not affect the final render at all, it only speeds them up. If your render is dark using CPU only, it will be equally dark after using GPU.
279 on amazon >.<
Bite the bullet and get a 1070. Money will spent. I use a 980ti -- also money well spent.
Bite the bullet and get a card that isn't going to help with GPU renders any time soon? That's... an interesting approach.
I have two GTX 970s, about $300 each. A GTX 980 Ti is probably a better choice for the same price, because the scene size can be a bit of a problem (though it depends highly on what kinds of scenes you are doing)
wish, lol. not entirely sold on the iray with no seeming shadow controls,
was thinking to spend like under a hundred bucks, it's for hobby only.
Renders too dark? Add some spotlights to the scene (this will also speed things up a little) - and ramp up their lumens value as the default is also too dark (I don't know why the default value for all the lights is too low to be really useful, except in certain cases where you want it low, but I find even then I'm increasing it).
Last statement from Nvida was that we might expect the tools for 10 series cards to work with Iray be available sometime in the fall of 2016.
Money will be spent as you point out, but not necessary well spent if you're recommending a card that isn't support by the software at the moment nor do we know how quickly it can be adopted by the Daz team for a preexisting build or we need to wait for another version or increment of Studio before we can try it out.
As the others have said, your scene being too dark has nothing to do with what you are rendering with. It just means that you don't have enough light in your renders. This would also be true if you used Iray. You can add more lights, or adjust the lights that you have to put out more light depending on what you are doing.
A simplier alternative to making an image lighter is to just increase the ISO in the tone mapping
You can get 4GB gtx cards for under 100$, they will not have many cores, but should speed your renders up by a factor of 2-3 times
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-NVIDIA-TC2P0-GTX-745-4GB-1-8Gb-s-PCI-Express-3-0-GDDR3-Video-Graphics-Card/291701001187?_trksid=p2045573.c100505.m3226&_trkparms=aid=555014&algo=PL.DEFAULT&ao=1&asc=20150817211623&meid=f43c3ccdcb704a3d85ea0b6516a79472&pid=100505&rk=1&rkt=1&
Playing with your camera settings as well as extra lighting: ISO, exposure values, shutter speed, etc. can be used as some settings can brighten things up as they let in more light. Tone mapping: Crush Blacks, Burn Highlights, Gamma, etc. can also be used to brighten up a setting that is too dark.
2-3 times, a 4 hour render would speed up by 2 hours?
i've never bought anything on ebay, guess is time to try it
i'd like to add a fill and a backlight, but don't know how to make them not cast shadows?
If you still want an inexpensive NVidia card maybe consider spending a few pennies more and get a new one rather than taking a chance on a used one:
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=&sku=1060539&gclid=Cj0KEQjw6uO-BRDbzujwtuzAzfkBEiQAAnhJ0O47mlFy7119VOIKBSiGjIRozQ7sgivVKAoT7wzeipoaArbZ8P8HAQ&is=REG&ap=y&m=Y&c3api=1876%2C92051677682%2C&Q=&A=details
As has been stated, the darkness is about lighting, not render method.
Kendall
Wow...that's a bummer. And I'm glad I have the 980ti 6gb...it will be good for several years, and I see them on amazon for under $500 now.
I used a 640GT; it had 2GB of GDDR3 and when I got curious about how it would do it did actually get used. I was actually using it for the display, whilst I decided if I liked the 970 enought to add another or better card. It didn't do much better (iirc) than the i7 CPU, but it was cheap, much less than £100.
I really like the 970, but a 980ti would be better (I added one for rendering and use the 970 for display.); tbh, though, I would wait and see what the 10 series cards are capable of. But don't believe the hype, wait until real-world tests come in.
does the x in gtx have significance? is a big price difference.
thanks!
Mmm, I was wondering that question three weeks ago myself. I've been through the newbie thread for Iray users recently, trying to gauge the best NVidia card for Iray that is cost effective. (DAZ is a hobbyiest program for me, and I'm not ready to invest in a $800 video card).
--> 1) I know that what others are saying down this post is true. They know their Iray, whereas I do not. I'm certain that dark renders are because the lighting is insufficient. I use prepacked lights. I'm too new to Iray to 'get' the emissive concept and settings at this time.
--> 2) I just recently purchased a new EVGA card two weeks ago and popped it into my Workstation last Monday. -- this is after much, much research into benchmark scores and whatnot VS affordability. (and computer/PSU compatibility).
--> 3) Amazon and Ebay searches turned up a bunch of used cards without warranties, over-priced refurbished products that looked dodgy, and a lot half-packaged video cards missing vital components for hookup. --------------> Instead, I decided to go with a brand new card that was in my price range from EVGA.
--> 4) I invested in a GTX 960 SC 4GB from EVGA and a three-year warranty for $160 USD (I bought on sale with a rebate). It was new. I have 100 percent support from EVGA, which I like. No problems thus far.
Bottom line: Your budget depends on what you will be willing to spend. For me $200 USD was the limit. I checked around. A new card was better than an old card in the end.
Final note: I just discovered, unless you have a TON of RAM - switching on both the CPU and the GPU in DAZ will result in the SAME TIME even if you turn off the CPU.
"Cheap" can vary wildly to different people. To me, $100 is sort of cheap, but to somebody else, $400 is cheap.
You need to consider what you are doing with Daz and Iray before looking at a GPU. How large are your scenes? This is very important, because the amount of VRAM in the GPU is the first factor to look at. A super fast GPU is completely useless for Iray if your scene exceeds its VRAM, because your scene is kicked out to CPU ONLY mode. So my recommendation is to look for at least 4gb. My card has 2gb, and that sucks. I can get 1, maybe 2 figures in a VERY basic scene. Like a wall and a floor. And many times, that's still too much. What I usually end up doing is rendering the figures separately from the background, and photoshopping them together. Its all I can do.
Besides VRAM, the other stat is CUDA cores. You could have lots a VRAM, but a small CUDA count wont speed things up very much. However, it would still be a boost over CPU only.
Ebay should be safe. You can find lots of used cards much cheaper, in particular, the 900 series cards have seen a lot of price drops in the used market s gamers upgrade to the 1000 series. As some have said, the 1000 series does not even support Iray at this time, plus they are stupidly expensive. You can buy two 970 cards for LESS than a single 1070 card. A used 970 for $180~190 is a very good deal right now. That would be lightyears faster then the $100 "new" 740. And sometimes these used cards still have a warranty! Warranties can be transfered, at least EVGA cards can be.
In my not so humble opnion, $100 for a new 740 is a total rip off. You can get FOUR TIMES as many CUDA cores with a used 970 for potentially $90 more. And in addition, newer generations provide more optimized CUDA cores, meaning that not only does the 970 have more CUDA cores, its CUDA cores are also more efficient and faster.
BARRACUDA!
my desktop has 12gb of ram. my ram usage stays in ghe 4gb range even with both DS and Carrara open at the same time. i see the 4 cpu windows hitting the ceiling though.
Well, I'm not sure on that one, Hon. To be honest - you have double the RAM that I do. I'm running on a Xeon Dual Processor - Quad Core, so when I render CPU, I see the 8 CPU also hitting the ceiling on mine. When I upgraded the system to the 960, I still saw the ceiling being hit on all 8 CPU monitors, still again - I only have 6GB of RAM.
However, with the new card running solo on 4GB of VRAM and no CPU running on an Iray - I had a 20 minute Iray render on this (**same time with CPU checked on):
PS: I don't have Carrara - but I do use Photoshop extensively that sucks lots of CPU up (running DAZ and Photoshop at the same time are laggy). -- even with a new video card, this problem doesn't change.
i'se narrowing down final decision to order my new card.
there's a 64-bit and a 128bit version. Does that matter to the iray?
seeing a low profile/ passive version, it's 10 dollars cheaper. does it matter?
thanks!
i really should be buying a new UPS backup first.
I really wouldn't bother to get any card that was not at least 4GB. It doesn't matter how many cuda cores you have, if your scene goes over 2GB, the card is not going to be used efficiently. I think the best bang for the bucks are the 4GB 960 and 4GB 970 cards.
+1
Even 4GB has its limitations
I'm inclined to say, a waste of cash; sure it's not much cash, but it will be incredibly easy to have the scene over the 2GB max, and the cash you spent will be idle.
And GTX 970 4GB cards with more cuda cores are getting about as cheap as the 960 ones: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00NNXVPS2/ref=ox_sc_sfl_title_2?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER
There is a 4GB version of the GT 730 available for just a little more than the one the one you suggested; but either one of them only has 96 cuda cores: https://www.amazon.com/EVGA-GeForce-128bit-Graphics-04G-P3-2739-KR/dp/B01AWB7WMU/ref=sr_1_3?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1474045622&sr=1-3&keywords=GT+730
I agree with the others here that a 4GB card is the minimum unless you only render scenes with a single character and a very simple background. You would be better off hanging on to the dollars until you can afford a better card. There is a lot of overhead that disappears no matter what else is in the scene, so a 4GB card has more than twice the space of a 2GB in terms of space available for your scene assets.
i was looking in the 50-6-$ range. >.<