New NVidia Graphics card installed
Just before I left for work, can't wait to give it a spin in Daz Studio!
Also required was a new 500 watt power supply for the PC...upgrade one part, you need to upgrade another; never ends does it? But I look at it this way: my original Video card (Radeon 1G) could take an hour to render a simple image, several hours (sometimes overnight) for a more complex render (two characters, scenery and props).
My "rescue" card, a 2Gb Nvidia card that was gathering dust in my parts box (it wasn't compatible with my prior build so I hung onto it) could render simple images in a few minutes and a more complex render in a few hours.
So...I'm hopeful the newer, more powerful Graphics card will improve performance dramatically...we shall see! Are there any settings or tweaks I should be aware of?
Comments
I hope you got an Nvidia card. AMD Radeon cards do not work with iRay.
Yeah, it's Nvidia, it's recognized in Daz
Meet Brenda and Quentin :) the render was shy of 22 minutes, and as you can see, there are silver streaks in what should be a jet black mane of hair. Otherwise, what do you think?
Daz actually recognises Radeon cards as well, but Daz Studio can't use them
Iray can't use them - they can be used for dForce calculations.
Yeah, that's what I meant to say, honest.
Meet Brenda and Quentin :) the renderwas shy of 22 minutes, and as you cansee, there are silver streaks in what should be a jet black mane of hair. Otherwise, what do you think?
This is the card I got:
EVGA 1060 6gb SuperClocked Graphics Card
I am no expert, but there may be a couple of things to check as the time is a bit longer than I'd expect.
First check the driver is up to date, and that the card is selected for rendering by DS. Then when rendering, check using task manager what the CPU usage is. If it's 100%, then the card may not be being used. I have a second hand Asus 6Gb GTX 1060 and expect between 6 & 10 mins for a 2 person render, sometimes as low as 4 for a single person & lightweight hair model. If, however I use a big background model, that renders in CPU only as the background model on its own more than fills the 6GB of the card memory without any figures. I'd suggest render 1 figure first, see how long, then 2, then with the background. You may find a step change in times at the point the graphics memory fills.
Regards,
Richard
Card and CPU are selected, I'll try updating the drivers
Don't use the CPU for renders
Okay, after looking more into it, it would seem that the Windows 10 driver update for the card aren't necessarily the right ones, I need to download the Studio drivers (as opposed to the game drivers) directly from Nvidia...to be continued!
That's something you'll always have to keep an eye on. Windows Update — especially in W10 — has a long record of replacing perfectly working NVidia drivers with almost-but-not-quite-completely-compatible generic drivers. Always check after every Update Tuesday that the graphics card driver specs DAZ|Studio detects are the same as when you last updated from the NVIdia website. It's a bit more of a headache with the newest D|S version, which has a new Iray version, which requires a very recent NVidia driver version.
Bingo! Just completed a simple one character render in 30 seconds, 2 characters a few props and a background took 9 minutes 52 seconds and 3 characters, props and background actually took 9 minutes 6 seconds ...not sure why it was faster; but yippee! I finally got it working properly!