GPU usage?

How can I figure out if Daz is using my GPU or if the scene is too large and it's switching to CPU rendering? I just noticed that in task manager in windows, it says daz is using 99% of my CPU, 12GB of RAM, and 0% GPU however not sure how accurate task manager will be regarding the GPU usage.

Comments

  • jurajura Posts: 50

    Hi there

    I would have opened GPU-Z when you do rendering,personally I have opened HWiNFO which usually would tell you what GPU usage as actual and what max and VRAM usage,then I would open Log which you will find under Help->Troubleshooting->View Log File in DS  which should help you understands why are you running out of VRAM

    What GPU do you have as first there?

    If its scene is large,usually you will see that straight away,try simple render with G3F or G8F etc and check GPU usage in GPU-Z or HWiNFO there 

    You can try as well Octane Render Free Tier which is faster than IRAY and can use Out of Core which means if yours scene doesn't fit in GPU VRAM then will use System VRAM

    Thanks,Jura

  • How can I figure out if Daz is using my GPU or if the scene is too large and it's switching to CPU rendering? I just noticed that in task manager in windows, it says daz is using 99% of my CPU, 12GB of RAM, and 0% GPU however not sure how accurate task manager will be regarding the GPU usage.

    If your CPU is at 99% during a render then it is doing the render, unless you're alos doing something lelse CPU intense. If you don't have the CPU selected as a render device then the render has dropped to CPU.

    Task Manager can let you see CUDA activity on your GPU which will tell you if it is active in the render. Open task managaer->performance select the GPU, select a graph title, should open a drop down, select CUDA. If the graph shows activity during the render then the card is doing the work.

  • Well this is incredibly bad news. Yeah there is no CUDA activity at all. I just spent $2500 on this new system specifically so I could learn Daz, and it's basically worthless? : (

    Ugh. So _incredibly_ painful.

    Ok two questions then: 1. Is there any way I can find out how many GB my scene is, so that I can determine how much GB of graphics card space I need?

    And are there any ways I can work around the limitation? I am trying to render a scene with a lot of characters in it at once, 9 to be exact. I guess I could render the scene with only 2 or 3 characters, then hide them and render it with another 3, hide them, then render with the last 3, then combine the 3 images in photoshop?

  • You'd need a RTX Titan or one of the top tioer Quadros to have enough VRAM for 9 G8 characters. You need to set your sights much lower if you're just learning.

    Try single character portraits to get the feel for posing. lighting and the like. Then go to 2 or 3 character scenes. 

  • Well there is one single point of activity that appears every time I start a render but after that it remains empty from there on out. However as you can see the 'dedicated GPU memory usage' shows activity, what about that?

    However both CPU and RAM are at 100% (Daz is using 25GB RAM) and 98% CPU even though I have un-checked the CPU in the render settings.

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  • Well there is one single point of activity that appears every time I start a render but after that it remains empty from there on out. However as you can see the 'dedicated GPU memory usage' shows activity, what about that?

    However both CPU and RAM are at 100% (Daz is using 25GB RAM) and 98% CPU even though I have un-checked the CPU in the render settings.

    iRay doesn't calculate total VRAM usage before the render starts. It just tries to load the scene into VRAM. If it runs out of VRAM it drops to CPU but doesn't clear the reserved VRAM. If there is no CUDA activity then the GPU is not rendering.

    9 G8's, assuming clothes, hair and other props, is going to need a lot more than 8Gb of VRAM.

  • Ok two questions then:

    1. Is there any way I can find out how many GB my scene is, so that I can determine how much GB of graphics card space I need?

    2. Are there any ways I can work around the limitation? Could I render the scene with only 2 or 3 characters, then hide them and render it with another 3, hide them, then render with the last 3, then combine the 3 images in photoshop?

    That seems like a pretty crappy solution, so any other ideas would be great.

  • edited December 2019

    So I even just tried clearing the scene so there is no environment setting, just empty space. And loaded only two characters. The first render was lightning fast and I saw the CUDA chart light up. Then all I did was, I adjusted the pose on one of the characters but everything else is exactly the same, and now it's rendering super slow and CUDA is not engaged. How is that possible??

    Can't even tell you guys how hard I am kicking myself for blowing $1000 on a graphics card and finding out it is basically as good as a brick.

    Post edited by intrinsicanomaly_262dc77de2 on
  • TheKDTheKD Posts: 2,666

    Did you leave the first render window opened? It will keep the vram until you close it, so it will drop to CPU unless it can fit the scene twice in VRAM. The GPU is not useless, but it's not magic either.

  • FishtalesFishtales Posts: 6,038

    Try rolling back the nVidia Graphics driver to 431.86 instead of the 441? that you have. I loaded the 441? and all renders dropped back to CPU so I went back to the 431.86 and haven't seen it do that unless it is over 5GB on the 6GB card. You seem to be only using 4.3GB on an 8GB card so it shouldn't be dropping back to CPU. Make sure you use the Studio driver and not the Gaming driver.

  • TheKD you were right on with that yes, I often do leave unfinished renders open as a reference, I had no idea that was taking up memory even after the render was cancelled, how weird! That totally fixed that issue.

    Even so, I am finding that even rendering just 2 characters is not possible in anything other than a vacuum (any kind of environment or setting, such as a room, is too much apparently) major bummer.

    I was not aware there was a studio vs. gaming driver, I'm downloading that and will be testing it out, thanks Fishtales.

    Why is it that the CUDA can show no activity yet the 'Dedicated GPU usage' does show some activity?

    I still would love to know if there is any way of finding out how large the scene is so I would know how much memory I would need to do what I want to do. I would like to sell this graphics card ASAP and save up for a better system but I can't do that if there is no way of knowing what I need...this really is pointless if all I can render is 1-2 characters on a grey background.

  • This is interesting...further testing, I have the camera zoomed in for a close up on just one character. You cannot see any of the other characters in the frame that I am rendering. However, when I run the render as is, with all the characters still 'there' but not visible, it goes to CPU. When I delete those extra characters and run again, it goes to CUDA.

    I had been told before that it doesn't matter how large or how much stuff is in your scene, the card only takes memory for what is actually in the frame you are rendering. But this seems to prove otherwise. Is this right?

  • TheKDTheKD Posts: 2,666
    edited December 2019

    Anything in the scene will load in the VRAM as far as I know, maybe if you turn them invisible with the eyeball toggle in the scene tab they don't load into VRAM, never really tested that. If you are doing full scenes https://www.daz3d.com/scene-optimizer that is a godsend. I usually cut maps down to 2k or less on anything that is not supposed to be a closeup portrait type. 4K maps are overkill unless it's a closeup IMO. Also subdivision on figures/clothes/hair is 2 or less unless it's a closeup too in my renders.  

    Post edited by TheKD on
  • Very cool I just bought it thanks for the tip

  • iRay loads the entire scene now matter how little of that scene is on camera. If it didn't reflections wouldn't work.

  • Ok that's very good to know, I was making a scene on a train, however the train has 4 cars and I am doing my renders inside one of them. I deleted the other 3 cars and rendering time has been greatly reduced!

  • AnimAnim Posts: 241
    edited December 2019

    You can check the log file for information about how much vram is used by your scene.

    Once you start a render, the log file gets populated with the information. You don't need to finish the render. As soon as you see the image starting to build up in the render window you can stop the render and open the log file.

    You can also find the log.txt here:

    For Studio public beta:

    C:\Users\your user name\AppData\Roaming\DAZ 3D\Studio4 Public Build

    For Studio release version:

    C:\Users\your user name\AppData\Roaming\DAZ 3D\Studio4

    Important note:

    There are several threads in the forum about issues with Studio 4.12 and vram allocation. They are mainly about vram that does not get released once you made the first render. That means you render the first time, then adjust something and render again - or you render an animation - or you have interactive preview active in the viewport. In some cases it happens that the first render works on GPU but the second falls back to CPU because the vram is not released (sometimes even a first render that started on GPU fall back to CPU). This is considered a bug either in daz studio or iray or nvidia drivers. Your GPU is very likely not the issue and might be great once those vram issues got sorted by DAZ or Nvidia.

    I also started a thead recently about examples of vram usage with G8F and hair at several SubD and texture compression settings:

    https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/367596/some-iray-ressources-consumption-tests

     

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    Post edited by Anim on
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