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Average VRAM Consumption on Product's Page

sparviersparvier Posts: 20
in The Commons
I recently made some tests on memory consumption to investigate on CPU Fallback of the Iray Engine in certain scenes. I have a GTX 960 with "only" 4GB of VRAM, so I need to be cautious on Memory Consumption. For example, I created a scene with the "Classic Bob Hair for Genesis 3 and 8 Female(s)" ALONE (no figures at all, no props, nothing but the hair) with a camera (all default setting, default camera settings, default render settings). I switched off all programs and measured the memory consuption with GPU-Z. That scene consumes about 1871 - 2010 MB of VRAM: about 1871 MB when the scene is visible in the viewport (Iray Engine selected), 2010 MB when I hit the render button... So, the hair alone consumes HALF of my VRAM: the product is gorgeous but almost unusable for me (and that's why a scene with a figure AND the Classic Bob Hair causes the CPU Fallback...) I think it could be very useful for customers if a product in the store showed the VRAM Consumption with default settings if rendered alone. I could choose a product not only for his "beauty" but also for his VRAM Consumption. I know that there could be various settings and the VRAM Consumption could change but this could be reported on the product's page: - settings 1: about 1 GB of VRAM - settings 2: about 1.5 GB of VRAM, etc.

Comments

  • Richard HaseltineRichard Haseltine Posts: 108,091

    Don't forget that with your GPU and recent versions of DS Iray will be sending over a large chunk of code to emulate the RTX features found on newer cards. It might be wise to try rendering a simple one-division plane and see how much memory that uses as a baseline. That is also why your suggestion probably wouldn't work - even with defaults the amount of memory used will be influenced, potentially quite strongly, by other factors.

  • barbultbarbult Posts: 26,243

    I've forgotten, but isn't there some render setting that a user can set to prevent that RTX feature simulation memory from being used?

  • Richard HaseltineRichard Haseltine Posts: 108,091

    barbult said:

    I've forgotten, but isn't there some render setting that a user can set to prevent that RTX feature simulation memory from being used?

    Not that I am aware of - as far as I know Iray uses those features now, so if the card doesn't have them in silicon they have to be emulated.

  • barbultbarbult Posts: 26,243

    Back when the option for rendering with/without Optix (Prime?) was removed, non-RTX graphics card RAM usage suddenly jumped by about 1GB. I thought a DS update introduced a workaround for that problem, so scenes that previously rendered on an older DS version, could be rendered again. Does that ring any bells? My memory is foggy on the details.

  • Richard HaseltineRichard Haseltine Posts: 108,091

    barbult said:

    Back when the option for rendering with/without Optix (Prime?) was removed, non-RTX graphics card RAM usage suddenly jumped by about 1GB. I thought a DS update introduced a workaround for that problem, so scenes that previously rendered on an older DS version, could be rendered again. Does that ring any bells? My memory is foggy on the details.

    Not really, and I've been spouting the "non-RTX loses memory to emulation" for a while without any contradiction from the experts.

  • barbultbarbult Posts: 26,243
    edited January 2021

    I think this is what I was thinking of - from the change log:

    • Source maintenanceUpdate to NVIDIA Iray RTX 2019.1.6 (317500.11080)
    • Added a Render Settings (NVIDIA Iray) > Optimization > Ray Tracing Low Memory property; controls the memory used by ray tracing acceleration hierarchies; currently only reduces memory usage on pre-Turing generation GPUs (while potentially harming rendering performance) if set to “on”
    • Updated registration of script accessible classes
    DAZ Studio : Incremented build number to 4.12.1.76

    Ray Tracing Low Memory.jpg
    488 x 594 - 58K
    Post edited by barbult on
  • sparviersparvier Posts: 20
    edited January 2021
    @Richard Haseltine: (unfortunately for me) you are right! I made other tests: - blank scene, iray viewport activated: 1322 MB Used! - basic scene with a plane (1m x 1 m, 1 subdivision): 1327 MB Used (Viewport) and 1399 MB Used (render) @barbult: I'll make other tests with the Ray Tracing Low Memory Option ON However, at the end of the day, It seems I have to buy a newer graphic card or use the CPU Fallback (I have 16 GB of RAM) or downgrade Daz Studio to a previous version (if I can find it). Thanks
    Post edited by sparvier on
  • nicsttnicstt Posts: 11,715
    edited January 2021

    I don't like average; they can mean different things, and everage on one machine might be different on another.

    It would be sort of useful to have a card: call it the Daz reccommended minimum, and how much ram was used on that card; of course it would need to include the specs of the rest of the system.

    Post edited by nicstt on
  • Ghosty12Ghosty12 Posts: 2,080
    edited January 2021

    I have noticed one thing when turning off CPU in the iRay advanced settings, with CPU turned on my vram usage is about 6.5 to 7 GB for a scene.. Deselecting the CPU option and rendering the exact same scene, my vram usage is maxed out..

    So that setting seems to have a big impact on memory usage, although I am still using a 1070Ti have yet to get a newer card..

    Post edited by Ghosty12 on
  • akmerlowakmerlow Posts: 1,124

    I have 960 gtx with 4 vram as well. Any advice / guides?

  • PerttiAPerttiA Posts: 10,024

    The size of the installation package does also give clues to how heavy the scene is, and that information would be readily available.

  • MattymanxMattymanx Posts: 6,996

    Concerning resource usage of the mesh and textures in a scene for iray, the information I posted on these promos - https://www.daz3d.com/resource-saver-shaders-collection-for-iray - still holds true except for one thing, as of Daz studio 4.11, Iray no longer loads up multiple copies of an image map for every surface its used on, so its much more resource friendly when reusing the same map in different image map channels.

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