Buying a new graphics card for Daz Iray
scyhoce
Posts: 69
Hello, I was wondering on what to look for when buying a new graphics card to work in daz. I know for sure the numbers of cuda cores matter, also vram. But the thing is the 3090 have more cuda cores than 4090 and I'm seeing people buying the 4090 for daz, so this got me confused. Am I missing something? Also, is there more optimal situation where two graphics card are better than one? Thank you.
Post edited by scyhoce on
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Comments
I find for normal hobby rendering that 1 graphics card [and not super multi-tasking] works just fine.
Like many people, 3060 is working just fine for me.
One wants to get as much VRAM as they can; 12 is way better than 8, 4 is practically a show stopper. And then of course lots of RAM too.
This post compiles the results of user benchmarks (up to whatever point it was last updated) for different cards and versions of DS/Iray. You crossed out a section, but in case you're still unlear about it, you can't meaningfully compare CUDA core counts across generations of GPU; a 4090 might well be considerably faster than a 3090 despite the lower core count, and my understanding is that that's just the case. The trick to using 2 GPUs is that the cards can't share VRAM apart from the higher-end cards. If, for example, you buy two 8GB cards instead of a single 16GB card, you don't have 16GB of VRAM to work with: you only have 8 (minus whatever Windows and other processes eat up). For Iray, the most important consideration is amount of VRAM, because if your scene exceeds your VRAM, your card isn't doing anything. That said, if you get a 4090, there would definitely be a benefit to adding a second one later, or even a 3090, but, say, two 4080s wouldn't beat a single 4090.
if you can get a 3090 for like 800-900€ / $ then thats by far the best option for DAZ.
Oh, thank you. This cleared a lot for me.
Just make sure your computer can handle the card you put in it. These 3090s and especially 4090s are massive. There are cases that these cards will not fit in. You may also need a better power supply because they are kind of power hungry. So make sure to research all these aspects before making your final decision.
If you want to use multiple GPUs, which is a good strategy with Iray, you will need to be even more careful of those things. And yes, two 4080s would beat a single 4090. However you would have less VRAM to work with since they have 16gb. How much VRAM you need is hard to say. Everybody is different.
Another factor about VRAM is also RAM. If you have more VRAM, in order to use all of that VRAM, you may need more RAM in your system as well. Again, this just depends on what you want to do. How much RAM can very wildly. The amount of RAM a scene uses can be anywhere from 2 times to 4 times the amount of VRAM you are using. Or even more in some cases. Iray has a texture compression setting, and if it is aggressive, you can indeed end up using 4 or 5 times the RAM compared to VRAM. I personally managed to use 50GB of RAM with a 11GB GPU in a scene. That was more of an extreme case, but the point is it can happen.
However, unlike VRAM, RAM is easy to add in, so you don't have to worry too much. If you run out of RAM, Daz might crash at rendering. If it happens a lot, then maybe get some more RAM. Odds are you may not need it, though I don't know how much RAM you have. I would say 64GB is a good start if a 3090 or 4090 is your goal, and hopefully leave enough room to expand to 128GB if needed. It depends on how much you want to put into your scenes. Maybe you don't need this much. Ultimately, you need memory or you can't render. If your GPU runs out of VRAM, it will not render. If Daz runs out of RAM it might just crash. So you can see why memory is important.
Also...
The 4XXX series only seems to have a 12gb option at the 4070 level. The 3060 12Gb cards were kind of a Godsend to us hobbyist with tighter cashflow.... and a savy buyer can find a new one for around $340.
That being said, NVIDIA just announced a new Work Station Card: RTX 4000 SFF 20GB
This may be our new sweetspot, but sadly, MSRP seems to be $1249 for it.... which puts it in 4080 territory, though the 4080 only has 16gb of VRam
Currently 4070 Ti 12gb are $900ish
The promo image stunned me because it looked like it was 3-slot, which would be completely outrageous for the 4000 level. Then I looked more closely, checked the specs, and realized that it was 2 slots, but just over half the length of the 4090, which is a compromise I can easily live with. The A4000 from the previous generation was single-slot, but long.
I saw a "Leak" of the regular 4070 (non-Ti) and it looks like it may have 12gb as well.
That might be the new "floor" going forward but it will probaby be in the 500-600 range. The 4060 is reported to only have 8gb of memory, so if you were holding off to buy a 4060 12gb card, you might be better off going for the 3060 12gb if you want the VRAM (like I did).
If they'd just make a 4070 24GB card, all the content creators of the world could rejoice... sigh...