What is the best GPU i can buy now for Daz ?
in The Commons
I have 3060ti .I want to upgrade to at least to a 16GB .Does daz support 50 series ? if not what is the best value for the money?

Comments
The DS6 Alpha does support the RTX 50 Series, but the Alpha is not yet feature complete and there is no published timeline for when it will be.
Personally, my recommendation is that the only one of the 50 series cards that provides a significant bonus over the equivalent 40 Super card is the 5090. Most of the others seem to provide only a modest boost to Iray, maybe as much as 20%, and do so at the cost of more power consumption. (Most of the 50 series's claimed gains for gaming are achieved with AI frame generation, not of relevance to Iray).
If you're not going for the 5090 (and that's exorbitantly expensive), then unless gaming performance is a considerable concern, then right now I'd recommend looking at the 40 Super series if you can get your hands on it.
The GPU market is incredibly unfavorable currently. If you must however, the only reasonable priced 16GB GPUs are 5060Ti series at $450-$600. The cheapest 16GB 4000 series on pcpartpicker.com is a 4060Ti at $736.90, that is massively over-priced IMHO.
If I had to upgrade/replace a GPU now I would go with an MSI 5060Ti and commit to using Daz Studio Alpha that supports 5000 series GPUs.
Take this idea wiht a hefty number of grains of salt. But buying "fast" computer with a 3060 or even two of them and having them remotely render while you use your current computer to make scene files might be the "best" and "cheapest" option. Assuming you need to get many renders per day completed.
Have you looked at RTX 4000 Ada Generation? It's not for gamers, but with 20 GB VRAM, single slot, 130 W TDP, you don't have to buy a small power plant to run it. And, yes, it renders Iray in DS 4.24 and DS 6 2025, no problem. It was a big step up from my old GTX 1080...
If you are planning to get into generative AI, the 5000 series may be a better choice. You will just have to deal with many existing scripts not working with DS 2025
Do scene creation in DS 4, using CPU rendering to preview, then send it over to DS 6 for rendering - the only thing that won't transfer, unless you are a Premier member with Geometry Sculptor installed, is Mesh grabber Modifiers: those will have to be baked down to morphs in DS 4.
Something I saw today about HP Omen subscription laptops and RTX 5000 series GPUs that might be worth looking into. Basically HP is leasing a range of laptops:
For some use cases, this subscription program may be feasible.
Unlike leasing a car, there appears to be no option to buy the laptops at the end of the term to own. I first read about HP's Omen Gaming Subscription in this PC Gamer article.
Cheers!
After looking at all the info on current and (predicted) future pricing of the 4000 and 5000 series (ACK!), I bought a used 3090 to run in parralel with what I have.
I have the 4090 and 5090 and daz it runs fast to fast as of i am more of a gamer
and i have ran other 3d programs yes fast and i am still running eon vue to render i can get a big render in under 2 min mix 3 mins
and blender remders all so fast any of the 50s will work for you and max out your ram too
I have an RTX 460 Ti 16 Gb (the only one that was in my price range). The price of the Ada 4000 is relatively low considering the memory shortage, plus its form factor is really nice.
Will the two cards add up their memory ?
No, having two cards won't add up the memory (except if they're the same cards with nvlink), only computing power.
If you have one card with 16GB VRAM and one with 20GB :
First priority: Whichever GPU card you can afford that has the most ram (as long as it’s compatible with Iray, so an Nvidia card).
Second: If you want to keep using Daz 4 for rendering, something in the 4000 series. If you’re okay doing renders just on the Daz alpha/beta for now (you can still setup scenes in Daz 4 and open them in the alpha/beta for rendering), a 5000 series card.
I’ve seen some folks say that they got good deals on second-hand cards. One has to be careful with those, because they probably won’t last as long (having likely already been used a bunch) and you need to trust the seller.
Side note: I do wish Daz would incorporate the open-source Cycles render engine (from Blender) so we weren’t stuck with Iray and its exclusivity to Nvidia cards.