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best hardware to run Iray?

gibrril_fa945a6ceegibrril_fa945a6cee Posts: 550
in The Commons

hi all,

I've saved up a budget to upgrade my system, but before I decide to buy stuff, I thought it would be best to ask the community here:

What's most important to get smooth results out of Daz Studio and the Iray renderer, the CPU or the GPU?

Currently I'm on an AMD configuration and I was thinking of buying an FX 9590 CPU. I'd use a Geforce GTX Titan X as a GPU.

Smart choice, or am I doing something rather stupid here?

Also, are there any specs the motherboard would need to have to be able to use this hardware properly? My motherboard has the right sockets for both CPU and GPU, but are there any other things I should be looking for? I'm using 16 GB or RAM at the moment. Do I need to bump that up too?

I'm currently not very keen on changing the motherboard, because it might cause me to loose my Windows 10 lisence, and maybe even force me to reinstall Windows alltogether... Or would it be a bad idea to keep the old motherboard in (it's an ASROCK 880GMH/U3S3)?

Thanks a lot,

Me

Comments

  • frogimusfrogimus Posts: 200

    This thread has a bunch of links to Iray discussions, including one about graphics cards

    http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/56788/iray-start-here#latest

    Iray uses the GPU first until it runs out of memory, then switches to CPU. Nvidia cards only, as they are the ones that developed Iray

  • mjc1016mjc1016 Posts: 15,001

    Most of the threads on Iray systems dwell on Intel chips/motherboards but the FX9xxx should be fine. 

    Bumping up to 32 GB for memory won't be a bad idea, but isn't strictly needed (32 maxes out that board).

    The one limitation of that board that may make me want to change it...only one slot for a video card.   Granted the Titan X is going to be a good card.

    The other thing...what about power supply.

  • gibrril_fa945a6ceegibrril_fa945a6cee Posts: 550

    Hi,

    Thanks for the quick replies!

    I thought about the power: I found a 650 watt power supply. (I live in europe, 220v wall sockets over here :) )

    What would the difference be between 16 and 32 GB of RAM? (I have no clue what to expect.... right now I'm ona FX 8120 CPU and a Geforce GT 440 GPU...)

     

    Thanks a lot,

    Me

  • StratDragonStratDragon Posts: 3,273
    gibrril_fa945a6cee said:

    Hi,

    Thanks for the quick replies!

    I thought about the power: I found a 650 watt power supply. (I live in europe, 220v wall sockets over here :) )

    What would the difference be between 16 and 32 GB of RAM? (I have no clue what to expect.... right now I'm ona FX 8120 CPU and a Geforce GT 440 GPU...)

     

    Thanks a lot,

    Me

    in the event you render in Iray you cant mix system RAM with the GPU RAM. if you have 16 or 32 GB of system RAM it wont assist in a GPU render only the CPU render. If you run out RAM on any single GPU that GPU will stop rendering and pass off calculations to another GPU (if you have one) that has the necessary RAM to render or the CPU. If you are planning on large scenes and CPU rendering 32 GB RAM would be recommended as 16GB RAM is not a huge amount of RAM any longer in 3D, it's a great deal to have but it's not out of the question to exceed it in some extreme render attempts. If you plan to run multiple GPU's for Iray only the cores will combine (provided they are Nvidia chips and have the cores) but the RAM will not, you will need all cards to have enough RAM to render the scene as if they were the only cards rendering (despite the fact they would not be) at the time of the render, otherwise they will stop assisting altogether. 

     

  • hphoenixhphoenix Posts: 1,335
    gibrril_fa945a6cee said:

    Hi,

    Thanks for the quick replies!

    I thought about the power: I found a 650 watt power supply. (I live in europe, 220v wall sockets over here :) )

    What would the difference be between 16 and 32 GB of RAM? (I have no clue what to expect.... right now I'm ona FX 8120 CPU and a Geforce GT 440 GPU...)

     

    Thanks a lot,

    Me

    If you are planning to run the TitanZ, I'd go with a somewhat beefier Power Supply.  750W minimum, 850W would be better.  And make sure it is at least 80+ Bronze certified (80+ Gold would be even better.)

    Make sure whatever Motherboard you go with has 4 slots for memory.  That way, you can get 16GB (2x8GB Dual Channel) and still have room to upgrade the RAM with an additonal 16GB easily later.  Having a second PCI-E x16 slot would be good as well, so you could slot in a cheaper nvidia card to drive the display, leaving the TitanZ free to devote all its power to rendering.

     

  • JCThomasJCThomas Posts: 254

    Here's a link to a thread I recently started:

    http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/68899/building-intel-rigs-for-iray/p1

    Unfortunately, they're all Intel builds. 

    If you're going to stick with AMD, I'd recommend the 8370. Also, the 650W will be enough for the Titan X, but I saw Titan Z in the previous post. It wouldn't be adequate for the Z, which is a dual gpu.

  • gibrril_fa945a6ceegibrril_fa945a6cee Posts: 550

    Thanks for the replies!

    When I bought the motherboard, the max amount of RAM on one slot was 4GB, I saw they have slots of 8GB now, that would allow me to go up to 32.

    However, how do I know the board will be able to handle it? (again, it's an AS ROCK 880GMH/U3S3). Any specifiecs I need to keep in mind?

    Thanks a lot,

    Me

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