graphics card question

alisa53

I am using a 2015 MacBook Pro primarily for DAZ and my graphics card is the standard AMD Radeon R9 M370X 2048 MB Intel Iris Pro 1536 MB.

I've been having a lot of trouble with grain in darker images, and I see in forum questions people often ask about the card, or say that they have something like a GTX960 NVIDIA card.  I'm not a computer person.  Should I be thinking about a different graphics card?  

Richard Haseltine

Changing the GPU in a laptop is not usually possible, and using a Mac limits you anyway - at the moment it's possible, though expensive, to use an external GPU connected over Thunderbolt but I'm not sure how driver suport will go if you are keeping up to date with the OS..

alisa53

Thanks, Richard - I guess a question I would have:  If a Mac is limiting, and a laptop is limiting, how much of a difference would I notice with a different computer?  Would you imagine that the computer is part of the grain problem?  I resolved the current render by rotating the dome to increase light on the subject and working in tone mapping - dropped the ISO way down, etc.  It's made a difference.  But I really love dark images, and what I have (although not grainy now) is certainly not dark.  I can always darken it in post.  Just wondering how much of a difference I would see.  Could be pretty hard to answer....

Richard Haseltine

Well, grain will go away given enough samples - so if your render is stopping for time then having a faster renderer would let it get more done - but you could achieve the same by increasing the Maximum Time in Render Settings and just letting it run. More direct light on problem areas will also help with grain, and you can always do a spot render (to a new window - set in Tool Settings) to redo any problem aeas and then save as PNG or tiff and place over the main render.