Yet Another CPU-GPU question

tonaz

Hello everybody!

I'm trying to work in more depth with DS, and i've read that is better to make iRay use only GPU.
So i unticked CPU in the advaced hardware tab, but DS uses 100% CPU anyways (i know that when vram exceed, DS switch in CPU mode)
The verbose says:

Geometry memory consumption: 34.8993 MiB
Texture memory consumption: 632.132 MiB for 62 bitmaps 
Lights memory consumption: 414.441 KiB
Materials memory consumption: 228.656 KiB

I have a GTX980ti 6 GB Vram and 16 GB of ram.
Isn't that enough? What does Geometry 34.8993 MiB stands for? Is that 34 GIGABYTES?! <- If so, that's explained.

Thanks for any help!

mclaugh

MiB = Men in Black. Watch out: they're on to you! 

MiB is the abbreviation for mebibyte, the IEC's (International Electrotechnical Commission) (IEC) term for 1,048,576 bytes.

1 MiB = 1 MB.

tonaz

Ahhahaahah :D So 34.8993 mib is just a little more tha 35 mb?

kenshaw011267

Those reports from the iRay engine are not entirely accurate.

Try something like a single object to make sure you can render on GPU.

tonaz

CPU is 65%.

Is that good, meaning GPU is being used?

(anyways CPU is unticked...so i wonder why 65%)

mclaugh

I assume you're running the latest driver for you GPU? If not, you might need to upgrade.

Look through your log. If it doesn't say DS is dropping to CPU to render, it's using the GPU.

How are you getting the GPU and CPU usage stats? If you're using Windows 10 task manager, TM does not show iray usage by default; you have to set one of the graphs to CUDA or Compute_0 in the Performance tab. Another (better) option would be to GPU-Z.

Also, open the NVIDIA control panel and check that DS is set to run on the GPU. I've run across instances where the NVIDIA control panel setting overrides the internal DS setting.

kenshaw011267

tonaz said:

CPU is 65%.

Is that good, meaning GPU is being used?

(anyways CPU is unticked...so i wonder why 65%)

65% could be fine. It all depends on which CPU it is compared to the GPU. The CPU does do some things while the render is going.

To figure out if the GPU is rendering open Task Manager, while the render is running, and switch to the Performance tab. Select your graphics card, on the left side of the window. You should see a number of graphs. Choose one and find the title, you should see a down arrow beside it. It's actually a drop down menu. Click it and choose CUDA or Compute_1. If the graph shows a lot of activity then the GPU is doing the render.

Sevrin

kenshaw011267 said:

tonaz said:

CPU is 65%.

Is that good, meaning GPU is being used?

(anyways CPU is unticked...so i wonder why 65%)

65% could be fine. It all depends on which CPU it is compared to the GPU. The CPU does do some things while the render is going.

To figure out if the GPU is rendering open Task Manager, while the render is running, and switch to the Performance tab. Select your graphics card, on the left side of the window. You should see a number of graphs. Choose one and find the title, you should see a down arrow beside it. It's actually a drop down menu. Click it and choose CUDA or Compute_1. If the graph shows a lot of activity then the GPU is doing the render.

Task Manager ist weird when it comes to GPUs though.  On my system with 8Gb VRAM and 32 system, it's showing 24 Gb of VRAM.

RayDAnt

kenshaw011267 said:

tonaz said:

CPU is 65%.

Is that good, meaning GPU is being used?

(anyways CPU is unticked...so i wonder why 65%)

65% could be fine. It all depends on which CPU it is compared to the GPU. The CPU does do some things while the render is going.

To figure out if the GPU is rendering open Task Manager, while the render is running, and switch to the Performance tab. Select your graphics card, on the left side of the window. You should see a number of graphs. Choose one and find the title, you should see a down arrow beside it. It's actually a drop down menu. Click it and choose CUDA or Compute_1. If the graph shows a lot of activity then the GPU is doing the render.

If your CPU is active for rendering and you haven't gone through the trouble of selectively disabling certain CPU cores for use by Daz Studio (via the Set Affinity context menu option from the Details tab in Task Manager) your overall CPU usage will always stay at or near 100%. If it is hovering somewhere significantly lower than that, that is positive confirmation that your CPU is indeed not being used for rendering.

As to why it would be so high as 65% anyway, Iray always needs at least one CPU thread for itself for housekeeping purposes. And it further reserves one additional CPU thread per rendering enabled GPU in a system for load-balancing purposes. SO in a low count CPU system (eg. a 4-core 4-thread i3-9300K) 50%+ CPU usage with Iray GPU only rendering is pretty much a given.

Iray likes higher order mutli-threaded CPUs very much.

kenshaw011267

Sevrin said:

kenshaw011267 said:

tonaz said:

CPU is 65%.

Is that good, meaning GPU is being used?

(anyways CPU is unticked...so i wonder why 65%)

65% could be fine. It all depends on which CPU it is compared to the GPU. The CPU does do some things while the render is going.

To figure out if the GPU is rendering open Task Manager, while the render is running, and switch to the Performance tab. Select your graphics card, on the left side of the window. You should see a number of graphs. Choose one and find the title, you should see a down arrow beside it. It's actually a drop down menu. Click it and choose CUDA or Compute_1. If the graph shows a lot of activity then the GPU is doing the render.

Task Manager ist weird when it comes to GPUs though.  On my system with 8Gb VRAM and 32 system, it's showing 24 Gb of VRAM.

I know that but it will show CUDA activity if you follow my instructions. How much CPU is being used won't be all that relevant then.

 

Sevrin

kenshaw011267 said:

Sevrin said:

kenshaw011267 said:

tonaz said:

CPU is 65%.

Is that good, meaning GPU is being used?

(anyways CPU is unticked...so i wonder why 65%)

65% could be fine. It all depends on which CPU it is compared to the GPU. The CPU does do some things while the render is going.

To figure out if the GPU is rendering open Task Manager, while the render is running, and switch to the Performance tab. Select your graphics card, on the left side of the window. You should see a number of graphs. Choose one and find the title, you should see a down arrow beside it. It's actually a drop down menu. Click it and choose CUDA or Compute_1. If the graph shows a lot of activity then the GPU is doing the render.

Task Manager ist weird when it comes to GPUs though.  On my system with 8Gb VRAM and 32 system, it's showing 24 Gb of VRAM.

I know that but it will show CUDA activity if you follow my instructions. How much CPU is being used won't be all that relevant then.

 

Pass. I use the GPU Tweak that came with my graphics card, TYVM.  Don't they all come with something like that?  Like MSI has Afterburner.

kenshaw011267

Sevrin said:

kenshaw011267 said:

Sevrin said:

kenshaw011267 said:

tonaz said:

CPU is 65%.

Is that good, meaning GPU is being used?

(anyways CPU is unticked...so i wonder why 65%)

65% could be fine. It all depends on which CPU it is compared to the GPU. The CPU does do some things while the render is going.

To figure out if the GPU is rendering open Task Manager, while the render is running, and switch to the Performance tab. Select your graphics card, on the left side of the window. You should see a number of graphs. Choose one and find the title, you should see a down arrow beside it. It's actually a drop down menu. Click it and choose CUDA or Compute_1. If the graph shows a lot of activity then the GPU is doing the render.

Task Manager ist weird when it comes to GPUs though.  On my system with 8Gb VRAM and 32 system, it's showing 24 Gb of VRAM.

I know that but it will show CUDA activity if you follow my instructions. How much CPU is being used won't be all that relevant then.

 

Pass. I use the GPU Tweak that came with my graphics card, TYVM.  Don't they all come with something like that?  Like MSI has Afterburner.

You asked a question. I told you how to get the answer to your question. 

JD_Mortal

kenshaw011267 said:

Task Manager ist weird when it comes to GPUs though.  On my system with 8Gb VRAM and 32 system, it's showing 24 Gb of VRAM.

Sevrin said:

Windows can only "See" windows tasks. Rendering in iRay is NOT happening "in windows", you are speaking directly to the cards, at a hardware level, out of windows view. Any activity you see there, is your card being used to draw your screen that you see in windows. (Windows uses all cards as one card now, with or without SLI. That is what the WDDM drivers do. Id you use TCC mode on a card, it will not even show-up in windows and can not be monitored.)

If you play a game, (which uses direct-x or open-GL), that happens "in windows", and you will then see GPU use, as expected. The only way to get hardware-level GPU use, is with a true GPU monitor, not a "Windows monitor of GPU use, in windows".

Richard Haseltine

JD_Mortal said:

kenshaw011267 said:

Task Manager ist weird when it comes to GPUs though.  On my system with 8Gb VRAM and 32 system, it's showing 24 Gb of VRAM.

Sevrin said:

Windows can only "See" windows tasks. Rendering in iRay is NOT happening "in windows", you are speaking directly to the cards, at a hardware level, out of windows view. Any activity you see there, is your card being used to draw your screen that you see in windows. (Windows uses all cards as one card now, with or without SLI. That is what the WDDM drivers do. Id you use TCC mode on a card, it will not even show-up in windows and can not be monitored.)

If you play a game, (which uses direct-x or open-GL), that happens "in windows", and you will then see GPU use, as expected. The only way to get hardware-level GPU use, is with a true GPU monitor, not a "Windows monitor of GPU use, in windows".

Windows can, of course, see the activitry - but by default it is not an aspect that is reported. The way to change that is explained above.

RayDAnt

Richard Haseltine said:

JD_Mortal said:

kenshaw011267 said:

Task Manager ist weird when it comes to GPUs though.  On my system with 8Gb VRAM and 32 system, it's showing 24 Gb of VRAM.

Sevrin said:

Windows can only "See" windows tasks. Rendering in iRay is NOT happening "in windows", you are speaking directly to the cards, at a hardware level, out of windows view. Any activity you see there, is your card being used to draw your screen that you see in windows. (Windows uses all cards as one card now, with or without SLI. That is what the WDDM drivers do. Id you use TCC mode on a card, it will not even show-up in windows and can not be monitored.)

If you play a game, (which uses direct-x or open-GL), that happens "in windows", and you will then see GPU use, as expected. The only way to get hardware-level GPU use, is with a true GPU monitor, not a "Windows monitor of GPU use, in windows".

Windows can, of course, see the activitry - but by default it is not an aspect that is reported. The way to change that is explained above.

Although @JD_Mortal is absolutely correct when it comes to drivers being in TCC mode. With TCC mode activated a GPU doesn't even show up in Task Manager's list of tabs at all. And many mainstream system performance management utilities (like Corsair's iCue) similarly lose the ability to see the GPU's temperature stats or sense/control its fans completely (hence why Quadro cards are usually shipped to default at fixed fan speeds.)