How Much Graphics Memory Do I Need?

Patroklos

I have used only CPU in past, so I have no idea.

I know this can't be answered precisely. Please give me some approximation how much I need for high quality rendering

a. One, two, four, eight person(s) in a room.

Thanks

       

Richard Haseltine

Eight, especially if clothed and with hair, would probably be demanding - though don't forget tricks like resizing images and simplifying materials tor educe the load.

Patroklos

Hello Richard - demanding as in 8gb, or 11gb?

fastbike1

@Patroklos

No one can answer this for you. Best advice is to get as much as you can afford.

kenshaw011267

Basically get the newest Nvidia card that fits in your budget.

JonnyRay

There are SO many variables involved here. It is very easy to build a scene that needs 6 to 8GB of VRAM once you have a room, props, and figures loaded in it. In general, when it comes to VRAM, more is always going to be better.

Other factors can also play into it like if you have the Iray preview running in a viewport at the same time you're trying to render.

I've recently run into a few scenes where I needed to use V3Digitimes' Scene Optimizer product to reduce texture sizes and other factors for background characters so that I could get the scene to fit on my 8GB card.

In general, like @fastbike1 and @kenshaw011267 have said, "More is better". I would even say prioritize VRAM over clock speeds on the video card as a slow(er) GPU is still going to be significantly faster than if Iray falls back to your CPU instead.

Patroklos

Thanks for advice

Patroklos

I can get a PC for rendering with 8gb £1075, 11gb £1780 & 24gb £3250

kenshaw011267

If you really have money to burn get the RTX Titan (the 24Gb option you list.) Otherwise get the 1700 one and buy Scene Optimizer (sold in the store here). Most scenes will fit in 11Gb without any issue and the ones that can't should be able to once they've been optimized.

SpottedKitty

Patroklos said:

I can get a PC for rendering with 8gb £1075, 11gb £1780 & 24gb £3250

That sounds more like system RAM on your motherboard, not VRAM on your graphics card. Also remember that for GPU Iray rendering you must have an NVidia card; a Radeon card or the graphics chip on your motherboard will not support Iray.

Patroklos

Have optimiser, its good. £1700

kenshaw011267

SpottedKitty said:

Patroklos said:

I can get a PC for rendering with 8gb £1075, 11gb £1780 & 24gb £3250

That sounds more like system RAM on your motherboard, not VRAM on your graphics card. Also remember that for GPU Iray rendering you must have an NVidia card; a Radeon card or the graphics chip on your motherboard will not support Iray.

11Gb is not a possible system RAM configuration and 24Gb would be very unlikely to be part of a prebuilt.

DDR4 is only available in 4, 8, 16 and 32 Gb sticks. In general your memory performance will be best using exactly matched stick. To get 24Gb you'd need either 3 8Gb, not useful since all memory controllers have multiples of 2 channels, or 2x4 and 2x8, not all matched, and then combinations that exceed 4 slots, most motherboards only come with 4 slots.

lazarus102

Patroklos said:

I can get a PC for rendering with 8gb £1075, 11gb £1780 & 24gb £3250

 

Save yourself money on the prebuilt [systems].. if you got enough of a head about you to pull down decent renders in Daz, then building a PC should be cake in comparison. Just Google it and ask around about parts. But if you buy a prebuilt system, then one quarter to one third of your money will be gone on brand name alone.. maybe half your money if you go Alienware.. for the amount you spend on that [stuff], you can build your own PC and use the money that you save on a second video card to run them in SLI.

Padone

Patroklos said:

I can get a PC for rendering with 8gb £1075, 11gb £1780 & 24gb £3250

also don't forget to add ram accordingly, the minimum ratio is ram = 2x vram, 3x is better, so for 24gb vram you need a minimum of 48gb ram