1660 > 2060 Super - Worth the upgrade?

WsCG

Hi there.

I'm currently using a NVidia 1660 on my system. With my tax return arriving "any day now", I'm considering upgrading to a 2060 Super. The benchmark comparisons I've seen seem significant but I don't know how that translates into 3D rendering work.

Anyone here familiar with those cards, or otherwise knowledgable in that area who can opine on whether the upgrade is worthwhile, or if the 1660 is sufficient? Is the rendering speed and performance improvement significant?

I'm newer to DAZ Studio and don't know how well it works with NVidia GPUs. I know Blender works great, but for what I want to do, Blender is kind of like using a sledgehammer to kill an ant.

Thanks a bunch

Paradigm

Check out this thread: https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/341041/daz-studio-iray-rendering-hardware-benchmarking/p1

Theres a generalized "value" column of iterations per dollar per hour. Basically the bigger number = more bang for your buck = "more worth." The 2060 Super is less value per dollar, but is ~77% faster based on what we have there.

that being said "worth" largely comes down to what you value. I value my time and often render scenes with multiple G8 figures in complex interiors and find my 2080ti worth it.

 

WsCG

Paradigm said:

Check out this thread: https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/341041/daz-studio-iray-rendering-hardware-benchmarking/p1

Theres a generalized "value" column of iterations per dollar per hour. Basically the bigger number = more bang for your buck = "more worth." The 2060 Super is less value per dollar, but is ~77% faster based on what we have there.

that being said "worth" largely comes down to what you value. I value my time and often render scenes with multiple G8 figures in complex interiors and find my 2080ti worth it.

 

Yeah "worth" is very much subjective. That crossed my mind while typing it, but I figured I could still get some helpful insight out of it.

However, ~77% is definitely what I'd consider worth it for myself. So, that link probably answers my question for me.

Still, wouldn't mind seeing what experiences others have had, if they made that kind of upgrade, or something close. 

Thanks for the link!

TheKD

Personally, I am always disappointed when I upgrade lol. I have a 2080 super and a 1070 in my rig, outdoor scenes are done in 10 minutes the fastest, indoor scenes takes 45mins to a few hours still lol. Unless nvidia does something drastic like double the VRAM, I am skipping the next generation or 3 of gpu releases.

WsCG

TheKD said:

Personally, I am always disappointed when I upgrade lol. I have a 2080 super and a 1070 in my rig, outdoor scenes are done in 10 minutes the fastest, indoor scenes takes 45mins to a few hours still lol. Unless nvidia does something drastic like double the VRAM, I am skipping the next generation or 3 of gpu releases.

Do you have shots of some of the scenes you've rendered that took that long? Just curious how complex they are, etc. I'm guessing those 45-hours would be 3 or 4 times longer still for me right now heh.

Is IRay known to be a slower renderer overall? I have seen mention of people using other renderers around here, like Octane, etc. I think others use Blender for Cycles (which is pretty fast, even on my system). I've considered using Blender for rendering, but I don't know how smooth or kludgy the transfer would be from D3D to Blender, including setting up lighting, materials, etc. So I'm not sure if it would be worth the extra effort/time.

surody

Since the new 3000 generation releases this year, which apparently is way faster and much more energy efficient because of the new 7nm technology and there's like 0 drop in price since release of the 2000 generation, I would wait a couple months if possible.

 

WsCG

surody said:

Since the new 3000 generation releases this year, which apparently is way faster and much more energy efficient because of the new 7nm technology and there's like 0 drop in price since release of the 2000 generation, I would wait a couple months if possible.

 

Hiya,

I've been waffling on the video card upgrade decision. I keep thinking it's a good idea, but then nothing I've done yet has taken obnoxiously long to do. At this point, I'm still pretty new at DS and all it involves and have no plans to do anything elaborate or complex any time soon. So, I think I'd rather save up more and just get something better later down the road. Maybe something in the 3000 series. Maybe a higher end 2000 series. Who knows. 

Good thing I'm not actually at the store thinking this over. I'm horrible with impulse buying when stuff is right in front of me  

Richard Haseltine

Do bear in mind that there has been a fair wait with the last two geenrations for Iray support, the last one was quicker than the previous as far as basic support (actually working) went but didn't show the full benefits in that initial release. Of course they may be much further ahead this time, but I wouldn't plan on buying a 30x0 card on release until we know where we are.

TheKD

TwoCats said:

Do you have shots of some of the scenes you've rendered that took that long? Just curious how complex they are, etc. I'm guessing those 45-hours would be 3 or 4 times longer still for me right now heh.

Is IRay known to be a slower renderer overall? I have seen mention of people using other renderers around here, like Octane, etc. I think others use Blender for Cycles (which is pretty fast, even on my system). I've considered using Blender for rendering, but I don't know how smooth or kludgy the transfer would be from D3D to Blender, including setting up lighting, materials, etc. So I'm not sure if it would be worth the extra effort/time.

To be fair, every single PBR render engine I have ever tried, and it is many, are all slow at indoor renders, unless you pull some tricks to get more light bouncing around. It can be done in DS too with ghost lights. My short trial with octane plugin showed octane being a bit slower than iray, and looking less good out of the box. I was going to ask at their forums about it, probably some tricks to speed it up, but even after signing up and getting the plugin, it wouldn't let me post at their forums. So I simply gave it up and went back to the devil I am already familliar with. I did grab the newest version of it today, not sure when I will have the time to do another realworld scene trail run with it though. If it shows to be a good speed increase, I will probably go back to see if I can get it looking as good as iray again. Another thing that worries me, that octane might revert back to being a paid for plugin only after I have taken the time to learn it lol. I will go thermonuclear.

nonesuch00

Not worth it by a long shot since you have 1660 already. I'd try to sit on it until this year's cards are out, even then if you don't render animations it's really dicey that all that extra money spent is worth saving 10 or 15 seconds a render or maybe a minute perhaps if you render in 4K.

smaker1

TheKD said:

TwoCats said:

Do you have shots of some of the scenes you've rendered that took that long? Just curious how complex they are, etc. I'm guessing those 45-hours would be 3 or 4 times longer still for me right now heh.

Is IRay known to be a slower renderer overall? I have seen mention of people using other renderers around here, like Octane, etc. I think others use Blender for Cycles (which is pretty fast, even on my system). I've considered using Blender for rendering, but I don't know how smooth or kludgy the transfer would be from D3D to Blender, including setting up lighting, materials, etc. So I'm not sure if it would be worth the extra effort/time.

To be fair, every single PBR render engine I have ever tried, and it is many, are all slow at indoor renders, unless you pull some tricks to get more light bouncing around. It can be done in DS too with ghost lights. My short trial with octane plugin showed octane being a bit slower than iray, and looking less good out of the box. I was going to ask at their forums about it, probably some tricks to speed it up, but even after signing up and getting the plugin, it wouldn't let me post at their forums. So I simply gave it up and went back to the devil I am already familliar with. I did grab the newest version of it today, not sure when I will have the time to do another realworld scene trail run with it though. If it shows to be a good speed increase, I will probably go back to see if I can get it looking as good as iray again. Another thing that worries me, that octane might revert back to being a paid for plugin only after I have taken the time to learn it lol. I will go thermonuclear.

Hello

Octane is my renderer since V0 also because I used Octane before Iray came to live and wanted to have an unbiaised renderer. In DS4, I work with differents scenes and merge them in Octane. One advantage is also to improve my scene in DS4 (pose, ...) while working on the lighting/material in Octane. So I don't use the plug-in and have my own workflow to facilitate the transfer (personal nodes, ...)

Here is a not definitive render of a big indoor scene (small and low resolution sorry, no postwork except signature) on my GTX680 4gb (I dream when seeing the different discussions about the last graphic cards :-) !) . 

There are approx. 50 clothed Genesis 3 and 8 male and female. Plenty of Stonemason, Kidbaretto, Petitpet, Aerysoul objects,sets" and clothes, some robots (15 approx), plenty of lights (at least 80: most are visible: headlights, ... and some invisible) and distant fog. Of course this scene can't be stored entirely in my "poor old" graphic card so swaping is important. I can't compare with Iray as I can't work on the global scene due to my material limits (my PC is 7 years old !!)

Final render took 12 hours (8000x4000 as I want to print a poster) . Sleeping and real life job make this time acceptable. In Octane you can also save the render state, stop, work on a new scene and continue the render later with loading the renderstate. So day: make a scene / night: render.

May be my 3D tools roadmap would have been different if I started later. For example I leaved Poser for DS4 (a long time ago) as I needed decimator and texture atlas because swapping didn't exist in the first versions of Octane and the number of texture maps was also limited. Now this limit doesn't exist anymore: all texture are the originals and I don't take the time to reduce them anymore. Same for objects resolution . The only optimization I do is to make invisible the bodyparts hidden by the clothes.

TheKD

Damn, that is a great result! Lots going on in that render. Only render engine I worked a lot with before that could handle something massive like that was mantra in houdini lol.

smaker1

Thanks! I was my personal tribute to Syd Mead, I took inspiration from one of his paintings

My point is not to say that Octane is better than Iray but only that it currently fulfill completely my needs on my low config and also my technical lacks :-)

If you are well organized you can manage very very complex scenes on a low config. I never spend more than 24h for a final render (night and day job so not a problem!) 

In Octane, I have plenty of objects (much more than the DS scenes) grouped logically (front/middle/background,...) so I can work on each part even on only one character for texturing. I launch the global render during the night to get a working result and then work again on the parts who need improvements. Same logic as grouping in DS4. A good naming and grouping is the key !

Currently I use Octane V4 and thinking to make the jump to the 2020 permanent licence but it's a little bit pricey (but for 3 versions between V4 and 2020!)

WsCG

smaker1 said:

TheKD said:

TwoCats said:

Do you have shots of some of the scenes you've rendered that took that long? Just curious how complex they are, etc. I'm guessing those 45-hours would be 3 or 4 times longer still for me right now heh.

Is IRay known to be a slower renderer overall? I have seen mention of people using other renderers around here, like Octane, etc. I think others use Blender for Cycles (which is pretty fast, even on my system). I've considered using Blender for rendering, but I don't know how smooth or kludgy the transfer would be from D3D to Blender, including setting up lighting, materials, etc. So I'm not sure if it would be worth the extra effort/time.

To be fair, every single PBR render engine I have ever tried, and it is many, are all slow at indoor renders, unless you pull some tricks to get more light bouncing around. It can be done in DS too with ghost lights. My short trial with octane plugin showed octane being a bit slower than iray, and looking less good out of the box. I was going to ask at their forums about it, probably some tricks to speed it up, but even after signing up and getting the plugin, it wouldn't let me post at their forums. So I simply gave it up and went back to the devil I am already familliar with. I did grab the newest version of it today, not sure when I will have the time to do another realworld scene trail run with it though. If it shows to be a good speed increase, I will probably go back to see if I can get it looking as good as iray again. Another thing that worries me, that octane might revert back to being a paid for plugin only after I have taken the time to learn it lol. I will go thermonuclear.

Hello

Octane is my renderer since V0 also because I used Octane before Iray came to live and wanted to have an unbiaised renderer. In DS4, I work with differents scenes and merge them in Octane. One advantage is also to improve my scene in DS4 (pose, ...) while working on the lighting/material in Octane. So I don't use the plug-in and have my own workflow to facilitate the transfer (personal nodes, ...)

Here is a not definitive render of a big indoor scene (small and low resolution sorry, no postwork except signature) on my GTX680 4gb (I dream when seeing the different discussions about the last graphic cards :-) !) . 

There are approx. 50 clothed Genesis 3 and 8 male and female. Plenty of Stonemason, Kidbaretto, Petitpet, Aerysoul objects,sets" and clothes, some robots (15 approx), plenty of lights (at least 80: most are visible: headlights, ... and some invisible) and distant fog. Of course this scene can't be stored entirely in my "poor old" graphic card so swaping is important. I can't compare with Iray as I can't work on the global scene due to my material limits (my PC is 7 years old !!)

Final render took 12 hours (8000x4000 as I want to print a poster) . Sleeping and real life job make this time acceptable. In Octane you can also save the render state, stop, work on a new scene and continue the render later with loading the renderstate. So day: make a scene / night: render.

May be my 3D tools roadmap would have been different if I started later. For example I leaved Poser for DS4 (a long time ago) as I needed decimator and texture atlas because swapping didn't exist in the first versions of Octane and the number of texture maps was also limited. Now this limit doesn't exist anymore: all texture are the originals and I don't take the time to reduce them anymore. Same for objects resolution . The only optimization I do is to make invisible the bodyparts hidden by the clothes.

Great scene! Wow there's a lot going on in there. Keep seeing new stuff when I look at it lol.

WsCG

nonesuch00 said:

Not worth it by a long shot since you have 1660 already. I'd try to sit on it until this year's cards are out, even then if you don't render animations it's really dicey that all that extra money spent is worth saving 10 or 15 seconds a render or maybe a minute perhaps if you render in 4K.

Yeah I've decided to stick with the 1660 for now. It's doing well enough for me. I'm going to be bringing stuff into Blender most likely anyway, and Cycles is a lot faster than IRay. Just have to learn to get materials looking right in Blender, but that shouldn't be too difficult. Seems to be a number of tutorials out there for that.

 

StratDragon

if anything the 1660ti I bought back in July is more expensive now, and I didn't buy it on sale then. I might wait for the 3K's or see what Nvidia plans for them.