Curious: Does the latest Nvidia driver bring benefits for Iray renders?

AnxaerAnxaer Posts: 12
edited June 2020 in The Commons

[Curious: Does the latest Nvidia driver bring benefits for Iray renders?] Just curious as the new feature that enables "Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling" sounds like it could help with Iray renders. 

 

Post edited by Richard Haseltine on
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Comments

  • nicsttnicstt Posts: 11,715

    Someone posted in another thread that they were not seeing a difference.

    IMO, regardless of whether there is one or not, I wait for a few days to ensure it's not bug-ridden.

  • HavosHavos Posts: 5,404

    I had to upgrade yesterday when I discovered that the latest version of DS did not work with the version of the driver I had (which was about 9 months old).

    Too early to say if the render speed is faster, but the I did notice that the initialisation period (ie the time the scene is grey when switching to Iray Preview) seemed to be somewhat shorter, which is a welcome advantage.

  • Serene NightSerene Night Posts: 17,680

    I updated and seems to perform poorly still in 4.12

  • outrider42outrider42 Posts: 3,679
    If a graphics driver is buggy, you can roll back. So there is no real harm in testing out a new driver. However, if a new version of Studio is buggy you can never ever ever roll back Studio.
  • Serene NightSerene Night Posts: 17,680

    I run 4.11 which renders faster and with less strain on the cpu than any of the latest builds. I also keep 4.12 for the things that 4.11 can't do like hair, and certain scripts. 

    As far as performance goes, something happens with 4.12. When I renders, the exact same thing as 4.11 it seems like its using CPU a lot. I don't use it for this reason. It is also slower to render.

    The new driver made no difference to the performance in either version that I could detect.

  • TaozTaoz Posts: 9,979
    If a graphics driver is buggy, you can roll back. So there is no real harm in testing out a new driver. However, if a new version of Studio is buggy you can never ever ever roll back Studio.

    Well you can if you save a copy of the installer.  I've done it many times.

  • LeanaLeana Posts: 11,845
    Taoz said:
    If a graphics driver is buggy, you can roll back. So there is no real harm in testing out a new driver. However, if a new version of Studio is buggy you can never ever ever roll back Studio.

    Well you can if you save a copy of the installer.  I've done it many times.

    You can also open a support ticket to ask Daz if they can provide you with the older version.

  • alienareaalienarea Posts: 528

    I upgraded yesterday and it didn't mess up anything so far (knocks on wood).

    It's maybe a bit faster initializing, but not significant.

    Using Windows 10 Home 64-Bit, Daz 4.12, Nvidia GTX 1060

  • Ghosty12Ghosty12 Posts: 2,068
    edited June 2020

    This is what the new feature does https://uploadvr.com/hardware-accelerated-gpu-scheduling/ .. Going by what it says there it seems that it is supposed to allow the graphics card to handle its vram, rather than the operating system.. Now you may go cool finally but all this does is reduce latency and increase performance, which is more for gaming and may not have any real benefit for iRay rendering.. All depends on what Nvidia do with iRay in the future..

    Post edited by Ghosty12 on
  • FishtalesFishtales Posts: 6,162

    I just updated to the new nVidia Studio Driver, 451.48, and everything seems to be working fine in DAZ Studio 4.12.1.117.

  • TaozTaoz Posts: 9,979
    Fishtales said:

    I just updated to the new nVidia Studio Driver, 451.48, and everything seems to be working fine in DAZ Studio 4.12.1.117.

    Same here.

  • fred9803fred9803 Posts: 1,564

    There's an analysis here and it seems to be a bit hit and miss with regard to the gaming community.

    My motto is if everything's working fine it's better to leave things alone.... especially if changing things has little pay-off by changing them.... as it seems in this case.

  • TaozTaoz Posts: 9,979
    fred9803 said:

    There's an analysis here and it seems to be a bit hit and miss with regard to the gaming community.

    My motto is if everything's working fine it's better to leave things alone.... especially if changing things has little pay-off by changing them.... as it seems in this case.

    On the other hand, if it has bugs they may be carried over to next version if no one is testing it.  I assume the gaming community is not using the Studio version, which probably has far less users..

  • fred9803fred9803 Posts: 1,564
    Taoz said:

    On the other hand, if it has bugs they may be carried over to next version if no one is testing it.  I assume the gaming community is not using the Studio version, which probably has far less users..

    That's true Taoz. I suppose we need to test it in DS to see what happens in an actual comparative testing environment. "Seems a little faster" is good news but we'll see when someone compares like with like.... the new and old one against each other.

  • SevrinSevrin Posts: 6,310
    Taoz said:
    fred9803 said:

    There's an analysis here and it seems to be a bit hit and miss with regard to the gaming community.

    My motto is if everything's working fine it's better to leave things alone.... especially if changing things has little pay-off by changing them.... as it seems in this case.

    On the other hand, if it has bugs they may be carried over to next version if no one is testing it.  I assume the gaming community is not using the Studio version, which probably has far less users..

    Studio drives are game ready drivers that are stable.  You're far more likely to have problems with game ready drivers than with studio drivers.

  • TesseractSpaceTesseractSpace Posts: 1,442

    I'm using it with no issues so far. Seems a bit faster getting from me hitting render to it actually starting to render something. 

    Win 10, Daz 4.12, RTX 2070

  • kenshaw011267kenshaw011267 Posts: 3,805

    I've had no issues rendering but the game driver crashed Civ 6.

  • Ghosty12Ghosty12 Posts: 2,068

    I had to turn off the setting in Windows, as with it active I had two horizontal lines of distortion across my screen when scrolling up and down webpages..  Hopefully when I get one of the new Ampere cards later this year I can turn it back on.. lol

  • outrider42outrider42 Posts: 3,679
    Taoz said:
    If a graphics driver is buggy, you can roll back. So there is no real harm in testing out a new driver. However, if a new version of Studio is buggy you can never ever ever roll back Studio.

    Well you can if you save a copy of the installer.  I've done it many times.

    Yes, but that is entirely on the user to do themselves. Daz provides no option to roll back otherwise. Many users are probably unaware they can even do this.

     

    Leana said:
    Taoz said:
    If a graphics driver is buggy, you can roll back. So there is no real harm in testing out a new driver. However, if a new version of Studio is buggy you can never ever ever roll back Studio.

    Well you can if you save a copy of the installer.  I've done it many times.

    You can also open a support ticket to ask Daz if they can provide you with the older version.

    Not good enough. Key word: ASK. They may not provide you with an older version. There are people who have asked and not received one.

    So you cannot count on this. Because of this uncertainty, I would say this is not a valid option. I mean, really? We have to ask and just hope they will help?

    Why it matters.

    A new user who is unable to update drivers for whatever reason is pretty boned. The current version of Daz requires pretty recent drivers. Mac no longer receives Nvidia drivers. Fermi may be rare these days, but it no longer gets drivers. People with these cannot run the current version of Daz. Kepler is still pretty common, and is currently on the chopping block. The 780ti and the first Titan are Kepler products. Support for these could be killed any time. So anyone who has these cards should not upgrade when that happens. But a new user downloading Daz Studio for the first time cannot avoid this. A new user has no choice for what version they get.

    It is easy for people who have been doing this for years to figure this out. But not everyone is at that level. That's a big part of why Daz Studio exists in the first place, to provide premade content to customers, to make it easy for people to get started in 3D art. A lot of people here do not build their own computers, let alone know how, that's why we get so many threads asking about what is good for Iray. In my travels I have found artists who know very little about the computer they are using. We get people from various places and income levels, and plenty of people who cannot afford to just run out and buy a new GPU. There can be numerous reasons why people cannot run the latest version of Daz.

  • TaozTaoz Posts: 9,979
    Sevrin said:
    Taoz said:
    fred9803 said:

    There's an analysis here and it seems to be a bit hit and miss with regard to the gaming community.

    My motto is if everything's working fine it's better to leave things alone.... especially if changing things has little pay-off by changing them.... as it seems in this case.

    On the other hand, if it has bugs they may be carried over to next version if no one is testing it.  I assume the gaming community is not using the Studio version, which probably has far less users..

    Studio drives are game ready drivers that are stable.  You're far more likely to have problems with game ready drivers than with studio drivers.

    OK.

  • nicsttnicstt Posts: 11,715
    fred9803 said:

    There's an analysis here and it seems to be a bit hit and miss with regard to the gaming community.

    My motto is if everything's working fine it's better to leave things alone.... especially if changing things has little pay-off by changing them.... as it seems in this case.

    "if it aint broke don't fix it"

    Seems like good advice and I've passed it on a few times myself.

  • nicsttnicstt Posts: 11,715
    Taoz said:
    If a graphics driver is buggy, you can roll back. So there is no real harm in testing out a new driver. However, if a new version of Studio is buggy you can never ever ever roll back Studio.

    Well you can if you save a copy of the installer.  I've done it many times.

    Yes, but that is entirely on the user to do themselves. Daz provides no option to roll back otherwise. Many users are probably unaware they can even do this.

     

    Leana said:
    Taoz said:
    If a graphics driver is buggy, you can roll back. So there is no real harm in testing out a new driver. However, if a new version of Studio is buggy you can never ever ever roll back Studio.

    Well you can if you save a copy of the installer.  I've done it many times.

    You can also open a support ticket to ask Daz if they can provide you with the older version.

    Not good enough. Key word: ASK. They may not provide you with an older version. There are people who have asked and not received one.

    So you cannot count on this. Because of this uncertainty, I would say this is not a valid option. I mean, really? We have to ask and just hope they will help?

    Why it matters.

    A new user who is unable to update drivers for whatever reason is pretty boned. The current version of Daz requires pretty recent drivers. Mac no longer receives Nvidia drivers. Fermi may be rare these days, but it no longer gets drivers. People with these cannot run the current version of Daz. Kepler is still pretty common, and is currently on the chopping block. The 780ti and the first Titan are Kepler products. Support for these could be killed any time. So anyone who has these cards should not upgrade when that happens. But a new user downloading Daz Studio for the first time cannot avoid this. A new user has no choice for what version they get.

    It is easy for people who have been doing this for years to figure this out. But not everyone is at that level. That's a big part of why Daz Studio exists in the first place, to provide premade content to customers, to make it easy for people to get started in 3D art. A lot of people here do not build their own computers, let alone know how, that's why we get so many threads asking about what is good for Iray. In my travels I have found artists who know very little about the computer they are using. We get people from various places and income levels, and plenty of people who cannot afford to just run out and buy a new GPU. There can be numerous reasons why people cannot run the latest version of Daz.

    Well said. (a +1 just didn't cut it. wink )

  • LeanaLeana Posts: 11,845
    Taoz said:
    If a graphics driver is buggy, you can roll back. So there is no real harm in testing out a new driver. However, if a new version of Studio is buggy you can never ever ever roll back Studio.

    Well you can if you save a copy of the installer.  I've done it many times.

    Yes, but that is entirely on the user to do themselves. Daz provides no option to roll back otherwise. Many users are probably unaware they can even do this.

    Leana said:
    Taoz said:
    If a graphics driver is buggy, you can roll back. So there is no real harm in testing out a new driver. However, if a new version of Studio is buggy you can never ever ever roll back Studio.

    Well you can if you save a copy of the installer.  I've done it many times.

    You can also open a support ticket to ask Daz if they can provide you with the older version.

    Not good enough. Key word: ASK. They may not provide you with an older version. There are people who have asked and not received one.

    So you cannot count on this. Because of this uncertainty, I would say this is not a valid option. I mean, really? We have to ask and just hope they will help?

    You don't like Daz policy, I get it. That doesn't make your statement that "you can never ever roll back Studio" true though.

  • kyoto kidkyoto kid Posts: 41,260
    edited June 2020
    If a graphics driver is buggy, you can roll back. So there is no real harm in testing out a new driver. However, if a new version of Studio is buggy you can never ever ever roll back Studio.

    ...if you save copies of the Daz programme installer for older versions that is another way to "roll back".without having to submit a support ticket (I have an installer archive that goes back to version 1.8 - including 4.x beta releases).  All you have to do is go into the DIM Install folder (provided you don't have it set to delete packages on install, then you're out of luck), and copy the installer.zip to an archive folder.  I do this routinely each new beta or full version.

    Post edited by kyoto kid on
  • Ghosty12Ghosty12 Posts: 2,068
    edited June 2020

    Just a word of warning everyone using this option, because it needs to have the 2004 version of Windows 10 to work there is a major flaw with the defrag program continually re-trimming SSD's for some people.. If unable to roll back to the previous version of Win 10 the only option is to turn off auto re-trim until this is fixed..

    Post edited by Ghosty12 on
  • KeryaKerya Posts: 10,943
    Ghosty12 said:

    Just a word of warning everyone using this option, because it needs to have the 2004 version of Windows 10 to work there is a major flaw with the defrag program continually re-trimming SSD's for some people.. If unable to roll back to the previous version of Win 10 the only option is to turn off auto re-trim until this is fixed..

     

    ???

    It needs to have the 2004 version? I installed 451.48  on my Windows 10 64bit 1909 ...

    Or are you talking about the hardware-enabling feature thingie?

  • Ghosty12Ghosty12 Posts: 2,068
    edited June 2020
    Kerya said:
    Ghosty12 said:

    Just a word of warning everyone using this option, because it needs to have the 2004 version of Windows 10 to work there is a major flaw with the defrag program continually re-trimming SSD's for some people.. If unable to roll back to the previous version of Win 10 the only option is to turn off auto re-trim until this is fixed..

     

    ???

    It needs to have the 2004 version? I installed 451.48  on my Windows 10 64bit 1909 ...

    Or are you talking about the hardware-enabling feature thingie?

    It is both you need the latest driver, and you also need the Win 10 2004 update for hardware scheduling switch, unfortunately the update has this bug..

    Post edited by Ghosty12 on
  • KeryaKerya Posts: 10,943

    Thank you for the clarification ... and the warning. I am not usually updating to the newest Windows when it comes out, but I will be extra careful about this one.

  • kenshaw011267kenshaw011267 Posts: 3,805
    Ghosty12 said:
    Kerya said:
    Ghosty12 said:

    Just a word of warning everyone using this option, because it needs to have the 2004 version of Windows 10 to work there is a major flaw with the defrag program continually re-trimming SSD's for some people.. If unable to roll back to the previous version of Win 10 the only option is to turn off auto re-trim until this is fixed..

     

    ???

    It needs to have the 2004 version? I installed 451.48  on my Windows 10 64bit 1909 ...

    Or are you talking about the hardware-enabling feature thingie?

    It is both you need the latest driver, and you also need the Win 10 2004 update for hardware scheduling switch, unfortunately the update has this bug..

    This is fixed in the next release candidate. Unless your drive is already nearly exhausted it will not have a major impact.

    Trimming is an automatic and needed feature on SSD's and should not be disabled, except in specific circumstance that will not come up in normal use.

  • outrider42outrider42 Posts: 3,679
    Leana said:
    Taoz said:
    If a graphics driver is buggy, you can roll back. So there is no real harm in testing out a new driver. However, if a new version of Studio is buggy you can never ever ever roll back Studio.

    Well you can if you save a copy of the installer.  I've done it many times.

    Yes, but that is entirely on the user to do themselves. Daz provides no option to roll back otherwise. Many users are probably unaware they can even do this.

    Leana said:
    Taoz said:
    If a graphics driver is buggy, you can roll back. So there is no real harm in testing out a new driver. However, if a new version of Studio is buggy you can never ever ever roll back Studio.

    Well you can if you save a copy of the installer.  I've done it many times.

    You can also open a support ticket to ask Daz if they can provide you with the older version.

    Not good enough. Key word: ASK. They may not provide you with an older version. There are people who have asked and not received one.

    So you cannot count on this. Because of this uncertainty, I would say this is not a valid option. I mean, really? We have to ask and just hope they will help?

    You don't like Daz policy, I get it. That doesn't make your statement that "you can never ever roll back Studio" true though.

    If you didn't back up, you have no recourse. If you can locate anybody who has actually received a previous build of Daz from their support, please let me know. So until you can provide evidence to say otherwise, my statement is 100% true.

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