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New User PC build questions

NarkonNarkon Posts: 12
edited August 2020 in New Users

Hello everyone, I  am building a new PC, and since I would like to spend some time with Daz Studio, I have a few questions.

1. I read a few threads and noticed that people suggest Nvidia cards. Is this a coincidence or do Nvidia cards have an advantage over AMD cards of the same price?

2. How does the CPU impact the performance of the system for Daz Studio, if at all? For example, comparing my current CPU (i5 3350 3.1GHz) to AMD Ryzen 5 3600, and assuming that the rest of the system is the same, would I see a noticeable difference in quality or time a project needs?

3. The Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1660 Super 6GB Gaming has a memory clock of 1‎4000 MHz while the GTX 1660 6GB has 8000 MHz. Is this difference something that would have a great impact during work on Daz Studio?

 

The system I am considering now is

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600

MB: MSI B450-A Pro Max (or MSI B550-A Pro so that it is compatible with the new Zen 3 AMD Architecture)

RAM: G.Skill Ripjaws V 32GB DDR4-3600MHz (2 x 16GB)

VGA: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1660 6GB OC

SSD: Western Digital Blue 3D 250GB

HDD: Western Digital Blue 2TB (5400rpm)

 

If you have any advice about the components of the system, please mention it.

Also, if you know of other threads here that mention budget/mid-range systems, feel free to redirect me there. Thank you.

 

Post edited by Narkon on

Comments

  • Richard HaseltineRichard Haseltine Posts: 100,791
    Narkon said:

    Hello everyone, I  am building a new PC, and since I would like to spend some time with Daz Studio, I have a few questions.

    1. I read a few threads and noticed that people suggest Nvidia cards. Is this a coincidence or do Nvidia cards have an advantage over AMD cards of the same price?

    Iray will simply not use an AMD card.

    Narkon said:

    2. How does the CPU impact the performance of the system for Daz Studio, if at all? For example, comparing my current CPU (i5 3350 3.1GHz) to AMD Ryzen 5 3600, and assuming that the rest of the system is the same, would I see a noticeable difference in quality or time a project needs?

    Most of DS is currently single-threaded, so cores won't help.

    Narkon said:

    3. The Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1660 Super 6GB Gaming has a memory clock of 1‎4000 MHz while the GTX 1660 6GB has 8000 MHz. Is this difference something that would have a great impact during work on Daz Studio?

     

    The system I am considering now is

    CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600

    MB: MSI B450-A Pro Max (or MSI B550-A Pro so that it is compatible with the new Zen 3 AMD Architecture)

    RAM: G.Skill Ripjaws V 32GB DDR4-3600MHz (2 x 16GB)

    VGA: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1660 6GB OC

    SSD: Western Digital Blue 3D 250GB

    HDD: Western Digital Blue 2TB (5400rpm)

     

    If you have any advice about the components of the system, please mention it.

    Also, if you know of other threads here that mention budget/mid-range systems, feel free to redirect me there. Thank you.

     

    Be aware that Iray passes extra code to non-RTX cards to make up for the lack of RTX features, so if you can make it up to an RTX card you will get a bigger increase in maximum memory than the raw spec suggests.

  • wmiller314wmiller314 Posts: 184

    Ditch the GTX card and get an RTX like Richard said, preferably one with 8gb of gpu ram.

  • NarkonNarkon Posts: 12
    edited August 2020

    I checked online and sadly the RTX cards I find where I live really push my budget. Even the cheapest one at 8Gb is over €370 and since I am just looking to get my feet wet and try Daz out I think I'll go for something cheaper and upgrade later.

    Anyway, thank you both for your replies. You've been most helpful.

    Post edited by Narkon on
  • nonesuch00nonesuch00 Posts: 18,120
    edited August 2020

    You can get an nVidia GeForce GTX 1650 Super with 4GB DDR5 for about $150. It has 1280 cudas which was very nice 3 years ago but only slow to middling now. You would have to composite render your really large DAZ scenes that use a lot of video RAM but that's easy to do if you create different groups for your models in the scene tab and go through & hide them consecutively while rendering each time then joining the renders together as layers in PS or Gimp.

    If you just render portraits and such and even quite a few scenes that most times 4GB video RAM is enough. I'd say 75% or more of the time, guessing.

     

    Post edited by nonesuch00 on
  • NarkonNarkon Posts: 12
    nonesuch00 said:

    You can get an nVidia GeForce GTX 1650 Super with 4GB DDR5 for about $150. It has 1280 cudas which was very nice 3 years ago but only slow to middling now. You would have to composite render your really large DAZ scenes that use a lot of video RAM but that's easy to do if you create different groups for your models in the scene tab and go through & hide them consecutively while rendering each time then joining the renders together as layers in PS or Gimp.

    If you just render portraits and such and even quite a few scenes that most times 4GB video RAM is enough. I'd say 75% or more of the time, guessing.

    I don't know what is considered a "large" scene, but most of them will include 1-2 characters with minimal environment. At least while I am getting used to Daz and in the foreseeable future.

    I had not considered rendering parts of a scene and then joining them in PS, so thanks for bringing this option to my attention. I am sure it will prove useful when a scene gets too large.

  • i53570ki53570k Posts: 212
    edited August 2020

    If the scene exceeds VRAM of the GPU then Daz will drop to CPU for rendering which will take ~10x longer to render (quality is the same).  Windows need about 2GB so your usable VRAM is (x-2GB).  Some G8 characters need more than 1GB without manaul tinkering.

    Memory clock on the GPU is mostly for gaming.  In gaming you need to load and unload assets quickly so a insufficuently fast memory might result in the game dropping a few fps in high fps situation.  In Daz everything must be loaded first so memory clock doesn't matter that much.

    Post edited by i53570k on
  • NarkonNarkon Posts: 12
    i53570k said:

    If the scene exceeds VRAM of the GPU then Daz will drop to CPU for rendering which will take ~10x longer to render (quality is the same).  Windows need about 2GB so your usable VRAM is (x-2GB).  Some G8 characters need more than 1GB without manaul tinkering.

    Memory clock on the GPU is mostly for gaming.  In gaming you need to load and unload assets quickly so a insufficuently fast memory might result in the game dropping a few fps in high fps situation.  In Daz everything must be loaded first so memory clock doesn't matter that much.

    Thanks for providing all the extra information. It's nice to finally know which numbers matter for each task.

  • jayjarrettjayjarrett Posts: 27

    I built a new rig and wen with the 2070 super and honestly wished I had gone bigger.

     

  • golem841golem841 Posts: 129
    jayjarrett said:

    I built a new rig and wen with the 2070 super and honestly wished I had gone bigger.

     

    IMHO, this is just ridiculous :

    It takes a whole lot of time to make a believable scene setting in DazStudio. A lot of trials and errors, really a lot, just for lights and texturing.

    My computer is a 12 physical intel cores, two Nvidia GTX 2080 video cards, more than 32 Gb of ram and a PCIe SSD, plus a Sata SSD for the daz library.

    Even with this somewhat an overkill system, it takes eons to load just one gen8 figure.

    As for real time Iray rendering, it's so slow, that I think it's plainly overstated.

    I'm using computers since 1979. My first one was an Apple II with 5.25 floppy disks and a TV monitor with the overpriced  VGA dedicated card.

    There's no magic : if you want to make something "believable or artsy" it needs a bunch of a lot of work. The tools have evolved over the centuries (milleniaes??), but the artistic part is always the same a totally elusive thing.

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