Advice: New Computer or Graphics Card...
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Hey all! So, I'm in the market for either a new computer or a graphics card. The primary usage of my computer is DAZStudio. I've been doing it for about three years now, and want to get better. My computer, however, is about seven years old. I'm not that savvy when it comes to computer specs, graphics card, lingo, etc. These are the specs of my current computer...should I get a new computer or just invest in a new graphics card?
XPS 8700
Intel (R) Core i7-4700 CPU @ 3.40GHz
Memory: 8192 MB Ram
NVidia GeForce GT 635
Approx Total Memory 5056 MB
Display Memory (VRam): 984 MB
From what I've been reading on the boards, it's the graphics card that helps with the render times and the CPU memory that helps with the scene construction by having more objects in it. I want to speed up the render times and make them higher quality. My artistic style is more figures and clothing using iRay, rather than environments (buildings, plants, etc). Full figure shots render rather quickly, but I want to do close ups with a higher subdivision to catch little details.
My Progressive Render settings are usually at 20 Min Samples/5000-15000 Max Samples, and Render Quality 5.
My budget is $700.
Thank you for all the feedback in advance, and I hope I made some sort of sense in this infodump!
Enjoy your week!
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Comments
Definitely a new graphics card will help more than a new $700 computer.
If you wait till October(ish) the 3070's will be launching. Those should cost around $500 and would be the best choice in your price range. You are going to need to verify what wattage the PSU is in your system is and if it has an available PCIE power plug. You'll also need to measure how much room there is in the case for a graphics card. That will tell you which card, there will be more than one option, to buy.
+1 and the remaining budget could be used to upgrade the RAM to 32GB and you have a rig that can take you in to the future.
If you get a 30X0 (or probably any of the 10X0 and later), make sure your power supply can handle it's requirements. There are web tools out there that let you estimate how much power your machine will use and then you can open the case up to decide if you will need to purchase a new PSU alongside the new card.
* I see that ken did a better job explaining the gotchas of upgrading a machine that was built for a card from a few generations back
So my computer has a PSU of 460W. The GTX 1660 Super Compact is said to fit 98% of computer towers. Though, it needs an 8 pin PCIE power cable for extra power. So, I opened my tower and couldn't even find a 6 pin power cable or a power slot for it. My tower, is at best, six or seven years old. Did they not make them with PCIE 6 pin power slots back then?
Thank you all for the feedback, I'm just so overwhelmed with all this jargon.
My vote goes for upgrade.
The computer is still a good machine
More RAM
Better GPU (at least 8GB)
New Power Supply
...usually the PCIe cables come with the PSU. Check the connectors, I have a PSU (750W) from about the same era and it has several 6 + 2 pin connectors.
I would opt for at least a 750W PSU with a 3070 as better to have more overhead than barely any just in case.
What kind of case do you have? Mini Tower? Mid Tower? Full Tower?
So I'm thinking about getting this one (https://www.amazon.com/ZOTAC-GTX-1660-Graphics-ZT-T16620F-10L/dp/B07Z8PWC6R). It's cutting it pretty close since the requirement is 450w, and I have 460w.
I have, what I believe, is a mid tower (it measures 15 inches). The cables coming from the PSU one looks like a 4 pin that is plugged into the motherboard and the others are these flat ones that I don't know the names of. I've included pictures if that helps.
Much appreciates for all the help and advice.
..a PCIe power cable looks like this (6 pin to 6 + 2 pin):
Yeah, don't have that. Just gonna buy a new computer. Thanks, everyone for the suggestions, though!!
...that's interesting, how is the GT 635 getting power from the PSU as those are pretty standard?
Again my system is about the same age and the PSU has several of those leads.
From what I see, this is what you have https://www.dell.com/lt/business/p/xps-8700/pd
This is tough. On paper your PC should be totally fine and all you'd need is to replace the RAM and GPU. 8gb of RAM is not going to be enough, and this should be priority #1 for upgrade, then the GPU.
But you have a Dell, and well, that is sub optimal. Your case is cramped and your power supply has very low Wattage. This physically limits you to using smaller and less powerful GPUs by default.
Possible the best GPU you can buy for that case may be a single fan 2060. You would have measure how long the card is and how it would fit. A 2060 would be a big upgrade over the 1660 you are looking at because it has ray tracing cores. Iray works extremely well with RTX. The 2060 is faster than my 1080ti from the previous generation...the 1080ti was the fastest GPU on the planet in 2016, yet a dinky little 2060 can render Iray faster. That is all because of the ray tracing cores it has. However, the 2060 has a weakness, as does the 1660 you are looking at. With 6gb of VRAM, that may be limiting. VRAM is the absolute cap for a GPU when it comes to Iray. If you go over that 6gb, then the GPU will not render at all. You would be back to CPU rendering, and you already know how bad that is on your machine. If you only had more space and a bigger power supply, you could have used that $700 on just a GPU, and $700 would get you a lot of GPU. If the rumors of a 16GB 3070 are true, that would probably be under $700, as the 8gb 3070 is going to be $500 this October. That would be an excellent upgrade, too, but your case and power supply wont allow it.
Otherwise, you need to get a new PC. With good planning, you can get a PC that has space and power to be able use any new GPU for years to come so you wont have to make such hard choices again. But doing this would pretty much eat up all your budget and not leave much room for a decent GPU.
Thus why I say you have a hard decision to make. If you want to be able to get a better GPU than a 1660 or 2060, you need a new PC.
My GPU is plugged into the actual motherboard, but there aren't any cables going into it. This is the graphics card, I think: https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/geforce-gt-635-oem.c2041 ; I have zero hard drive experience. Talking with you all has been a great source of information!
Actually, if you have no cables going to the GPU, it is possible this model is not even equipped with a power supply that has a cable for a GPU. That would be very bad news indeed. You can get up to 75 Watts through the motherboard pcie slot itself, and that is all. So if you have no cable, then you can only get GPUs that fit under that limit, and there are not very many that would help you with Daz Iray. You would be scraping the bottom of the barrel.
Making this worse, the Dell power supplies are often non standard in shape, which makes replacing the power supply with a better one a serious challenge because a standard one will probably not fit your case. With all the issues presented here, if you have no power cable for a GPU, you will pretty much have no choice but to get a whole new PC.
Yup, that is my computer! And thank you for the break down analysis of the situation. It was very helpful. I think you're right, a more up-to-date computer is what I need. The render times aren't that bad, but I just want more from them. I don't do large scenes with environments and effects. I just primarily do figures (one maybe two) with minimal background.
I was looking at the CYBERPOWERPC Gamer Xtreme with the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 built in. It's a couple hundred more, but at this point, I'm good with spending more for having a computer that will last seven more years. I was reading on another thread from two years ago that Gaming PCs might be a good idea for DAZ? But once again I'm not a big gamer, so I don't know if I need a Gaming PC.
If anyone has any ideas for a computer tower around $1000, I'm open to suggestions. Lol.
A gaming computer sometimes can be decent for Daz, there can be some overlap. But Daz Iray is different from gaming. For Iray the biggest thing is the GPU, the rest of the PC is nowhere near as important. This is different than video games, video games work better when a system is 'balanced'. With Iray you do not really need so much balance. With Iray it is OK to maybe skimp on a CPU and spend that money on a better GPU.
Like the computer you currently have. If you didn't have the case and power supply limiting you so much, you could have used that PC with a brand new GPU. If you had been doing that with video games...most PC builders would have scoffed at this idea.
So with that in mind, the idea for Iray is very simple. Focus on the best GPU you can get, and one that has more VRAM if possible. Like I said above, VRAM is your limit with Iray. So, your current PC has 8gb of system RAM, that is pretty small, yet you have made scenes within that 8gb for all these years. So I would recommend if possible a 8gb VRAM GPU. I also mentioned RTX. The cheapest GPU that has both RTX and 8gb of VRAM is the 2060 Super. Not to be confused with the regular 2060! The regular 2060 only has 6gb of VRAM. The 2060 Super has 8gb and it is faster as well. Of course you could get even faster GPUs, but these will be more expensive. A 2060 Super is going to be around $400.
If you can wait a bit longer, and you have already waited quite a while, new 3060's should be coming. The 3070 is only $500, but that is starting to creep up the budget. I would expect a 3060 to offer 8gb of VRAM, but this card does not exist yet. Also, it may take some time for companies to offer a 3060 in prebuilds. So whether you want to wait is up to you.
You can go with an AMD based CPU and motherboard. This should be pretty cheap compared to Intel counterparts. There are a variety of Ryzen CPUs under $200 that would be perfectly fine to build around. It would be good to get at least 16gb of RAM. This is another decision. Since you make smaller scenes, then 16 may be all you need. But 32gb is an option. I think a good idea would be to get 16gb with the capacity to expand it to 32 in the future. Meaning the motherboard should have enough RAM empty RAM slots so that you can easily add in new RAM at a later if you wish. By going with 16 now, that saves money.
You will want a power supply that can handle what you throw at it. 500 would probably be enough, but 600 would allow you to do more. Like if you decide one day you want a bigger GPU. Or maybe you could even use multiple GPUs together. That is also a great upgrade option when possible. But this is all up to you.
I feel like you would be very happy with a 2060 Super based system. You have been only using your CPU up until now (that GTX 645 only has 1gb, so it probably hasn't been rendering for a long time). A 2060 Super would be like 20 times faster, and that is not a joke. With a 2060 Super, you could possibly look at adding a little more to your scenes. You could have two people in a modest 3d background very easily, and it would probably render faster than what you currently do with two people and no background at all. It would be a massive upgrade. So you don't need the fastest computer to do this.
...I got a 404 page not found error. on the link so I Googled it myself
An odd card, and looking at the specs, as indeed ,it has no power connectors so it must have been powered through the PCIe slot. This is part of why I never bothered with "off the shelf" systems and took the time (about a year or so in my spare time after work) researching and learning about PC design, component compatibility, and system assembly.
I originally had a GTX 460 (Fermi) and it required external power connectors (2 x 6 pin) that is why it sounded a bit confusing there were no power connectors until I actually looked at the specs of the 635 OEM.
Did a bit more poking around and having trouble finding an XPS 8700 with exact same specs (particularly the GT 635 OEM video card). From what I have been able to ascertain, the GT OEM series is primarily geared towards general graphics display while the GTX series is oriented to gaming (as well as rendering, hence why my one generation older GTX 460 actually has 4 times the rendering ROPs and bus width of the GT 635 even though it has slightly fewer CUDA cores [336 vs 384]). I also came across what is known as UEFI and Non-UEFI BIOS (the latter often referred to as "legacy" BIOS) as it relates to GPU cards. Seemed a bit technical even for myself at the moment, but in reading through some discussions on the topic of individuals wanting to replace an OEM card with a newer one (9xx, 10xx, or 20xx) in an off the shelf system (one was even a Dell of about the same era as yours) with a "legacy BIOS" MB, could result compatibility and even boot issues. I need to look into this a bit more or if someone already has a better understanding of it, could they expand on this?
A better GPU will do more for you, as will more RAM.
Would you fully benefit from a 3080 (for example), in some respects, definitely not; you would see some benefit. You might find though that spending less on a card would see no less performance increase and save you some cash.
...still not sure if the system would be compatible with a newer GPU. I would check to see if the BIOS is UEFI or Non-UEFI.
Yes That XPS 8700 will upgrade just fine.
The PSU is the standard size and the motherboard has the standard connectors, so any off the shelf retail PSU will drop right in.
The board has 4 DDR3 slots that can take a total of 32GB.
There is space in the tower for any standard size GPU (the RTX 3090 will not fit, but a Titan RTX can)
For your original $700 budget, you could turn that old computer into a nice machine.
No matter how awesome your CPU or hard drive is, the GPU is what renders, and if the GPU lacks VRAM it doesn't render at all. If you are forced to make choices, you can skimp on CPU a little bit. Last generation Ryzen 2000 series parts are getting very cheap and are perfectly capable of running Daz Studio just fine. A half decent motherboard can tie it together while still being decently priced. A decent power supply is always recommended.
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