New RTX 3090 Owner here, what should I do first?
Diaspora
Posts: 454
Hello, Through some luck I managed to buy a 3090 from a friend who happened to buy 2 and so I was reading that there are some issues regarding optimized drivers and stuff.
So, to the other 3090 owners, I guess I'd like to be pointed to a sort of "do this first" list for making the most of the 3090 for DAZ Studio/Iray and eventually Octane (and eventually Redshift for Maya, but I know this isn't the place for that.) Cheers!
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Comments
Make sure it works.
Check GPUz that it reports the RAM, and then make a scene that uses as close to max as possible.
This is not just for a 3090, but any card, make sure it has the reported RAM, and that it can be used. If there are issues with RAM, it is possible that the issue is with a Chip that is only used when more RAM is required.
The first thing is to get updated drivers from nVidia (ideally Studio Drivers for DS etc.) - don't rely on the disc with the card, if any, or Windows Update.
I already had drivers that worked, although not the latest.
I'm not a fan of updating just for the sake of it, as although they can fix issues and add features, they are known to add their share of issues.
If it works (as in one's drivers are at least the minimum), why risk updating?
Get the Studio Drivers, and then see if they work with NVCleanstall - the latter freeware ensures that NVIDIA doesn't also load its junkware along with needed drivers.
After checking to see if GPU-Z works, then set up the drivers, fire up Studio, and load up those scenes that were giving you VRAM issue; I myself opened a scene that was giving me issues and now it renders magnificently!
Plus I'm finally able to bump up the subdivision of my character to 2-3; no more shadow artifacts due to low poly counts!
"I use a 3090 in tandem with a 2080. It worked out of the box and renders that took 10 minutes before on a 2080 are done in 1 minute. High quality renders that took an hour are now done in 10 minutes. I used the latest drivers."
That's a hell of a coincidnce, you just described my new setup. (I decided against selling my 2080). I look forward to those kind of results!!!
WAAAAAAAOOOWW! I don't want to brag too much given how much it sucks that there's a shortage of these beautiful machines but my 3090+2080 rig, just in my first test, I already see my render speeds multiplied by over 3.66 compared to what my computer can do with only the 2080.
I had no idea you could use a 2080 in tandem with a 3090. By coincidence, I've just bought a 3090 to replace my 2080. Render speeds are insanely fast! Only downside is that I've had to upgrade to DS 4.15 :(
i use a 980ti for displays and dont bother adding it to renders.
"Only downside is that I've had to upgrade to DS 4.15 :("
I was worried about upgrading as well but DS 4.15 has a lot of great features. Speaking for myself, the DAZ to Maya Bridge looks to be an incredible addition.
"I had no idea you could use a 2080 in tandem with a 3090"
The way Iray handles data, you don't need devices to be linked by SLI/NVlink or anything like that. Each compatible video card produces iray iterations independently and then the data gets bounced to the CPU where it is amalgamated onto the canvas.
Right now my configuration is I have a 3090, which I use as my display card, and my 2080 which just sits in the next pci express slot and doesn't do anything outside of iRay. The test renders I did yesterday, my 3090 and 2080 produced 378 iterations and the same test render with the 2080 working on its own produced 103 iterations. Since I intend to use this rig for outputting animation footage with batch render that can sometimes take multiple days, by choosing to keep my 2080 (though I had to upgrade to a 1000 watt PSU), I can shave off a substantial amount of hours off a large project.
My main reason for not upgrading (I've been on 3.11 until now) was that you can't run two separate instances of DS at the same time in 3.12 and above. I can't believe this is still the case, but apparently so. I like to set off a batch of renders in one instance,and then work in one or more other instances. The render queue software doesn't work after 3.11 if there's more than one instance of DS running.
I thought graphics cards had to be linked. I'm going to have to stick my 2080 back in alongside the 3090, I think! Good thing I upgraded my PSU at the same time :p
I assume you mean 4.11(.x.x) etc. You can run more than one instance, but you must explicitly name each each instance (though the command line, the DS script, or a shortcut).
Here's a screenshot of me running two renders in two instances, using a .bat script as a link to launch an instance.
I got curious about how it would manage more, so managed 5; not sure of a practical use for 5, but it is doable.
I find rendering one and using a second the most useful (be it 2 Studio; 2 Blender, or combinations).
That's the script i use to launch multiple instances of Studio.
Change the path beginning C to wherever yours is - it doesn't have to be there, but if you keep older installations elsewhere, it can point there too (Providing they were created for use with this script).
The final path beginning E in quotes is if you use a default scene, delete it if you don't.
Or create your own launch code (no not NASA related) using the script
Oh, and if you want to turn it into a link to launch; create an empty text file with the script in.
... then change the extension from .txt to .bat
Yep, It works with the script... to an extent. But if I have a render running in the first instance, am doing something in the second, and the second crashes (and 4.15 seems to crash A LOT), the render will simply freeze and my only option is to restart DS.
*edit* out of curiosity, I also just tried running two renders concurrently in two instances. Both froze after a few seconds, so looks like I have a problem somewhere.
You can get slow-downs, and what might be pauses, so leave for a few minutes to see if they continue
To those using more than one card, I assume you notice no drawback from the PCI-E slot falling back to x8 ?
I'll give that a try at some point. In the middle of a huge render queue atm, so don't want to risk crashing everything.
The 3090 really is an awesome GPU. I've re-rendered a few images that I've spotted issues in and the speed increase is fantastic. Several images that each took 5-6 hours on my 2080 have taken well under an hour each with the 3090. And not a single dropout to the CPU yet either :)
Just got a 3090 today, will be an upgrade from a 1080 so should be a nice boost.
I just ran two instances of GPU-Z, one for the 2080 and one for the 3090 and one interesting thing I saw was the GPU Utilization %. The 2080 utilization during a render in iray would top out at around 65% but the 3090's utilization would vary between 98-100%. So not only is the 3090 just a more capable card but iray also utilizes the available hardware more thoroughly, that does a lot to help explain why it runs so well.
That is odd - perhaps a scheduling issue, as normally Iray would max out the GPU if possible (e.g. not competing with another process also trying to access the GPU).
I don't know about that, it might literally just be some kind of limitation in how iray handles that generation because right now, the 2080 is used for absolutely nothing other than iray but for years, even before my upgrades, it also would never utilize the GPU enough that it would cause the fans to spin up significantly, for example.
That's definitely odd if you had a suitable driver, even my 2080Ti spins up when rendering for more than a very brief period.
After upgrading to 4.15 and my drivers I was hanging and crashing doing multiple renders. I first blamed Daz's upgrade but before downgrading to 4.12 I thought to try the Nvidia drivers. Yep, that was it, downgrading them did the trick. And yes PBRSkin works.
PBRSkin Test