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Worth having the files in the ssd for faster rendering?

MD11MD11 Posts: 39
in Daz Studio Discussion

Let's say I have some characters with textures and files in the ssd. Would this benefit render times with iray?

Is worth doing it? 

thanks!

Comments

  • PerttiAPerttiA Posts: 10,024

    Has no effect on rendering, unless you are doing it with the CPU and the amount of your RAM is so small that the OS is using your hamster powered harddrive as an extension to RAM

    Has a miniscule effect on loading times of the scenes, but due to other (bigger) issues with loading times, you may as well use the largest USB HDD to store your stuff, the affordable SSD:s will fill up too fast anyways.

  • ebergerlyebergerly Posts: 3,255
    edited February 2021

    Yeah, I think the process is, generally:

    1. Load the scene from the hard drive into system memory/RAM for D|S to work on it,
    2. Iray converts from DAZ stuff into a format of sub-data that the GPU can use (hence the need for much less (like 50%) VRAM than system RAM),
    3. Send that via the PCI bus to the GPU,
    4. The GPU grabs it and populates its VRAM and registers and stuff so it can calculate.

    But the hard drive is pretty much done once the data has been loaded into D|S (system RAM), unless, as PerttiA says, the hard drive is being used as virtual memory (slow as molasses) rather than using fast system RAM. 

    Of course it might help with step 1 if you have a faster SSD, but I'm not sure if the loading speed is software (D|S) limited or hardware (hard drive/SCSI) limited. As I mentioned before, you can have the fastest hardware on the planet, but if the software isn't capable of utilizing that speed it's of little benefit. 

    Post edited by ebergerly on
  • TheKDTheKD Posts: 2,696

    From the tests I ran, SSD made no difference. I decided to use my SSD for games, which at least sped up loading screens by using SSD, and use a massive HDD for content.

  • namffuaknamffuak Posts: 4,170

    If you use the Smart Content tab, put the CMS on the SSD for faster content lookups. I have over 15,000 products installed and the CMS is only using 2.64 GB. But the content proper - just put it pretty much anywhere; once you add it to the scene its in memory and disk speed is irrelevant.

  • Magic ManMagic Man Posts: 35
    edited February 2021

    No effect on rendering but I would still recommend putting your library on the fastest storage you have.

    Daz loads a lot of files when loading scenes, objects, morphs etc. Lots of files means lots of seek times and seek times is where SSD's excel.

    My library is around 500GB and I've noticed a big difference in load times going from HDD to SSD to PCI-E4 M2 drive. 

    Post edited by Magic Man on
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