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Which raises the question(and perhaps its already been asked & answered), has anyone ever tried this with other software(i.e. Iclone, Poser, etc.) and see how much system RAM they're chewing through? I'm guessing this is the nature of the beast, regardless of which software you use, and when you start getting into that much geometry & texturing, you're going to need a monster of a system where the RAM is measured in terabytes.
...W10 Pro for workstations can handle up to 6 TB while Linux can handle upwards of 256 TB of RAM (pretty much limited by your MB and CPU. The most you can get today is 8 TB on 16 x 512 GB modules which will run you a cool 123,000 USD just for the memory alone (makes that 3090 even at scalper prices sound like a bargain). Downside is finding an MB that can manage that level of memory. Only AMD Epyc 2 or newer can support more than 1 TB and it would take a dual socket MB with two of these pricey CPUs for a full 8 TB. The downside is Epyc 2nd generation only supports Windows Server or Ubuntu Linux so for Iray rendering support, pretty much out of luck.
I don't see the Windows Pro 6TB limit being an issue anytime soon, since so little hardware is even capable. I'm sure if it gets to that point MS will change it. But by that point computing hardware will be several generations more powerful. I shudder to think how long a 1TB size scene would take to render even on the fastest current GPUs. Even Pixar is not using that much data.
At any rate, if somebody can afford that kind of hardware, they are not using Daz. They can afford to have a dedicated team of 3D artists creating original assets in whatever program they choose.
As for RAM usage, I think the amounts sound about right for PBR renderers like Iray. Octane recommends having a RAM pool that is 3 to 4 times your VRAM, and that lines up with what we are observing here. Going back to the 17GB VRAM and 64GB RAM....the RAM is just a hair over 4 times the VRAM in that scene. For me, a lot of times I see my RAM between 2 and 3 times my VRAM, but it can hit 4 and slightly above. In my most extreme case, hitting almost 48GB of RAM is just a little above 4 times the 11GB of VRAM that were in use. That was with a lot of hidden items in the scene that no doubt added to the RAM count. If I didn't mention it earlier, stuff you hide using the scene tab's visibility toggle still uses RAM, that is why you can toggle it on and off (otherwise it would need to reload). Hiding an object does save some VRAM. So if you have the RAM to spare, you can hide items in a scene to get under VRAM. You could possibly render a scene multiple times this way by swapping what is hidden, and then use an editor to put them together. The spot render tool can be used in this way as well, and the big advantage is a small spot render can render much faster than the full size render. I'm sure a lot of us do that, but some newer people may be unaware.
...I'm usually at 2 - 3 which is why If I go for a VM (about 800$ to upgrade ot have a large enough W7 partition of 48GB [which is 4x the VRAM of my Titan-X]) I would need an MB capable of supporting at least 64 GB leaving 16 GB for the Linux base for online purposes. 128 would allow me to go to 24 GB VRAM with 32 GB for the LInux base.
heh, no thanks. The cost of having to upgrade/buy new equipment for a system like that every 5-7 years I'll leave to businesses with deeper pockets that actually use it to make money. Besides, anyone that uses hardware with specs like that probably won't be using Daz. Plus another thing to factor in with the cost of those $100k+ workstation/servers is storage, which will most likely involve 1 or more RAID configs and or NAS. That motherboard I linked from the Asus website supports Win10 & up to 2,048Gb or 2.048Tb RAM, which is more than enough for any hardcore "iray rendering enthusiast" or someone that wants to put together a small render server. I think Terabytes & Petabytes is not too far around the corner when it comes to common desktop RAM & storage.