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What is the 2nd most important PC component (next to GPU) for Daz/iRay?

PA_ThePhilosopherPA_ThePhilosopher Posts: 1,039
edited June 2015 in The Commons

Hey guys,
iRay user here.

I am in the process of putting together a new PC build. I already have a top-of-the-line GPU, so I am wondering where to invest my money in next (e.g., more RAM, more cores, SSD, etc.). Later, it will be another GPU, but for now, I am wanting to focus on other components.

-Does 32 GB of RAM make a noticeable difference over 16 GB?
-Does an SSD provide noticeable difference over a HDD?
-Does Daz/iRay take full advantage over a 6-core processor?
-What about the latest Intel X99 CPU's with 15 MB of cache?


I was just curious what you found to provide the best improvements in moving about the UI in Daz, and also rendering in iRay.

Thanks,

Davide

Post edited by PA_ThePhilosopher on

Comments

  • AeonicBAeonicB Posts: 166
    edited June 2015

    I think the huge amount of RAM is a great thing for DAZ. I have a computer that does DAZ and Iray great in every respect, and it's nearly six years old at this point (Hexcore AMD CPU, ATI Radeon 7750, platter HDD, and 2 Gig of RAM.) Guess what the show stopper is there? The RAM.

    I can easily hit 1.5 gig in a single session with Genesis 3, and watch my computer slow to a crawl.

    But otherwise, I can do Iray renders in 15 minutes, no kidding. It renders faster than I expected to on a machine this ancient (by computer terms! :-P )

    Post edited by AeonicB on
  • frank0314frank0314 Posts: 14,330
    edited December 1969

    Invest money into RAM, GPU and CPU. The bigger the better. 32GB RAM will give you the ability to set up heavy scenes with no problems. With IRay get a good Nvidia GPU with 4GB of RAM. Do not get the GTX 970. It advertises 4GB but it only recognizes 3.5GB. CPU get a really good quality quad core or 6 Core. 6 Core are great and benchmark quite high. Be sure to check out the different benchmarks of your hardware. You can build a great computer from them.

  • HavosHavos Posts: 5,404
    edited December 1969

    I have a GTX 970, and so far I have no issues with it, renders very fast and I have done some fairly big scenes with multiple Genesis 2 characters, and they have all fit in the GPU, probably under 3.5GB or I assume it renders very slowly. So far it has never dropped down to CPU only.

    Whilst there are better cards around, the GTX 970 gives you one of the better $ to cuda cores on the market.

  • Richard HaseltineRichard Haseltine Posts: 102,865
    edited December 1969

    Where is your current bottleneck? If your renders have little in the way of geometry and texture but use a lot of calculation-heavy effects you may gain more from the processor, if they are huge with big textures on lots of models then RAM may be more important (though in that case your GPU isn't going to be helping you that much, so you may want to sell it on eBay and improve the CPU instead). Essentially you want to spend the money on the choke-point, if any, in your system.

  • DrNewcensteinDrNewcenstein Posts: 816
    edited December 1969

    I've got a GTX 980, and it's not as powerful as an older 780 Ti. The 980 doesn't have as many CUDA cores, but the same memory bandwidth as the 780 Ti. I wish now that I had looked into it more before wasting my money on the 980. Luckily I picked up 2 used 780 Tis for nearly the cost of the 980.

    In the few tests I've done with the 780s, I'm getting 200-300 iterations in under 40 seconds using both GPUs, without the CPU.

    However, SLI does not help, so if you go that route, disable it.


    Regarding the 4GB vs 3.5GB - I understand there's a class action against Nvidia and Gigabyte about this. The card does have 4GB of Vram on it. Allegedly it only uses 3.5 GB and the other 500MB is used for overflow, thus, it's using 4GB.

  • SPACECHIMPSPACECHIMP Posts: 212
    edited December 1969

    I think RAM is even more important than the games card go for 32gb if you can makes a big difference even without Nvida card on Iray. I have SSD it seemed fast at first but it fills up quickly and I have to keep emptying it into the second drive or it gets slow.

  • frank0314frank0314 Posts: 14,330
    edited December 1969

    If your gonna go with SSD then get 1-2 4TB backups so you know you will have extra space

  • kyoto kidkyoto kid Posts: 41,260
    edited December 1969

    ....if an older system such as mine, memory and CPU would be the best route as for one the newer GPUs are PCI 3.0.

    I could upgrade to a i7 980/990 Extreme or Xeon X3690 6 core (12 thread) and 24 GB of physical memory (which is the most my board will support). As my scenes tend to be on the "heavy" side (and would require a minimum of 8GB video memory meaning a Titan-X as there is no GTX GPU with 8 GB) for the cost, I would do better to settle for the memory and CPU upgrade which would give slightly better CPU rendering performance.

  • PA_ThePhilosopherPA_ThePhilosopher Posts: 1,039
    edited June 2015

    Thanks for the tips guys. I went ahead and ordered my build. Here is what I ended up going with.

    -Intel Core i7-5930K Haswell-E 6-Core 3.5GHz LGA 2011-v3
    -Crucial 32GB (4 x 8GB) 288-Pin DDR4 SDRAM DDR4 2133
    -Intel 730 Series 480GB Solid State Drive (SSD)
    -EVGA X99 FTW LGA 2011-v3 Intel X99 Motherboard
    -EVGA 1000 Watt VR 80 PLUS GOLD Power Supply
    -Noctua NH-D14 CPU Cooler

    My GPU: GTX 780 Ti


    NOTE: This particular i7 has 40 PCI lanes, which means that it can run two GPU's in PCI Express 16 slots (at full capacity). The motherboard can hold up to 4 GPU's 16x8x8x8, so there is plenty of room for growth here.


    Davide

    Post edited by PA_ThePhilosopher on
  • ZarconDeeGrissomZarconDeeGrissom Posts: 5,412
    edited December 1969

    Watts? That top-end GPU with a good CPU with lots of ram, will need lots of them watts. Just something to keep in mind.

  • DrNewcensteinDrNewcenstein Posts: 816
    edited December 1969

    I've also got an HP Z600 workstation with dual 5650 6-core CPUs (24 total cores), and 48GB of RAM. Granted the CPUs only run at 2.5GHz, but it renders the same scene slower than the 32GB quad-core (8 total) i7 system in a CPU vs CPU render, so more RAM is not a sure-fire solution.

    One thing to note about motherboards with multiple PCI slots - make sure they're spaced far enough apart to hold double-width GTX cards. My ASUS Z87-Pro board has 3 PCI slots but the third one is too close to the middle one to squeeze a single-width card into, and too close to the power supply to put a single-width card in the middle and the double-wide in #3.

    Though I guess I could put the PS outside the case...without burning the house down.

  • DrNewcensteinDrNewcenstein Posts: 816
    edited December 1969

    As for the earlier statement about getting a 4GB card and not the 4GB-but-really-only-uses-3.5 - the 780 Ti has 3GB and has no trouble, so I'm not seeing the issue there. What will be an issue is that the 970 only has 1664 cores. And don't waste the money on a Quadro K4000. I did. I regret it. I could've gotten another pair of 780 Tis for what I paid for it. Granted the Quadro cores have a slower clock that helps in long renders, but EVGA-branded cards come with a handy dandy tool that lets you drop the clock on GTX cards, so you get 2880 cores and greater stability. Not that I've had to do that except with Luxrender. Iray doesn't seem to have that issue.

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