GPU Question - RTX 3060

rlewisfr

Hello all,

I'm struggling to find a good balance with renders and, alongside other programtic changes, I'm considering my GPU options.

I currently have an RTX 3060ti with 8gb of VRAM.  It is a great card, and it does work very well for my low level gaming and such.  However, I often find myself maxing out the 8gb for some scenes and I'm wondering if the RTX 3060 12gb is a better choice.

So, scenario 1 is selling my 3060ti and picking up a 3060 12gb

Scenario 2 is adding a 3060 12gb, keeping the 3060ti but running renders through both (when I only need 8gb and gaining speed) or just the 12gb when I need the extra room.

Scenario 3 is keeping the 3060ti 8gb in and just finding ways to manage scenes better (for instance through scene optimizer or intstances)

[Edit:  MSI Z690 Tomahawk MD if it matters]

Any thoughts and advice would greatly, greatly appreciated.

PerttiA

If you are using assets, especially hair that has been released within past year, the 8GB VRAM is not enough.

I would say the "scenario 1" would be your best option.

lorraineopua

I got myself a 3060 and I'm very happy with it. I've rendered 14 G8 figures at base res with it.

Silver Dolphin

Get a 3090 with 24gb of vram! All the lemming are selling their kidneys for 4090s so this is a good time to get a 3090. Is the 4090 better than a 3090 sure. Is it worth it? The answer is a big fat NO!

nonesuch00

If you are just DAZ Studio rendering a 3060 will do fine. If you want to render out animations someday or use software specifically designed to use DLSS like AI enhancement/restoration of old film / photoos and such then you want a 4090. Anything else ignore unless you find for an unusually cheap price.

KomodoVR

I'm a big fan of the 12GB RTX 3060 and currently render with two. Obviously, I'd prefer to be rendering with dual 4090s, but all in good time.

If your 8GB 3060 TI is also running your desktop/monitor, then you could consider getting a cheap additional GPU just for that, so you can use a bit more of the TI's 8GB VRAM.

On the other hand, if your CPU has an integrated GPU, then you could consider using that when rendering larger scenes with the 8GB 3060 TI. When I render large scenes, I switch the monitor/desktop to the Ryzen 9 7950X's integrated GPU. It works, but it isn't perfect (for reasons). In general, I am avoiding scenes above ~10GB until I can render with a 3090 or 4090.

In my opinion, any and all GPU money - at this point in time - is probably best put toward obtaining 12GB 3060s until the 24GB 4090s become affordable. So, I would sell the 8GB TI and put that money toward a 12GB 3060. When it comes to rendering, you don't need the fastest and most expensive 12GB 3060, just a lower priced one should do the trick.

While they may not all be equal when it comes to playing games, expensive and cheap 3060s - as far as I am aware - should all render iRay scenes at about the same speed. (If you can end up acquiring two 12GB 3060s, it will effectively halve the rendering time needed.)

Good luck and happy rendering with your future 12GB 3060(s).

rlewisfr

Thank you so much everyone for the comments and information.  I am just waiting to hear back on a used MSI 3060 Ventus 3x that will sit nicely in the rig.

Thanks again!

rlewisfr

Just an update, for anyone searching in the near future on the 3060ti vs 3060 question, I wanted to share my findings.

I added in a 3060 12gb onto the motherboard, and no issues getting it up and running in Daz, so that is RTX 3060 ti 8gb in the CUDA 0 and RTX 3060 12gb in CUDA 1.  My motherboard PCI-E slot 1 has a direct tie to the CPU and gives me a 16x connection, whereas PCI-E slot 2 is only 8X.  Since I do some gaming, I want the Ti in slot 1 (see below for Daz implications)

Observations with the 3060ti alone:

• My VRAM ceiling is now considerably higher.  How much?  Well, in terms of models and such, with the 3060ti alone, I was maxed out at the following:
• 3 G8.1 figures with reasonable hair and clothing, 4K 16:9 render dimensions, fairly complicated environment background with some props etc.;
• Pushed to 2 G8.1 figures and added a Victoria G9 HD with no clothing or hair FAILED to render;
• The best I could acheive was a reduction in textures from 4K to 2K (using scene optimizer and carefully managing hidden objects, etc. etc.) was 3 G8.1 figures, all reasonable clothing and hair, running at 4K textures

Observations with the 3060 and 3060ti:

• Same background scene as above, adding in a Victoria G9 HD (i.e. 8K) and a Ravenna G9 HD (8K) both with no clothing and no hair, plus the other 2 G8.1 figures, all reasonable clothing and hair, running at 4K.  Slow, but it definitely fit into the VRAM budget, and ran entirely on the 3060 while the 3060ti idled.  (2 G8.1 2 G9 HD)
• Adding clothing or hair to the G9s failed the VRAM budget
• Hair is the VRAM budget killer.
• Turning off the 3060ti and relying just on the 3060, I saw just how slow the 3060 is compared to the 3060ti during the viewport iray rendering.
• With both units running for the under 8gb VRAM budget, it is fast!  My non-scientific results showed about a 40% reduction in overall rendering time.  The same scene above with 2 G8.1 clothed and hair rendered at 4K in 4 minutes.
• Temperature in the case became an issue, but perhaps because of my configuration.  My case has plenty of ventilation (3 large draw fans in the front, 1 large rear exit, 3 large top exit), but the MSI 3060ti card I have has only 2 fans.  The Gigabyte 3060 has 3 fans, and never reached 65C.  The 3060ti, however, hit 85C a few times and as a result I had to put a custom fan curve and my results were much better (although increased noise and power draw).  On the plus side, rendering keeps my office nice and warm in the winter!

Conclusion:  Overall, pretty happy with the setup.  Sure, a single 3090 would be great, and may be in my far future, but I was working with what I had and had a decent deal on the 3060 add on.  For anyone considering a 3060 12gb vs 3060ti 8gb, you are going to see a drop in speed and responsiveness, but a much higher VRAM budget.  I imagine two 3060 12gb cards would be the ideal, but then you are approaching used 3090 prices at that point.

Cheers!

 

rlewisfr

Sorry, just wanted to add a comment on the 3060ti in PCI-E slot 1.

I did NOT try the 3060 12gb in the slot 1 (too much hassle), but the implication is that the 3060ti has a constant load (background Windows, etc.) and a constant high load when under the 8gb VRAM budget.  This may be an issue with long term wear and tear, but the speed of the 3060ti is hard to give up as the leader GPU.

cgidesign

In some benchmarks (e.g. redshift: https://www.cgdirector.com/redshift-benchmark-results/) the old 2080Ti has similar speed to 3060 Ti but with 11GB instead of 8 GB - and it allows for NVLink which means 22 GB. This might be an alternative for a tight budget when buying used is an option.

James

The easy answer is, if you have the budget, have both.
DAZ can render in both GPU at the same time.
If the scene can fit in both, DAZ will use both.
If not, DAZ will use only one with higher Vram.

More Cudas = faster render

Kitsumo

rlewisfr said:

Sorry, just wanted to add a comment on the 3060ti in PCI-E slot 1.

I did NOT try the 3060 12gb in the slot 1 (too much hassle), but the implication is that the 3060ti has a constant load (background Windows, etc.) and a constant high load when under the 8gb VRAM budget.  This may be an issue with long term wear and tear, but the speed of the 3060ti is hard to give up as the leader GPU.

I wouldn't worry too much about it. I can't offer you hard statistics, but based on my experience (with a GTX 460 and GTX 770), and lots of forum posts here, your card will probably be dropped from CUDA support long before it actually stops working.

To be honest, when I had that 460, I was using my computer for World Community Grid, a distributed computing project, so it ran for about 2 and a half years continuously, except for power outages. I'd say pretty much any name brand GPU nowadays will survive to outlive its usefulness.

Pickle Renderer

I bought a 3060 12GB recently, to replace a 2070.  I believe it's a little slower than your 3060 Ti.  However you can put a lot more characters and props into a scene.  I would recommend it over the Ti actually.  Having more RAM is a bigger advantage than marginal improvement in render time.  Also I very much doubt there's a 40% difference in render times between the 60 and the 60 Ti.  That would be absurd.

Kitsumo

Pickle Renderer said:

I bought a 3060 12GB recently, to replace a 2070.  I believe it's a little slower than your 3060 Ti.  However you can put a lot more characters and props into a scene.  I would recommend it over the Ti actually.  Having more RAM is a bigger advantage than marginal improvement in render time.  Also I very much doubt there's a 40% difference in render times between the 60 and the 60 Ti.  That would be absurd.

 I think they were saying the 3060ti + 3060 combined was 40% faster than the 3060ti alone.

Pickle Renderer

Also don't forget if you're animating you can halve render time by getting something like Flowframes (I paid a small sum on Patreon for it). from NMKD Software (he has a patreon).  It's a very good AI-based framerate upscaler, e.g. you can go from 30 to 120 fps and get really smooth motion, or you can render 15 and double it to 30, whatever you want.  It's local, not cloud-based.  In my experiments 15 to 60 fps still looked very good. Couple that with a great denoiser in your tool chain (I use Declan Russell's Open Image Denoiser) and you can halve it again. 

I wrote a little explorer extension code to do denoising, then framerate upscaling, then joining into a video file (ffmpeg).  You could put the toolchain in a batch file I guess.  It would be nice for someone to do a plugin for post-render events.  My impl is kind-of specific to the way I work.

Point is you don't need the latest, greatest video card for two grand to double your rendering times.  If you're not using these tools you still have some low hanging fruit to pick before opening your wallet.