RTX 3090 vs 4090 on Daz iray rendering?

NamelessxPeasant

I have a 3090 and thinking about upgrade to 4090, done some research but still a bit confuse:

 

https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/596921/first-rtx-4090-render

In this post 4090 is 300% faster than 3090.

 

In this video it's only around 30% faster (still good though).

 

If it's true that 4090 is 300% faster then I'll go grab it as fast as I can, if it's 30%... well I guess it's still worth for me, but just won't be that hurry :^P.

Sevrin

You may want to check out the benchmarking thread. 

Daz Studio Iray - Rendering Hardware Benchmarking - Page 38 - Daz 3D Forums

LeatherGryphon

I followed the GPU gossip between 2019 and 2022 while I built a few computers, but I've been cured of that disease and haven't been as deeply immersed in recent GPU lore lately.  However, I have noticed a few YouTube videos about the 4090 not being all that it promises, and only excels in very specific situations. Several prominent and popular techheads are saying to wait for technology to iron out the issues and for the price to lower.

MeneerWolfman

I upgraded from a 3090 to a 4090. The 4090 is faster, 40-50% faster in general. Most multi subdivided figures + room and props scenes render in 7 - 9 minutes. I was finding on the 3090 it was taking 16 to 20 minutes to render.

If I add a lot of refractive surfaces and geoshells it still goes up to the 15 - 20 minute mark. But I would consider it a good piece of equipment if you can afford it.

NamelessxPeasant

LeatherGryphon said:

I followed the GPU gossip between 2019 and 2022 while I built a few computers, but I've been cured of that disease and haven't been as deeply immersed in recent GPU lore lately.  However, I have noticed a few YouTube videos about the 4090 not being all that it promises, and only excels in very specific situations. Several prominent and popular techheads are saying to wait for technology to iron out the issues and for the price to lower.

Thanks for reply!  I guess I'll wait a bit more longer, maybe until 4090ti came out :^P.

NamelessxPeasant

MeneerWolfman said:

I upgraded from a 3090 to a 4090. The 4090 is faster, 40-50% faster in general. Most multi subdivided figures + room and props scenes render in 7 - 9 minutes. I was finding on the 3090 it was taking 16 to 20 minutes to render.

If I add a lot of refractive surfaces and geoshells it still goes up to the 15 - 20 minute mark. But I would consider it a good piece of equipment if you can afford it.

Sounds wonderful!! will you consider 4090ti? seems to come out soon, I'm thinking about get 4090 now or wait for 4090ti.
And maybe build a 3090+ 4090 both to render, I've seen someone done it and the result are amazing (another 50% boost), but the power and heat might be a problem if long time using?

MeneerWolfman

NamelessxPeasant said:

MeneerWolfman said:

I upgraded from a 3090 to a 4090. The 4090 is faster, 40-50% faster in general. Most multi subdivided figures + room and props scenes render in 7 - 9 minutes. I was finding on the 3090 it was taking 16 to 20 minutes to render.

If I add a lot of refractive surfaces and geoshells it still goes up to the 15 - 20 minute mark. But I would consider it a good piece of equipment if you can afford it.

Sounds wonderful!! will you consider 4090ti? seems to come out soon, I'm thinking about get 4090 now or wait for 4090ti.
And maybe build a 3090+ 4090 both to render, I've seen someone done it and the result are amazing (another 50% boost), but the power and heat might be a problem if long time using?

If you can afford to wait, I'd wait for the 4090TI to drop. Even if you weren't to get it, I would imagine there might be some price reduction in the regular 4090 at that point.

As for running both, if your PSU and your circuit breaker can handle it, go for it.

PrefoX

LeatherGryphon said:

I followed the GPU gossip between 2019 and 2022 while I built a few computers, but I've been cured of that disease and haven't been as deeply immersed in recent GPU lore lately.  However, I have noticed a few YouTube videos about the 4090 not being all that it promises, and only excels in very specific situations. Several prominent and popular techheads are saying to wait for technology to iron out the issues and for the price to lower.

price won't lower, sure when the 5xxx is released then yes but that would not be smart to wait that long.

the GPU is fine, running as intended and promised. some features must be integrated into software to fully use the capabilities but that counts for every new GPU.

the 4090ti won't reduce the price of the 4090, 3090ti didn't reduce the price of the 3090 as well. its just another step above. it should be 15% faster for at least 400-500$ more. 4090 is the pretty sure the best bang for the buck right now.

outrider42

There is always something better coming. Whether it be a 4090ti or the 5000 series later on. The question is if it is worth that much to you to upgrade. Everybody is going to have a different answer depending on much they personally value rendering times.

The wild card with Iray is the Ray Tracing core. RT cores enhance render speed, but how much they enhance render speed can vary wildly from scene to scene. The general idea is that RT cores work better with more geometry. The more geometry you have in your scene, the larger the performance gap will get between different GPUs. So think about what kinds of scenes you make first. Lots of fiber mesh, high subdivisions, and dense foliage can be geometrically complex. Shading performance is not as improved as geometry. This is why you might see some different numbers from different people (though I really have to wonder about the 300% one without seeing more data on it.)

You have a 3090, so you already have better equipment than most users. If Iray is your focus, you have options. You can buy another 3090 at a discount and run two 3090s if you want to. If your PC has the power supply and can support multiple GPUs, this is always a possibility. Or you can buy a 4090 and use it with your 3090, again if your PC can fit them (it very well might not.) Iray usually scales well with multiple GPUs.

Back in 2018 I bought a 2nd 1080ti at used discount instead of buying a 2080ti, skipping Turing. Then I got a 3090. Later added a 3060 to get a little more pop. This is an option as well, you can mix any cards you want. The 3060 will not run if the scene exceeds its 12GB VRAM capacity, so there is that facet to consider. So there are times when I am only using the 3090. That's fine, the 3060 was a lot cheaper. When they do run together, my times in Daz 4.16 rival those of 4090 users in 4.21. That is also something to look at, the version of Daz can impact render speeds as well. 4.15 and 4.16 are faster. 4.20 is a turd. 4.21 is slightly faster than the 4.20, but not close to 4.16.

marble

MeneerWolfman said:

I upgraded from a 3090 to a 4090. The 4090 is faster, 40-50% faster in general. Most multi subdivided figures + room and props scenes render in 7 - 9 minutes. I was finding on the 3090 it was taking 16 to 20 minutes to render.

If I add a lot of refractive surfaces and geoshells it still goes up to the 15 - 20 minute mark. But I would consider it a good piece of equipment if you can afford it.

 

Figures like this always have me scratching my head. I have a 3090 and any scene taking more than 3 minutes has me wondering whether it has dropped to CPU or something. I guess I got used to using some of the tricks of reducing render times back when I had a 1070 for several years and I have just continued with them (other than I find less need to optimize for saving VRAM now that I have plenty).

I might add that dForce is the biggest time-consumer for me these days and upgrading to a 3090 did very little to reduce those times.

Expozures

outrider42 said:

There is always something better coming. Whether it be a 4090ti or the 5000 series later on. The question is if it is worth that much to you to upgrade. Everybody is going to have a different answer depending on much they personally value rendering times.

This exactly.  I've been in the computer business for 30 years now (ugh), working my way up from retail to doing IT.  I've seen a lot of innovations come out over the years.  One thing I always fall back on, particularly with video cards is: get what you can afford, when you can afford.  Don't wait until the next big thing comes out, because there will always be a next big thing to come out.  Don't wait for prices to drop.  Prices will always drop.  And get what meets your needs, not necessarily just the fanciest and shiniest.

PerttiA

Expozures said:

outrider42 said:

There is always something better coming. Whether it be a 4090ti or the 5000 series later on. The question is if it is worth that much to you to upgrade. Everybody is going to have a different answer depending on much they personally value rendering times.

This exactly.  I've been in the computer business for 30 years now (ugh), working my way up from retail to doing IT.  I've seen a lot of innovations come out over the years.  One thing I always fall back on, particularly with video cards is: get what you can afford, when you can afford.  Don't wait until the next big thing comes out, because there will always be a next big thing to come out.  Don't wait for prices to drop.  Prices will always drop.  And get what meets your needs, not necessarily just the fanciest and shiniest.

 

Yeah... Not to mention the fact that the shiniest and fanciest may have teething problems, which sometimes cannot even be fixed (properly) with mere driver/firmware updates.

The stuff is released when most of it works for most of the users (in US). If one is doing something most of the users are not doing (or one not in US), chances are that it may not work for what one is doing.

outrider42

Expozures said:

outrider42 said:

There is always something better coming. Whether it be a 4090ti or the 5000 series later on. The question is if it is worth that much to you to upgrade. Everybody is going to have a different answer depending on much they personally value rendering times.

This exactly.  I've been in the computer business for 30 years now (ugh), working my way up from retail to doing IT.  I've seen a lot of innovations come out over the years.  One thing I always fall back on, particularly with video cards is: get what you can afford, when you can afford.  Don't wait until the next big thing comes out, because there will always be a next big thing to come out.  Don't wait for prices to drop.  Prices will always drop.  And get what meets your needs, not necessarily just the fanciest and shiniest.

To be fair though, the last couple years have been a wild ride and everything has turned on its head a bit. The 3090 did drop as low as $600 used on ebay during the the 4090 release. But after that, prices have actually crept back up. Back when things were normal, this would not have happened, certainly not to this degree.

So prices sadly don't always drop, thanks to market shenanigans.

However this is still reasonable advice. Right now things are more stable than they have been. We also caught a break when the US decided to post pone a 25% tariff on imports from China (where a lot of GPU parts come from).

https://www.pcmag.com/news/us-delays-re-imposing-tariffs-on-gpus-for-another-9-months

I do think we might see some price drops as the 3000 series finally sells out. I believe this has been Nvidia's strategy since the 4000 launch. They priced the 4080 and 4070ti crazy high to push people to buy the remaining 3000 series, or get the 4090. This seems kind of suicidal, as these cards collect dust on shelves. Stores do not like unsold inventory.

At some point they have to drop prices. Some people are even talking about a GPU market crash, which is kind of happening. If things continue, they will be forced to drop prices, whether they want to or not. The question is when, and of course, how much is one willing to gamble on that idea of waiting or not to buy. It is a tough call, and everybody has to make that for themselves. The best we can say is just educate yourself on what is happening in the market.

iSeeThis

MeneerWolfman said:

I upgraded from a 3090 to a 4090. The 4090 is faster, 40-50% faster in general. Most multi subdivided figures + room and props scenes render in 7 - 9 minutes. I was finding on the 3090 it was taking 16 to 20 minutes to render.

If I add a lot of refractive surfaces and geoshells it still goes up to the 15 - 20 minute mark. But I would consider it a good piece of equipment if you can afford it.

Thank you! This helps a lot.

MeneerWolfman

marble said:

MeneerWolfman said:

I upgraded from a 3090 to a 4090. The 4090 is faster, 40-50% faster in general. Most multi subdivided figures + room and props scenes render in 7 - 9 minutes. I was finding on the 3090 it was taking 16 to 20 minutes to render.

If I add a lot of refractive surfaces and geoshells it still goes up to the 15 - 20 minute mark. But I would consider it a good piece of equipment if you can afford it.

 

Figures like this always have me scratching my head. I have a 3090 and any scene taking more than 3 minutes has me wondering whether it has dropped to CPU or something. I guess I got used to using some of the tricks of reducing render times back when I had a 1070 for several years and I have just continued with them (other than I find less need to optimize for saving VRAM now that I have plenty).

I might add that dForce is the biggest time-consumer for me these days and upgrading to a 3090 did very little to reduce those times.

It really comes down to how complex the scenes get. In fairness, I can render out a single character with hair and clothes at 4 subd in an empty scene, it takes less than 8 seconds from hitting the render button to it being done. It's literally so fast I can't even really switch to my browser to look at something.

I think the more advanced the GPU gets the more advanced you start making the scenes. There's a lot of things I wouldn't have even bothered to try back when I had a 1080ti because I knew it would not fit in the card's memory or knew it would take insanely long to render (water, refractive sufaces, multiple geoshells, etc.).

marble

MeneerWolfman said:

marble said:

MeneerWolfman said:

I upgraded from a 3090 to a 4090. The 4090 is faster, 40-50% faster in general. Most multi subdivided figures + room and props scenes render in 7 - 9 minutes. I was finding on the 3090 it was taking 16 to 20 minutes to render.

If I add a lot of refractive surfaces and geoshells it still goes up to the 15 - 20 minute mark. But I would consider it a good piece of equipment if you can afford it.

 

Figures like this always have me scratching my head. I have a 3090 and any scene taking more than 3 minutes has me wondering whether it has dropped to CPU or something. I guess I got used to using some of the tricks of reducing render times back when I had a 1070 for several years and I have just continued with them (other than I find less need to optimize for saving VRAM now that I have plenty).

I might add that dForce is the biggest time-consumer for me these days and upgrading to a 3090 did very little to reduce those times.

It really comes down to how complex the scenes get. In fairness, I can render out a single character with hair and clothes at 4 subd in an empty scene, it takes less than 8 seconds from hitting the render button to it being done. It's literally so fast I can't even really switch to my browser to look at something.

I think the more advanced the GPU gets the more advanced you start making the scenes. There's a lot of things I wouldn't have even bothered to try back when I had a 1080ti because I knew it would not fit in the card's memory or knew it would take insanely long to render (water, refractive sufaces, multiple geoshells, etc.).

Yes, of course you are right in that a lot of factors contribute to render times. For example, I render at 5:4 ratio, 1600x1280 and I know that a lot of people render much larger images. That size suits me, however, as I don't need to fill a huge screen nor do I ever print anything. I'm also not very adventurous with lighting so I tend to use a combination of HDRi and a spotlight whereas I am aware that others use complex lighting rigs which are very demanding on the GPU. I'm just making picture stories, not high art.

I have to say that your 8 seconds is still dreamland for me and my 3090 which would be possibly twice that.