Crashes rendering with Parah loaded

VolvoB10M

I am trying to do renders with Parah but every time the render box turns white then shows not responding and closes automatically, this happens with only this character loaded and not with other characters loaded, how do I get this to work witth this character?

crosswind

Ho.. I haven't found such an issue after testing a scene with Parah. You installed the latest update ? And your hardware spec.?

Taoz

It's a HD character and Render SubD level is 5 by default, so if you don't have enough RAM your PC may start swapping to expand the page file which may cause "not responding" and even lock up the machine for a while, and sometimes the render may fail.  Try reducing Render SubD to a lower value and see if that works.

VolvoB10M

I have AMD B350M with Ryzen 5 2600, 16GB RAM, GTX960 (later 4GB version)

I can't increase pagefile without replacing the hard drive and having everything swapped to a new one would cost too much this is out of the question, only RAM could be upgraded but the correct cards are not available. How do I find what GPU to go as maximum before it is overloaded.

crosswind

TBH, the hardware you have is pretty out-of-date, RAM is not enough, let alone a GTX960 with 4GB.  In term of VRAM consumption, Win10 + one DS instance consume appr 1GB, a loaded G8.1F in Viewport consume appr 0.4GB, Iray Engine consumes 2GB, you only have appr 0.6GB VRAM left...
Parah character will at least consume 0.8GB, so you run out of the remaining VRAM.  In this case, esp. with GTX9XX series card, DS usually shows you a white render screen then crash, while with 20 series card and above, normally there'll be a black render screen, no crash..

You may use GPU-Z to observe VRAM usage from time to time but still suggest you consider upgrading your hardware to some extent...  The rig you have now probably will not bring you Happy Rendering, IMHO...

 

VolvoB10M

I have HW Monitor that shows alsorts of data and I usually have the irrelevant stuff hidden. I have been advised to avoid the 1000 and 2000 series cards as most affordable ones end up being damaged from mining units, what GPU can I go up to on this MB/CPUcombination without risking a bottleneck overload?

crosswind

What you've been advised is pretty reasonable to a certain extent. Going for RTX 30 Series at least won't make you left behind in terms of the hardware. But TBH, it depends on your budget and what's aimed to be your 1st priority at the end of the day. Maybe, for instance, within 30 series:
- low-end:  RTX 3060, Cuda Cores - 3.5K, VRAM - 12GB, RAM - 16GB (less Cuda cores - slow rendering, but more VRAM - hold bigger/complex scenes)
- mid-end:  RTX 3080 Cuda Cores - 8.9K, VRAM - 12GB, RAM - 32~48GB (Cuda cores doubled +, more likely the cost-effective one)
- high-end: RTX 3090 Cuda Cores - 10.7K,  VRAM - 24GB, RAM - 64+GB (much more optimal...)

Same strategy may apply for 40 series if you wanna consider.

VolvoB10M

I just tried rendering with no other scenery or environment loaded and it crashed again but automatically logged out and after logging back in the first time said accound is not available, the second time it loaded a completely different desktop with the wrong background, files missing, wrong windows bar and no web or file browsers except Edge.

From what I have been told previously a 3000 series would also likely overload the motherboard and CPU as this processor is not powerful enough and would neck the board causing it to fail. I had the same problem when I put this GPU on my old G5900 board at first. The 3080 series also seem to cost around £1,900 here which is 4 to 6 times my absolute maximum. Are the equivalent AMD cards cheaper or better suited to AMD boards? Though they are not compatible with Iray as that is Nvidia so I wouldn't be able to use any Iray textures.

Edit: There are no RTX 3060 available anywhere by the looks of it, everywhere is out of stock though they are listed as much more affordable.

crosswind

Yeah, on 'old card', the issue you mentioned is typical which resulted from a 'graphics card driver failure'... so there would be a couple of weird things happened... better reboot your PC..

Then, indeed, from my PoV, you'd better entirely upgrade your rig... well, AMD card could only be used for 3Delight render.

Not sure where you locate but I still see there're quite a lot 3060 in stock of many stores in my country.. but maybe those are mining cards...

VolvoB10M

By mining cards i mean used ones that have been used for "mining" crypto, I don't think the 2000 series are built anymore so a used one will likely be from a mining unit. I have known people who have bought used GPUs that have turned out to be completely unusable after being used in this way so it isn't a joke. There is one store I have found (Ebuyer) that does have RTX 3060 available at a fairly decent price, I will need to upgrade my PSU and ideally double the RAM. Various sources online state there are some bottlenecking between the R5 2600 and a RTX 3060 but that is fixed by increasing the CPU. Though it might not likely be enough to overload the CPU as the PCI is 3.0 on the MB rather than 4.0. I still don't fully understand it though.

I can't afford to replace the whole PC as that would inevitably be even more, I would also likely end up having to use this new subscription based Windows/Onedrive/Office licensing system which seems to be happening with everyone else I know who recently bought a new computer. I would rather it as it is where I have a valid license from obtaining the key to as long as I own the computer than pay every month or lose access. I currently have one program that uses this method and it is a nightmare to use since it won't even launch if it hasn't recently been able to connect to the cloud in the seperate license management software.

PerttiA

Here in Finland, there are no problems finding RTX 3060 12GB cards, new from a real store. Prices ranging from Eur 299 to Eur 549 (including 24% VAT)