Loading...
> >

is an FX-6300 really that slow with iRay?

tmtmtm_f56c8d4bdatmtmtm_f56c8d4bda Posts: 86
edited November 2016 in Technical Help (nuts n bolts)

Once the render actually starts, my GPU renders quite fast thank you very much... but the elapsed time to load things up and get started seems very long.

 

I have an AMD FX-6300 6-core CPU with 8GB RAM, and once I start an iRay render - even a simple scene with just the base figure - I can see the cores busy at about 30-50% load for each. And then Daz Studio just kind of sits there, and does whatever it does... I notice after a while, VRAM is increased, so I gather there is some loading going on.

It takes about a full minute for default base figure, no props, no fancy anything to get rendering.

The actual render itself then goes nice and smooth.

Is this normal? Am I doing something weird but don't know it? How can I optimize the pre-rendering load times?

 

Thanks

Post edited by tmtmtm_f56c8d4bda on

Comments

  • Male-M3diaMale-M3dia Posts: 3,581

    Iray isn't using your AMD card as it is not Nvidia CUDA compatible, so all processing is via CPU... so that would be normal.

  • tmtmtm_f56c8d4bdatmtmtm_f56c8d4bda Posts: 86
    Male-M3dia said:

    Iray isn't using your AMD card as it is not Nvidia CUDA compatible, so all processing is via CPU... so that would be normal.

    My GPU is not AMD, it's an NVIDIA card. My CPU is AMD.

    It's not the rendering that's slow, it's the pre-rendering work Stusio seems to be doing.

  • VadrusVadrus Posts: 47

    Sounds normal in my experience, it always takes a minute or so on my system to load a simple scene before the rendering actually begins.

  • mjc1016mjc1016 Posts: 15,001

    For some reason, it seems that under certain conditions, the pre-render stuff will drop to single thread mode.  THAT will slow things down. Check your CPU usage in the pre-render stage, to see if it's running on all cores or just one.

    But, for the first time rendering a scene, a minute 'delay' is about average on lower than 8 cores.  8 cores and up, it will be a bit faster...

    Later renders of the same scene, with little or no changes should be faster.

  • ToborTobor Posts: 2,300
    tmtmtm_f56c8d4bda said:
    Male-M3dia said:

    Iray isn't using your AMD card as it is not Nvidia CUDA compatible, so all processing is via CPU... so that would be normal.

    My GPU is not AMD, it's an NVIDIA card. My CPU is AMD.

    It's not the rendering that's slow, it's the pre-rendering work Stusio seems to be doing.

    It would be helpful to establish a baseline by noting the CUDA-based card you do have, including its installed VRAM. You should also look at the Troubleshooting log immediately after a complete render to see if there are any warnings or errors. 

    The "pre-render" you speak about is Iray building its scene database. Slowdowns there can be caused, among other things, the auto-conversion of shaders to those compatible with Iray. If this is an issue, you should consider manually converting all materials to Iray shaders. The topology of your drive paths, such as through USB drives rather than SATA, can also be an issue. And so on. There are just too many variables given the information you've provided.

  • tmtmtm_f56c8d4bdatmtmtm_f56c8d4bda Posts: 86

    @Tobor,

     

    thanks for the response. Makes sense. My files are all on an SSD. The cores are all in use at about 30-60% each. The Iray shaders autoconversion is interesting. Gonna have to look into that.

  • ToborTobor Posts: 2,300

    Being an SSD, be sure it has plenty of swap space. Those drives tend to be small -- 60G to 120G is not uncommon, which these days is quite tight. You'll need several times available space, at least, your installed RAM (which, truth be told, is a little on the skimpy side--consider adding some more).

    Also be sure to quit all other desktop apps. Photoshop, Adobe Cloud, whatever ... they all take up RAM, sometimes crazy amounts just sitting there. With only 8G of RAM, you should free up whatever you can.

  • AlienRendersAlienRenders Posts: 793

    I have an FX-8350 with TitanX. It's normal. It drops down to single core when sending stuff to the video card. Not sure why. It can take a long time. I usually have the viewport in iRay, so there's no delay when I render. But if I start a render with the viewport being in opengl, then it does indeed take a while for the render to start. With a TitanX, it often takes longer to start the render than the render itself... which is kinda sad.

  • tmtmtm_f56c8d4bdatmtmtm_f56c8d4bda Posts: 86
    AlienRenders said:

    ...With a TitanX, it often takes longer to start the render than the render itself... which is kinda sad.

    TOTALLY! I hope they find a way to make that faster in 5.0 - because it really is an issue. I don't really get it either. A scene with nothing in it, just a figure, it takes aeons to load - admittedly I have a lot of extensions but in the end, it should only send what it needs: the geometry and the materials. Rendering a 300MB scene takes my GPU 20 seconds to render to 200 iterations, but loading it takes the CPU 90 seconds.

    I usually keep the aux viewport in iRay and the main one in openGL, but regularly this causes a crash even though my RAM usage is well below 50%.

  • Kevin SandersonKevin Sanderson Posts: 1,643

    As far as I know, it's the way Iray works, not Studio.

Sign In or Register to comment.