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Depend on what you render with? Iray (CPU on that machine), 3Delight (CPU), Octane or Lux can uses both CPU and GPU.
I'm rendering with iRay, so I'm using the CPU. Never tried Octane. Used Lux through Reality. So, any recommendations?
I would say CPU and RAM, GPU is probably fast enough for SIM (I haven't tested so I don't know)
By the way, Catalina has removed being able to format drives as Raid drives. I have some spin drives (not SSD) as Raid 1. Would Catalina be able to read from them? I'm guessing yes, but just not able to reformat the drive as Raid 1 or fix it, if a problem occurred. Apple had done this earlier with another operating system, then put the Raid back in. So, do you know if Catalina can read a Raid 1 drive?
OK, and any particular configuration of CPU and Ram? The specs are up on Apple's site.
I render well with 64GB but if your wallet loves you, 128GB
Buy your Mac Pro ram at OWC
OWC are often cheaper and very good.
https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/memory/owc/apple-mac-pro/2019
OK, and thanks for the reference to OWC. Know anything about the CPU choices? You mentioned Octane and Lux. They use both CPU and GPU? How easy is it to learn; are there easy ways to get the DAZ duf scene file opened? By Lux, do you mean go through Reality to Lux? But I imagine there will be problems with the materials or shaders, right? I know that's a lot of questions, but any information you can post, I'll be grateful for. (Yeah, I know: I ended the sentence with a preposition.)
Shaders is a mess, always. Octane do not have, yet, a plugin for DS, otherwise it renders fast and good. Lux, yes, Reality is the choice. Both use materail translations and there are translated materials, but there will never be render out of the box, lots of tweaking.
By the way, people have been saying that Catalina 10.15 can't handle Raid. I talked with an Apple person, and it can. Here's a link he gave me: https://support.apple.com/guide/disk-utility/create-a-disk-set-dskua23150fd/19.0/mac/10.15.2
I'm just posting this for anyone who would be interested in the new Mac Pro. I had an on-line chat today, and just got off the phone with an Apple tech support person, who compared my present late 2013 edition Mac Pro with the new 2019 offerings for the Mac Pro. So, here's a little bit of what I was told:
Checking the Activity Monitor myself, while running DAZ Studio, shows it really uses up CPU power. Not so much Ram or Memory. So, for a new Mac Pro, the CPU would be important. Also, for the Graphics Cards in the new Mac Pro, an Apple person checked and said that, yes, the Radion Pros do handle Open GL and Open CL. So, maybe there would be some performance boost there.
I'm not a Mac expert, so I'm just offering this up.
Does DAZ Studio make use of processors with multiple cores? If I bought a 3.5 GHz 8 core processor, or if I bought a 3.3 GHz 12 core processor, with which would DS run faster? The second instance has 4 more cores, but the first instance is faster.
In comparing Graphics cards, the AMD Radeon Pro 580X can deliver 5.530 Teraflops. The AMD Radeon Pro Vega II can deliver 28.18 Teraflops. Both have Open GL 4.6 and Open CL 2.0. The second card looks better, but would rendering in DS with it mean that DS would render faster?
With DAZ Studio rendering, checking in the Activity Moniter, % CPU is given as 2328.9. The Memory is given as 5.97 GB. I don't see anything for GPU usage.
Question: If my present Graphic Cars, which are two AMD FirePro D700 6144 MB, both contain Open GL and Open CL, why is the CPU usage shown as being so high? The CPU is a 2.7 GHz 12-Core Intel Xeon E5.
Rendering is multi-threaded.
No AMD card is going to help with Iray or 3Delight.
Well, OK, but doesn't the AMD card use Open CL and Open GL? It has them on board. So, would a faster card render with Open CL and Open GL faster?
If the DAZ Studio rendering is Multi-Threaded, then wouldn't a CPU with more cores do a faster job with the multi-threaded rendering?
See, that's what I'm trying to get at: if I bought a CPU or if I bought a GPU, which would provide faster rendering.
I imagine a faster GPU might well improve OpenGL speed, if you were happy with the way that looked. Yes, both Iray and 3delight will use all available cores on the CPU (for Iray when CPU rendering) so more/faster cores would speed them up (though not to the point you would get with an nVidia GPU, memory permitting).
OK, thanks for clarification.
I have been looking at mcasuals scripts that take scenes from DS and transfer them to blender which then can be cycles or evee, it means learning blender but perhaps its time
Could you post a link to the mcasuals scripts?
And what about dForce? Does dForce render in memory? Does it render with Open CL? So, if the ram were increased, would dForce render more quickly?
https://sites.google.com/site/mcasualsdazscripts9/mcjteleblenderfbx
Their deviantart is https://www.deviantart.com/mcasual
I think its the same username here
@ Milo: Thank you very much for posting this information. Is this only for Windows? And then Blender will render in what: in Metal?
no not specific to windows as far as I can tell I am still making some time to get up to speed in blender, Blender cycles and evee uses gpu accelerated rendering so I imagine it uses metal
If you were going to buy a new Mac Pro, what would be a good choice for what to load it up with, in order to get really fast rendering in DAZ Studio?
As much as it pains me to say this as somebody who much prefers MacOS to Windows or Linux, for the money you spend on a Mac Pro, you'd get much faster rendering with a Windows machine because AMD graphics cards don't speed Iray renders. However, if you want to stick with MacOS and don't want to build a hackintosh with uncertain Nvidia support (both of which would be true for me), then max the CPU—get as many cores as you can afford. At that price point, though, you might think about using another program to render, something that can use the AMD cards for GPU rendering. In my lotto-winning fantasy, I'd use V-Ray and Modo to render on my maxed out Mac Pro. You'll face a lot of initial work setting up shaders, but with PBR Iray materials, it shouldn't be too steep. You'll also get additional options that Iray in DS does't have. I'm pretty sure Arnold/Maya will give you AMD-based GPU rendering as well, and Cinema4D has plug-ins for both Arnold and V-Ray (as well as other render engines). Blender also offers an array of external renders as well as Cycles, which I think uses GPU acceleration.
Thanks for your info and opinions. You are sticking with the Mac OS, then? Regarding your comments about the other applicattions: V-Ray and Modo, Arnold/Maya will give you AMD-based GPU rendering as well, Cinema4D has plug-ins for both Arnold and V-Ray, Blender also offers an array of external renders as well as Cycles, which I think uses GPU acceleration.
What I'd like to know is (1) Can I go from DAZ Studio on a Mac, via a plug in, into any one of these applications? Or, (2) do any of these have direct imports for a DAZ Scene ready to be rendered and created on a Mac?
You can look into using Blender to render, it has 2 GPU based engines (cycles and EVEE or EEVE which is a near realtime render) i believe, there is an addon listed a few posts above done by mcasuals. If you currently have a mac try that our there are some nice free learning places for blender and some inexpensive ones out there (udemy etc). Test out the mcasuals transfer utility to see if you like it. (non lottery win scenerio) I am moving to this myself.
You'll need to export your files from Daz and import them into another app, where you'll need to apply shaders/materials again. It'll definitely be more work. I'm going to stick with Mac, but this is just a hobby for me and I don't do animation. So far as I know, there isn't any easy workflow that will take advantage of the power of a Mac Pro. You could script the export and import of the files, and probably get good results, but I don't know enogh about scripting to tell you how easy that would be. Blender, as @Milo suggests, may be easier to manager.