If I want to interact with high polygon count scenes in the DS viewport do I need a CPU or GPU upgra
linvanchene
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I can't answer all of this but I have found the faster the GPU and the faster the RAM in the GPU the more responsive your viewport gets, however I've never used hair made in zbrush and theoretically the viewport response would be based on the texture sizes, not the polly counts but more polly counts could mean more textures in use so 6 of 1, half dozen of another.
32GB RAM will help if you are running out of RAM on 16GB, if not there is a chance you might actually have to change your RAM timings to upgrade and you could actually SLOW your system down. Check with the RAM distributor, they generally know your BIOS settings better than anyone when it comes to that.
Quad Core, HexCore, Dual Xeon? I have an i7 920 2.6GHz (12GB RAM) and a Dual Xeon 2.4GHz. (8GB RAM) Software appears to run more smoothly on the the i7 especially when I'm modeling in Blender, but like they taught me in computering school "your mileage may vary."
My understanding is that the viewport in DS uses OpenGL rendering and that tends to be more GPU bound. A faster GPU with more memory for loading textures/meshes would show an improvement there for sure.
More memory is always a good thing though I'm not sure it would translate into noticeable improvements in the viewport performance. More cores in the CPU would also improve things but, again, not sure how noticeable it would be for just the viewport performance.
If you're only concerned about improving viewport performance then the GPU seems to be the biggest bang for the buck. Still, if you're upgrading anyway and can afford it I'd go with GPU first, RAM second and CPU third.
Viewport is entirely OpenGL / Video card driven. I've had ~26M verts in a scene and had reasonable performance. Note that I say REASONABLE. I was able to orbit the camera without significant lag and I was able to switch cameras with only small pauses.
My CPU is an i7-3960X overclocked to 4.2GHz on liquid cooling.
I have 64GB of RAM running at 1866Mhz
My video cards is the venerable EVGA Geforce 580 GTX which despite its age is still in the top 10 of all time performance video cards. I also liquid cool my video card.
I built this machine in November of 2011 specifically to be a render monster. It's done well.
The scene linked here is the biggest scene I've ever done (or seen done) in DAZ Studio as a *single pass render*. It only took a tiny bit over 3 hours to complete and yes, it uses UberEnvironment lighting. It took 22GBs of RAM (peak) to render. More details on the comments below the image. See it here if you care :) http://adamtls.deviantart.com/art/Urban-Centaur-372197828
Nothing further to add. I had a comment ready to fly but got called away and now have to content myself with this.
For most instances 16GB is more than enough, and like StratDragon says above, it would only be worth it if you were running out of memory as it is. Upgrading to faster RAM, if you're using cheaper RAM will probably give you a slight performance boost. Upgrading your quad core can only help, if not with the viewport it will help enormously when it comes to render time (unless of course you farm that out). 3Delight (standard DS render engine) does not use GPU at all, unless you render with the openGL option, which in most regards is inferior to CPU.
So, I agree GPU upgrade is the best way to go for getting a better viewport response in DS, but you will probably start to see diminishing returns on buying super cards, as a good deal of the viewport quality/speed will be down to code optimisation on the part of D3D, which have actually been making some good progress in that regard.
Hmm… guess I did have stuff to add.
Oh man, I want this system. My 2009 "beastie" is in need of an upgrade overall, but my i7 seems to be keeping those nasty render times in check even if I am running up against the 8GB RAM time and again.
16GB is generally enough for most people. I have a hard time getting close to 32 so I don't really see the benefit in the amount of RAM I do have. I'm probably going to be pulling half of it out and building a second i7-3960X box. :)
Agree, 16GB would be more than enough for me. Mostly I only do small renders and/or simple scenes (so 9 times out of 10 8 is enough), so 32 would be over-kill.
I've never used more than 12GB of my 32GB, so 16 should be more than enough
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Does Studio let you change the draw style for only select objects in the scene? If so, and the real culprit is just the use of fibermesh hair, then setting Bounding Box for the hair only might be a way to make your viewport more responsive without having to upgrade the machine.
But I also agree with the folks that have said the GPU is the biggest factor in viewport performance.
I've noticed a much better Open GL response using my old EVGA GTX 470 over the older high end ATI card in another PC I have. The CPUs are just a bit different speedwise. So yes, upgrading the GPU is the way to go, and especially if you're planning on using Octane.
If you're scene is set and you just want DS view port responsiveness while rendering in Octane, I would suggest setting the DS view port to wireframe also. One of the few scenes I change to wireframe to improve viewport response is a full load of Ultimo Paradiso.
I initially had issues with over all system responsiveness when rendering with Octane in a system outfitted with a single modest GT 640, though it has 3GB on board. Even web browsing while GPU rendering was painfully sluggish. Fortunately, my motherboard has two PCI Express slots and I added a second video card and dedicated it for OS use only. The second video card doesn't have to be anything fancy. In my case it was an even more modest spare GT 430 video card that sat unused from an upgrade. I set the GT 430 as the primary video display in the computer's bios and set Octane Render not to use it. It made the computer usable again while GPU rendering.
If your motherboard can accomodate your old Raedon video card, you should try popping it back in, dedicate it for OS use only and see if that improves your DS viewport response in those high poly situations.