Video Cards for Blender?
zombiewhacker
Posts: 683
We've talked nVidea cards to death re: Iray. But I'm assuming Blender is specialized for no graphics card in particular. What hardware are you running to get the best out of Blender -- and cycles in particular?
Daz 3D is part of 
Connect
DAZ Productions, Inc.
7533 S Center View Ct #4664
West Jordan, UT 84084
Licensing Agreement | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | EULA
© 2024 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
2080 super here, did buy it more for iray, but I have been getting more and more into blender, especially since diffeomorphic. Not sure about AMD cards, but as experiment I ran my AMD CPU render, it's way faster than CPU mode in iray. I don't have a threadripper or nothing, just a Ryzen 5 2600X.
Blender has CUDA support so cycles runs much faster with an nvidia card. Unfortunately i don't have one and do everything on an iMac so I'm just cpu rendering. Still, I find cycles to be much faster than iray in most cases, but I usually use eevee for my own sanity.
Cycles has Optix supprt, so you will still prefer an RTX. It is much faster that just CUDA.
Cycles in Blender supports OpenCL rendering on AMD graphics cards on Windows and Linux, but sadly not MacOS (yet?). Docs for GPU rendering here: https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/render/cycles/gpu_rendering.html
AMD cards are supposed to be decent.
Personally, I would wait; see what the new releases offer in the coming months.
The car in my profile was rendered on an i7 4 core when AMD wasn't supported in Cycles; it took hours. I'm trying to track the file down to see how long it takes to re-render - and probably slap a NVIABWAS (mostly naked vicki) in the scene too.
Oh good, I thought I was crazy.
My Threadripper 1950x is faster in 2.83 than 980ti. Very often significantly.
These are some tests I did of my own scene a while ago, with the BMW Mike Pan at the end:
2.83
980ti
512 x 512 2:31.21, 2:31.13, 2:27.25, 2:27.98
256 x 256 2:56.71
Threadripper 1950x
32 x 32 2:07.48, 2:07.45, 2:08.10, 2:04.80
64 x 64 2:06.42, 2:05.64, 2:07.81, 2:09.05
512 x 512 6:24.25
BMW Test
980ti 1:44.85, 1:45.36, 145.39
1950x 1:07.87, 1:08.52, 109.30, 1:10.30, 1:10.32
Tile size makes a different; usually 32 or 64 for CPU and hybrid, and 512 or 256 for GPU
If you have an AMD GPU (Radeon, etc, ...) and render in Blender you want to install the ProRender and the Blender plugin for the ProRender.
https://www.amd.com/en/technologies/radeon-prorender-blender
Wow! I had no idea about this AT ALL. I am going to download it and try it out later as this is the first render solution for blender i've seen that is explicitly compatible with my computer/video card.
You can use nvidia cards with the Pro Renderer too.
Also if I understand correctly, z-cycles by @JClave will only work with nvidia cards. The standard material conversion from diffeomorphic works with any card though.
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/5863296/#Comment_5863296
I moved to Blender in part to give myself options; I just don't see the point of locking myself to a vendor - that's to their benefit, not mine.
Yes, options are good, and I hate the NVidia premium as much as the Autodesk premium. But...
Aside from the many ways to make Cycles significantly faster on any hardware (e.g. 18 Ways to Speed up Cycles), when Cycles got Optix support, it was twice as fast in some cases. And then there's E-Cycles, which for me in some cases is twice as fast yet again.
Just because I don't like the option I have, doesn't mean that it won't turn out to be the best option even after I have choices :)
Of course not, but an informed decission made on what is good for you/me/us is what we should be doing, not basing it on other's opinions or on misinformation.
I was discussing with someone on Blender Artists a similar situation and they told me repeatedly that nvidia was the only way to go; that may turn out to be the right decission for me, but I'll wait to see what the next gen releases offer. All I know now is, I get faster renders with my CPU than GPU. I'm not prepared to spend thousands - or at least around that at this time when changes are coming - either a change to AMD or a change to a better Nvidia card. :)
I don't have RAM issues, hell Blender was using 57 GB during the set up stage of a render (a 6 character test) the other day. It calmed down to about 30 GB and completed in about 17 minutes (i didn't reduce texture size or anything either); that sure as hell wouldn't have happened in Iray. I may very well end up getting another high core Threadripper; cost-wise when one starts adding multiple cards and the new bridge items the cost of a new Threadripper seems much less eye-bleedingly horrible. I could then manage with one decent card.
My 970 that drives my monitors certainly needs upgrading, it can get a little laggy at times.
All your points are well taken.
If you don't me asking, is it the amount of RAM that's allowing a 57GB scene, or is it your processor? I bought my computer and it's perfect for Daz, I've never had a problem with things not rendering or acting slow there, but in Blender, the second the memory size gets to 7GB or more it starts to slow down, and then at like 15 GB it usually turns the program off or makes it so it takes about 20 minutes to make a move. So I'm teetering between getting a new computer or upgrading mine, and I'm just trying to figure out what I need to make Blender work better for me so I can do a scene that is more 7GB as I'm starting to model things now and such as well. And my computer is only 2 years old, these are the specs if you don't mind looking.
Chassis Model: Digital Storm VANQUISH 7
Processor: Intel Core i5-8400 (6-Core) 2.80GHz (Not Overclockable)
Motherboard: ASUS PRIME Z370-P (Intel Z370 Chipset) (Up to 2x PCI-E Devices) (No SLI Support)
System Memory: 8GB DDR4 3000MHz Digital Storm Performance Series
Power Supply: 750W Corsair RM750x (Fully Modular)
Graphics Card(s): 1x GeForce GTX 1080 Ti 11GB (Performance Edition) (VR Ready)
I've been a mac guy for 15 years so I'm not well versed at all in building computers, but any help you could give in steering me in a better direction would be so appreciative as I want to either buy something or upgrade next month. Thank you!
It's not such a high scene, well I suppose something was taking up the ram; 6 figures, multiple particle hair systems; different 4k textures for 6 characters including normal maps. The clothes didn't take up much, but would have added too.
One thing worth doing is if a scene is slow; close Blender and reopen.
Blender will run on a Rasbery Pi, it isn't resource intensive considering it's a 3D package, it is more what you're trying to do.
Oh and while I think of it: the outliner tab, click the circled and chose Orphan Data; it's worth clearing this out now and then as it get's rid of textures, meshes and materials no longer needed.
There are some good threads here about upgrading; I'd go for Desktop versus a Laptop; there are two reasons to get a Laptop instead: space is a premium or it must be portable. Otherwise, you get more for less with a desktop and get far superior upgrade options.
https://www.asus.com/us/Motherboards/PRIME-Z370-P/specifications/
Says here the MB supports up to 64GB DDR4 RAm via 4x(1x16GB) DDR4 modules so I'd add 2x(1x16GB) DDR4 to give you 40GB DDR4 and later add another 2x(1x16GB) DDR4 RAM modules. It will cost you about $60 per 1x16GB DDR4 module if you get the 'generic' brands rather than the 'gamer' brag brands.
Awesome! Thank you for the tip, I'll look into getting that tonight as I have enough cash to do that :D I'll be happy with generic for sure.
And thank you @nicstt for those tips, I'll give those a whirl as well. I appreciate all the help!