Good PC spec' for working DAZ?
FelinaLain
Posts: 29
Hey guys! I was wondering, since my own pc is starting to completely die, about buying a new one. (portable).
And I'm not really sure of what spec' would be ideal, depending on budget and all...
I tried looking at comparative website, but I dunno what CPU, RAM etc, is best to make DAZ work in a smooth...
So does anyone would know about this? What are you guys using? All advices will be welcomed! Thanks!
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I used Lenovo IdeadPad Y530 with DS 4.5 Pro - it worked very well (and was a great computer for other reasons too). I use Lenovo IdeaPad Y580 now - DS 4.6 Pro runs like a charm. I'm attaching a screenshot of basic information that should help you and a link to Amazon's description: http://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-59353260-Y580-15-6-Inch-Laptop/dp/B009MPBJKY. It is not related to 3D, so I guess the TOS is intact.
your going to pay a bigger price vs production desktop for a performance laptop but if you have to have a laptop
i7 or AMD Quad Core with multi-thread (for rendering)
Dedicated NVidia Graphics Card (for stability when using the interface, avoid "Integrated" cards that share system memory, they are numerous posts on these forums with laptop issues pointing back to integrated cards.)
8 GB RAM (more if you can swing it, Daz Studio is a RAM hog)
Large mechanical 7700 RPM SATA 3GB/s or 6GB/s hard drive as SSD's are expensive and external drives tend to be slightly to extremely slower than internal SATA drives, and by slower it's not just load and save it's navigating runtimes and pulling up textures and converting TDL's for 3Delight, plus a Runtime can require epic amounts of storage.
IMHO Lenovo is an avoidable product line. I've replaced a few too many, I have also given up on HP. I support end users on those platforms and they are often problematic. Personally if you want to stick to PC I'd go with Dell. Ideally an AlienWare (Dell) or MacBook Pro running windows are going to be on the expensive side but head to head they are beasts of laptops. You next tier of product would be some boutique custom build and those can up there in price rather quickly.
Think gaming machine with RAM if Studio is the main reason for the purchase, with not as much emphasis on the video card as a serious gamer unless you plan to render with Octane (or play a lot of new games).
Build your own, it is infinitely better than buying some branded PC (or MAC) and most likely will be cheaper and last longer.
I'd say a minimum of 16 GB of RAM. 8 just doesn't cut it. If you are going with a desktop, I just bought a Dell Precision T-5500 off lease, dual Xeon Quad core processors, and shoved 72 GB of memory in it - for about $1,000. I took t 100% he video cards and the hard drives off my old machine. I can tell you there is no such thing as too much processing power and too much ram, though I haven't clocked it as using more than 24 GB yet. All 16 threads at 100% while rendering - that it uses. Takes a lot less time to render though.
I built mine for a considerable amount, i7 4930k, 64 GB Vengeance 1866 DDR3 RAM, ASUS Rampage IV Extreme Black Edition MB,PNY Sig Series GTX 780, 1200Watt PSU, 500 GB Samsung EVO SSD (OS), WD Green 4TB (Data), and some extras for about 3600$ (all up to date hardware) and it eats everything I throw at it.
Hopefully your Xeon is on the higher end because those lower end versions have good rendering speed due to more cores, but poor "Work" performance due to a lower clock speed. If you have ECC ram then it slows down even more.
To render in DS's default 3Delight, you need the best quad-core CPU you can get. You need a commercial license of the external renderer to utilize more than four cores, which is $600 for four more, or $1200 for unlimited cores. If you don't plan to use an external, more than four cores is a waste of your money.
To render in Octane or Luxrender externally (the latter usually via Reality or Luxus) you need the best high-end graphics card or cards you can buy, because they use that instead of the CPU.
To set up the bigger scenes in the viewport without major lag, you need as much RAM as you can possibly get in there. I have 16 on my work machine and it's usually enough, but I also can't render large crowd scenes or the like.
I wouldn't say more than 4 is a waste, even if you only use 4 cores for rendering, that leaves additional cores free for other tasks and your computer responds better overall.
Oh yes. I'm just saying, if you're starting from components, don't spend extra money on a dual-CPU setup with all that that entails expecting it to help 3Delight rendering in DAZ Studio itself. Be aware that it IS just for having your computer respond better overall.
Oh yes. I'm just saying, if you're starting from components, don't spend extra money on a dual-CPU setup with all that that entails expecting it to help 3Delight rendering in DAZ Studio itself. Be aware that it IS just for having your computer respond better overall.
But it does - I show 100% on 16 threads when I am rendering, and that is on a dual CPU setup. If you are just rendering in 3Delight itself what you don't want to do is spend money on a high end GPU - because that engine gets no benefit out of it - yet. I'm assuming sometime in the future that will switch over, since high end video cards process massively parallel, and the more CUDA cores the better for that.
BTW I am not suggesting you spend a whole lot on Dual CPU workstation class machines - just that 3 year old models are available at very decent prices if you are on a budget. I can't cost justify a $4,000 machine for what I do. Particularly added to what I spend on content ;)
Well that's a lot of answer, and from what I can see some of those info recoup so to try sum it
- minimum of 8GB ram, but 16GB would be better
- A i7 Intel core or equivalent
- Dedicated NVidia Graphics Card
- Large mechanical 7700 RPM SATA 3GB/s or 6GB/s hard drive
The drives are just for stocking the data daz will use during render? It's where the 'My library' folder will go? So I could have one internal dedicated disk and an external one to stock everything else for example?
Thing is, I'm not yet using Daz as a pro, or doing anything worth more than a 1000$ (I can go up to 1500 but that's pushing it)
So would the above elements enter that kind of budget?
Also, with that kind of configuration, would I be able to run smoothly photoshop too? I think so (I also skimmed photoshop forums and the requirements seems identicals) but once again, I'd like to ask before buying so I don't find myself fucked...
Sawula:
First off, I expect it won't be long before a Moderator comes around to rap your knuckles re. your use of the F word.
As far as Photoshop goes, you should not have any problems with those specs.
As for locking yourself into something you will regret, the best option here is to get something that is flexible. Unfortunately this eliminates laptops and most namebrand OEM desktops, as these often offer rather limited upgrade options. Best is to build your own as others have suggested, or have a custom build (many retail websites offer this). The best in terms of flexibility is a mid or full-size ATX tower case with a full size ATX motherboard. You must decide on a CPU first, to ensure the motherboard is compatible, of course. You don't need a high end graphics card to begin with, something midrange will do fine. The high end here will blow your budget out of the water. The card can always be upgraded later if desired. As for Nvidia ve AMD for the video cards, the advice that others have given is based largely on the use of renderers such as Octane that have been specifically designed to use the CUDA cores of Nvidia cards. AMD has similar technology referred to as stream processors, but they favour OpenCL rather than Nvidias proprietary CUDA technology. Hopefully the industry will get the morass sorted out and decide on a standard eventually.
Photoshop should handle just fine on that setup. It's mostly a matter of how much you're making it do at one time; number of documentsopen, layers/layers complexity, image size, etc.
I'd still suggest a decent video card, there's a lot more happening on the GPU in viewports these days, and Photoshop has openCL acceleration. I've been eyeballing the nVidia 750ti ($135), but haven't looked into its GL/CL performance.
Afaik that's only true for Octane. LuxRender generally uses the CPU. There is a hybrid rendering mode, that I think involves both CPU and graphics card, but I don't think it's 100% perfected yet. And it certainly isn't the only way of rendering in Lux.