Custom PC Hardware Advice
alexhcowley
Posts: 2,326
A friend of mine has offered to build me a custom PC, optimised to run DAZ Studio 4.6. There are a couple of issues I would grateful for an independent perspective on:
1) Processor/Memory
The choice is basically between a 3.7 GHz. I7-4820K, with quad channel memory, and a 4.0 GHz. I7-4790K with dual channel memory. (Both of them quad core, with eight threads.) I would have thought that the quad channel processor would run memory-intensive, heavy-weight, number-crunching applications like DAZ Studio faster, even though it is nominally slightly slower.
2) Graphics Card.
I like the look of the MSI GeForce GT 740 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express. My intention is to work on some very large scenes based on Stefan “Stonemason” Morrell’s Village Courtyard series. I need enough horse power to handle this, without slowing the viewport down to a crawl, but I am not a computer games enthusiast. Would this card be up to the job or, going to the opposite extreme, would it be overkill?
Thanks, guys.
Alex.
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Comments
Please someone corrects me if I'm wrong but I don't think the Viewport will be affected in any relevant way by the GPU [EDIT: check below, I thought wrong], it is more a question of RAM and processing power.
Cannot help for the first question...
The viewport in DAZ Studio is controlled by the GPU (OpenGL), rendering is done solely by the CPU.
A good graphics card should help with moving around the viewport, this card is reasonably priced and is not overkill in my opinion, and should do the job well.
RAM is one of the most important things (if not THE most important) in a 3D graphics machine. I have 16 GB, but if I was able to, I would increase that to 32 GB, but I am using Win 7 Home Premium, and 16 is the max I can use.
Obviously you have to use a 64 bit OS, and then use as much RAM as is possible, that will help enormously. Also, plenty of storage, 2TB is not beyond the pale :)
My son, who works in IT, says the following:
The GT 740 Graphics Card is not very powerful by today's standard, anything from the GT range is their low end budget models. I would suggest a GTX model from the 500 or 600 series upwards.
As for processor the quad channel memory would be slightly faster on paper, but probably wouldn't make much of a difference in this type of work.
Obviously plenty of RAM, ideally 16 GB or more.
I've got a GT 545 (on my Dell) and it's a bit sluggish on huge scenes but really for most everything I do it's just fine. But wilmap's son is correct--it's on the low end.
The 4790k sounds like the better deal to me.
The 4820k was the entry level for the x79 motherboards a slower, more expensive processor but you get an upgrade path.
...but that only makes sense if you got the 4820k when it was launched in 2012.
In 2014, 4820k owners are probably swapping in the 6-core 4960x, making good on the premium they paid for upgradeability.
Compare it to its successor the i7-5820k, you get a 6-core, all the latest shiny new (x99) technology, and upgradeable to an 8-core.
The difference in equivalent systems is about £100 here in the UK.
Many thanks for all your comments which have been extremely useful. I'm going for the 4GHz processor. As noted above, the 3.7GHz chip is a fairly old design and only works with old chip sets. The 4.0GHz processor comes with much more up to date chip sets.
I'm also going to rethink the graphics card.
Finally, I intended to use 32GB of main memory right from the start. This is a sensible compromise between performance and still having something left in my bank account at the end of the exercise.
Cheers,
Alex.
For the Graphic Card, if you want an entry level Card and want an Nvidia, get the GTX 750 Ti . It's around 150$, has 2GB memory, and it has descent performance in all fields including OpenCL for Luxrender or Cuda for Octane
For the Display in DS, the most important thing is the OpenGL performance of the card. And for that, professionnal graphic cards are a better fit, provided you don't need good performance in games
You have the choice betwenn AMD's Firepro and Nvidia's Quadro
The cheapest would be AMD's W2100 (150 $ ) and W4100 ( a bit under 200$). Nvidia's cheapest K2000 is around 500$
Both AMD have 2GB VRAM and are 4K display ready but only have Display port as output (so you need display port on your monitor too)
I don't know how big the Stonemason scenes are. If they are too big to fit in the 2GB Vram of the card, performance will decrease and you may rather need a 4GB Vram Card
Note... I do come from a gaming background so I tend to lean toward game-capable cards..
But ya.. a 750 GTX is a great card for $150.. here's a few to look at..
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007709 600453362 600485929 600451260 600440544 600480021 600487565 600487564&IsNodeId=1&name=GeForce GTX 750&Order=PRICE&Pagesize=30
My personal pick of that lot is:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007709 600453362 600485929 600451260 600440544 600480021 600487565 600487564&IsNodeId=1&name=GeForce GTX 750&Order=PRICE&Pagesize=30
I'm sure evga and msi make good cards.. but I've personally NEVER had ANY issue with any ASUS product... so I'm very biased.
I also have a GTX 750 Ti, and it works great for me. I got my current system from iBuyPower.com.
...I'm in the same boat with memory. Only have 12GB (Tri Channel) and recently, just after launching a Reality/Lux render, it pegged memory usage at 10.9G/100% CPU then froze (even Task Manager refused to respond for a while) with a "Windows critical error which performed a soft reboot. Been considering going to the maximum limit (24GB as this is an older build), but would also have to upgrade to Win7 Pro.
When I originally built the system, a 24G kit was somewhere around 700 - 800$, now it costs less than the 12G I currently have installed. Don't have the resources to upgrade the MB to one of the newer generation ones (which would most likely require upgrading the CPU as well since the new boards have a different socket architecture).
CPU is an older generation i7, LGA 1366, 2.4 gHz non overclocked (as I do not do gaming).
As to GPU and Viewport performance, my current GPU has 1G GDDR5 and I have experienced crashes while working on very large scenes heavy with texture units in OpenGL mode. A friend gave me two Radeon 7950s, each with 3G GDDR5 and the SLI kit. Not sure though if running both would overtax my 750w PSU. This would give me 6G for OpenGL work (viewport) and 3G for GPU assisted rendering (Reality/Lux) as in SLI only one unit's memory is used..