Is this spec good enough
deeahr2169
Posts: 449
in New Users
Intel Core i5, 16GB RAM, 240GB SSD & 1TB HDD, Nvidia GTX 1650 Graphics Card
I want to get a machine that will enable me to run iRay renders and Deforce simulations at a reasonable speed. I dont need anything super fast, just something that works at a pace somewhat faster than paint drying. How would this spec perform ? This machine is a refurbished model and is at an affordable price from a top retailer with a one year warranty.
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More info on machine
The SSD is too small for much content, and I think that GPU has only 4GB or its own memory which is not really enough for anythign much. Beyond that, what do your typicel scenes contain - are they usually single-figures in a setting or do you do a lot of multi-figure scenes?
I realise the SSD is not big enough for much, but I have external storage of 3TB. Mostly I do couiples, sometimes four figures, rarely anything approaching a crowd, I like portraits. I suppose I could buy a better GPU, I assume that by GPU you are refering to the Nvidia card?
Yes, ideally you want 8GB and certainly anything under 6GB is going to struggle.
If you need 4 figures, I'd agree with Richard that an 8Gb graphics card is needed. Particularly if you are using DS 4.15. I have a 6Gb GTX 1060 and in versions prior to DS4.15 I never had it drop to CPU with 3 figures & a simple background, so 4 figures would seem to need 8Gb. Now, DS 4.15 seems to require a bit more GPU RAM so you may have it drop to CPU with 4 figures more frequently, but it shouldn't drop to CPU with 3 figures all that often.
I had, until last weekend, a PC with 16Gb of RAM. Using UltraScenery and a couple of figures then 16Gb of RAM is barely enough. If you can get 24 or 32Gb RAM it'd be better. I swapped out 2x4Gb sticks last weekend and replaced them with 2x8Gb sticks, and now my 24Gb machine is a bit less cramped and I didn't have DS run out of RAM with Ultrascenery & 3 figures. My 6Gb GPU did drop to CPU though.
Regards,
Richard.
Thanks for the help. I am really not that clever technically, though I can follow much of what you all say about Ram and GPU. My understaqnding is that while my Mac has some sort of GPU (AMD Radeon/512MB) its really not that significant. Also because I dont think I can upgrade the Mac, which is elderly like me, getting a new machine makes more sense. Whatever the weakness of my Mac I find I can mange to render iRay images that are pretty good, well good enough for me. I dont see me spending say £2K or so on a new machine to simply improve the render quality or time, so in truth I probably wont do that. However I may well buy a PC with an Nvidia card to see what the improvement might be. The main thing would be to find some sort of spec that might as a by product improve rendering, but that would enable me to use Dforce properly. So...Lets assume that I am happy with the performance I have rendering iRay images with my current machine, and to be honest, its actually not a big deal having to wait for a render to complete. What would I need to improve upon to be able to use Dforce with a reasonable performance. Right now there is no point in even attempting to use this technology, so obviously I need to increasse the performance of my machine, or get another that will do the job. Again, I dont need some hugely expensive computer, but I am prepared to pay for something that will allow me to use
An nVidia GPU won't improve quality, as long as you aren't letting your renders stop because they have hit the default two hour limit when they need longer, it will just make them faster.
Thank you Richard. To summarise then, the Nvidia GPU will not improve quality and in fact, for me, quality is not an issue so thats dealt with that. As for speed of rendering, the NV GPU will make rendering faster but again for me that also is not a huge issue. So given those facts, I see no point in spending money purely to obtain a machine with NV graphics.
So the next issue is improving the performance of Dforce. On my current machine using the available demo resources in dForce starter essentials its taking much too long to see any movement , except in the blocking fan scene which takes two minutes or so to run through. My use for dForce would be to arrange clothing and perhaps hair to improve the posing of the images I create. I am not interested in animation except I suppose inasmuch as it may be necessary to perform the adjustments required.
So what would I need to acquire, beg steal borrow or buy to make using dForce a viable proposition.
I am looking for information on the spec of a machine, doesn’t matter to me if its a Mac, or windows or whatever, the only thing I need to know is the spec for using dForce reasonably within a scene containing say four characters and occasionally sets like stonemasons…
Hope someone can answer this one for me…
dForce uses OpenCL, so it doesn't care about GPU brand. However, on Macs Apple has deprecated OpenCL in favour of an own-brand API and I don't think we have any information about how that will be handled by dForce yet.
With due respect I did mention that I dont care if the machine is made by Apple or anyone else, even Walt Disney Productions are in with a shout. So could someone point me in the direction of any machine that will have sufficient open CL power to enable the use of Dforce reasonably please...
Get yourself an RTX 3060 and it should suffice. They're available at the moment.
Seems I cant explain myself properly...
In previous posts we have laboriously reached a point where it has been established that Nvidia cards wont improve quality but will improve rendering speed. Because the render speed I currently get is okay for my needs, I cannot see any point in spending big money on anything invovling Nvidia cards. So i need open CL to improve Dforce performance and ask could someone point me in the direction of any machine that will have sufficient open CL power to enable the use of Dforce reasonably please...
Actually in your first post you did mention using Iray renders. That is done by the NVidia cards ;-) Need lots of VRAM, RAM, etc.
How I tend to shop is to write up a list of everything what is needed [more than minimum requirements] and give it to the tech guy at the computer store so he can build it.
The minimal list is on this page: https://helpdaz.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/115003568443-What-are-the-System-Requirements-to-run-Daz-Studio-
However you do want to get more than 4G VRAM which precludes laptops.
I did indeed mention iRay at the outset, because in my ignorance I wanted to improve the entirity of my renders as well as the speed. I also included a request for info on Dforce. I then spent ages before eventually I was told that acquiring an nvidia card would only improve the speed of the render not the quality. So because I can already render an image fast enough for my simple needs, I concluded that it would be a waste of oney to buy something with nvidia graphics card. Which left the question of dForce and what specs are necessary to enable a computer to run dforce with a reasonable performance. Bearing in mind I do want to do animation but simply to adjust clothing and hair for a more realistic still image.
I do not have the technical knowledge to decipher all the complexities of this subject, therefore I resorted to asking for information here, hopefully anyone good enough to respond would realise that any answer would be pointless unless it was simple enough for a layman to understand.
So for example if someone said you need X number of cores and this much Vram and 2GB of free space i would be introuble. If however someone said check out this machine and left a link then I would be good to go. Advice would be, as always, gratefully accepted...
PS> In the UK covid precludes popping into a computer store at present though soon that may change. What wont change is the computer stores I know of employ people who are good at aranging credit or selling televisions ( though not so much since they got complex ) but whose actual tech ability is about the same as mine. If I mention Daz Studio to them they adopt a blank look and zone out...
You also mentioned working faster than paint drying, which you don't get unless you get an Nvidia Graphichs Adapter (GPU) with enough memory (VRAM) that it can hold your scene while it is rendering.
Well I can appreciate nice plain simple information like buy "this exact computer" and D/S will always work on it .... but we can't do that for several reasons. The better computers for doing any specific tasks, like working with stuff in 3D, are "built" ... experts are required to compile together all the required parts. One does not buy such things at local dept. stores. But at places that are pretty much dedicated to providing such services as that, plus repairing them after we've broken something ;-)
btw [by the way] if you aim at looking for "gaming" computers you're in the ballpark. NVidia cards. As much RAM, VRAM, and all whatever that is affordable to your pockets for what your plans are for it. And do tell them what you plan on doing with the computer. Making movies requires different amounts of whatever than does reading posts in forums for example. Cellphones can read posts in forums. They cannot make movies. I hope this all helps you understand a little. Obviously I'm not a computer expert either. But I know that if the experts in here are saying RTX 3090 64G is the cat's meow, that's fine by me. It's also rather expensive and kinda rare ... but maybe in a few years, ya never know ;-)
{Iray is a NVidia thing which is why it requires NVidia cards}
Catherine3678, thank you so much for shedding light on this for me. Maybe I should have said at the outset that my aim is to produce the best still image that I can using the tech that I can afford. I dont want to or have any hurting my tiny brain with animation or anything more than simple images. I was not sure whether gaming computers were an area I wanted to venture into because of all the garish hype asociated with that genre, and also I have no interest whatever in playing games on a computer, I will leave that to my grandchildren.
So to keep it simple I can shop for a gaming computer with as much Ram, thats memory, and VRAM which I dont understand really but is virtual memory. Also with the best nvidia card I can afford.
Great now I can wait for the 19th of this month which is when Covid restrictions will allow me to physically go and shop for a machine. I will post my results later
Many many thanks
Ok just asking for an opinion, I have the following gaming computer in mind, in anyones opinion would this allow me to render and use dforce with reasonable performance.
AMD RYZEN 5 3600 ( whatever 3600 means )
Nvidia GTX1660 with 6GB ( is that RAM, I think so ) but then what about VRAM?
I can afford this, I can return it within 28 days but have to pay return shipping I think, so want to be sure before I take the plunge.
VRAM is RAM that is physically on the Nvidia card, it's faster than the RAM that is on your motherboard (main memory) and VRAM is only used for graphics related tasks.
6GB's VRAM is about minimum at the moment, but since the card is GTX and not RTX, on top of what the OS and DS are reserving at the base, some more VRAM is used to emulate the RTX fuctions on software = a 6GB GTX is not able to render the same size scenes as the 6GB RTX card can, but a 6GB GTX card is not completely unusable, you just need to monitor the texture sizes of the scene more closely.
Thanks for that. Again I am more concerned that dforce works, rendering is aceptable to me now on my current machine which is an iMac so while some modifications are possible, which I cant do myself of course, I am stuck the inbuilt graphics...
So with the spec above, can you tell me if dforce will work please
You're welcome.
VRAM is not exactly the same as what is called on the computer "virtual memory" ... It has to do with how much memory the videocard can hold before the program goes belly up. I was doing fine with my gaming laptop rendering stills until they brought out G8.1 and a few other things ... WAY too much memory being consumed by D/S and certain models. People keep talking about lowering the size of pictures, well ... take a good look at the SubDivision settings. No way we need everything jacked up to 4 or 5 SubD just to see pimples on skin ;-) If you lower the SubD to 1 or maybe 2, and zap the normals unless those are required [normally those were for use in games only] much less memory is used. Now Iray rendering does use more memory than rendering in 3Delight. So again, esp. if the scene is large, using 3Delight can be fine.
The computer you mention is not at the top of the list but I suspect it may give you better results than what you're getting now. And I could be totally out to lunch on this. The 'number' is a model number, that's all. If you do a Google search on it, you'll get more information about that particular setup. With my shopping habits I seldom buy the lst one on the rung, but go up at least one ... except for the vacuum cleaner. All one was paying for then was a piece of foam around the motor to make it 'quiet' ... An 800 dollar piece of foam I was not interested in lol ...
And yes, we're all looking forward to eating out again and things like that.
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