GPU recommendations

gregmacc95

So I've been keeping up with daz for a while now and I've taken a basic look on how the software looks by downloading it and getting a feel for the software. Problem is that my current specs are a ryzen 5600 6 core with 16gb ddr4 ram and a gtx 960 2gb, a swell as 1.5 tb total storage an 550 power supply. Money is tight right now so I can't exactly go out and get myself a 4090 or he'll even 500 bucks is pushing it for my budget with the 4060s. I've though about just not using daz and trying other softwares but daz has such a large library of assets I figured I'd be better off sticking with it. I've seen a fee posts about the 3060 12gb and the 3060ti but now that G9 is out I don't know if that would be enough vram to even do basic scenes. I've even contemplated getting a used tesla card lol All in all I'm looking for advice on what I should get. All thoughts are very much appreciated.

Richard Haseltine

16GB of system RAM will limit the size of the scene you can send to the GPU, so theer would be no point in looking at a high capacity card unless you can also foresee upgrading RAM in the future. For now the main thing would be speed.

PerttiA

The RTX 3060 12GB is still a good budget choice, but you will need more RAM

valter006

Curiously, I've been researching the same topic recently, and I'm wavering between the 3060 12GB and the 4060 Ti 16GB.
Personally it will depend on if two G9 figures fit in 12GB. There are very few videos testing 12GBs VRAM limit, but I do recall one showing a simple G8.1 figure on a bench taking up 6GB of VRAM.
Wish there was some way to simulate scenarios like that before getting the card.
But yeah like Richard said, RAM is going to need to be upgraded as well, so take that into account. The common rule of thumb suggests RAM to be around 3x the amount of VRAM.

PerttiA

valter006 said:

Personally it will depend on if two G9 figures fit in 12GB. There are very few videos testing 12GBs VRAM limit, but I do recall one showing a simple G8.1 figure on a bench taking up 6GB of VRAM.

Was that 6GB's of VRAM the total VRAM consumption, or the amount of VRAM consumption added by the figure?

About 3.5-4GB's of VRAM is used by the OS, DS, the scene and the necessary working space, what's left is available for Iray rendering. 

valter006

PerttiA said:

Was that 6GB's of VRAM the total VRAM consumption, or the amount of VRAM consumption added by the figure?

About 3.5-4GB's of VRAM is used by the OS, DS, the scene and the necessary working space, what's left is available for Iray rendering. 

The scene in question was already set up when the video started, but indeed there were already 4.3GB of VRAM being used before starting the render, which jumped to 6.1GB. Well that's a relief

travaler125

IF you are not adding huge amounts of objects a 4070 is a great card for Daz Studio.   If you are like me and add so many items that your computer will have a heart attack then go with the 4090 or if you can afford the needed hardware 2 4090's.    And yes, you can use 2 4090s to render if you have a  Threadripper Motherboard and they will out perform a system dual Nvidia 6000 ada's while costing a good 5k less.

cgidesign

A quick test on Windows 11 (OS consumes about 300 MB vram - more if a second display would be attached, less if no display has to be driven by the card).

Figures were default without hair. Render was with default hdri background.

With clothing, hair, props etc. it already might get crowded in 12GB of vram (at least with texture compression = off).

Regarding vram consumption when DS is started. When you start a render, DS consumes vram and is not releasing all of it after stopping the render. My example below: DS plus scene loaded = 1.1GB on first start. If I stop the render, DS sticks to around 8GB (textures, shaders etc. are cached on the GPU) instead of going back to 1.1GB. But that is not an issue because the cached data gets overwritten if required.

cgidesign

Update to my previous post. I forgot to mention that render subdevision of the figures was set to 3.

Here is the result with 4. In this case the 16GB ram would not work anymore (but sub-d 4 is not really required in most cases).

So, 12 GB vram and 16 GB ram can work - as long as your scenes don't get to complex and you stick to texture compression and sub-d 3 - but you won't have much headrom.

Maybe a used 16 GB GPU and more ram? But I know, even a used card plus ram might be over 500$

On the other hand, while my PC was broken, I worked with a notebook (16 GB ram and a 8GB RTX 2070) and stll was able to have fun with DS.

And regarding other 3d software - I think you would have the same situation there. The only real free package I know is Blender and that one eats ram and vram like DS does (and is missing the ease of use and content DS offers).

---

Another update:

While I was working with the notebook I used a product called "scene optimizer" (https://www.daz3d.com/scene-optimizer). It is a store product that works within DS. That one helps. Its main job is to downsample textures so you save vram and ram. Often you won't see a difference in the render because most background items anyway don't need those highres textures (and some foreground items as well).

valter006

Very thorough info there cgidesign, appreciated. Really leaning towards a 16GB card atm.
Iray really is completely unusable on a 4GB card, contrary to what the system requirements for Studio mention... No wonder I can't test even a single figure.
And yeah Scene Optimizer is a very useful plugin.
Also what exactly do you mean when you say "with Texture Compression"? Turning the Detail levels from High to Normal? Or something else?

cgidesign

It is a feature of Iray. It is taking the textures and compressing them on the fly. As you can see in my example it can save some vram - but it can come at a cost. In some cases you can get compression artifacts in your images.

You find it in the render settings:

Here are the settings in DS 4.22.x

The below linked thread shows an example of compression artifacts:

https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/544816/what-s-causing-these-shader-artifacts

And this thread explains the settings in the older DS versions (the UI has changed a bit in 4.22):

https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/7266596/#Comment_7266596

gregmacc95

So I've just purchased a 3060 12gb and currently waiting on it to arrive. No all I need is to upgrade my RAM. I'm trying to decide between 32 and 64 gigs. Would I be over doing it with the 64 or would I be fine with the 32 and save some money?

Gordig

As far as I'm concerned, you can't overdo it with RAM. Think of it this way: you've got a 3060 on the way, and 32GB might (or might not) be enough for that, but what if you get a 3090 in the future?

TimberWolf

You said money is tight so if you're on a budget 32GB is more than enough. You'll struggle to use that up unless you're trying really, really hard with multiple characters using multiple strand-based hairs in a complex scene with complex outfits at which point you'll have blown through the 3060s VRAM capability anyway. Seems unlikely to me.

If your motherboard has 4 slots for RAM, get 2 x 16GB sticks now. Keep what you can of your existing RAM as well - yes, the system will run at the speed of the slowest stick but the difference in render times from older memory and the latest high-speed stuff would be in fractions of a second - and think about upgrading by adding another 2 x 16 GB if you need it later on. If your motherboard only has 2 slots for RAM then the decision is a little bit harder and it comes down to what your plans are for the future - buying 64GB now might save you money in the long run, as Gordig says, but is utter overkill for just a 3060.

You do not need expensive, high-speed memory for rendering but avoid the nastiest of the no-name Chinese imports found on the shopping sites. Plenty of brand names with decent warranties do budget, slower RAM and that's all you need.