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Upgrade my PC (looking for advise)

killian_darkwaterkillian_darkwater Posts: 0
in Technical Help (nuts n bolts)

Hello everyone, 

I'm looking for advise on upgrading my PC. 

I mostly use DAZ Studio 4.9.2 to render still images in Full HD.
My aim is on reducing render time. 

Regarding my configuration below, could you tell me from your own experience what is the best choice between a second GTX980 or an i7-4790K (as I don't intend to change my MoBo). 

(I have already tried SLI with 2x MSI GTX 760 Twin Frozr and the benefit was up to 40% faster renders compared to single GTX760). 

MoBo MSI Z87-G45 Gaming 
CPU Intel i5-4670K 
GPU GTX 980 Gainward Phantom 
RAM Crucial Balistix - 2x 8GB DDR3 - 1600 CL8 
SSD OCZ ARC 100 240GB (for windows and major software) 
SSD Corsair Force LE 480GB (for DAZ Studio libraries and games) 
OS Windows 8.1 64 Bit (had a bad experience with Windows 10) 

Thanks in advance for your advice. 

Comments

  • callumlulzcallumlulz Posts: 43

    Try 2x GPU GTX 980 Gainward Phantom and run them in non-sli, or wait and get 2x 1080's when Iray is supported

     

     

  • dracorndracorn Posts: 2,345

    I would advise getting at least 32 GB Ram.  Don't skimp here: the comments I have read around the forum suggest that 16 doesn't quite cut it and that most people are happy with 32 GB. 

    As far as graphics card vs. faster processor, I would assume it would depend on your render engine.  3Delight depends solely on the CPU so a faster one would benefit.  Iray can render with both CPU and graphics cards, but I don't know if a second card instead of a faster CPU would be more beneficial.  There are experts who can answer that question better than I can.

  • killian_darkwaterkillian_darkwater Posts: 0

    Thanks for reply, 

    I only use Iray. 
    I just ordered a second GTX 980 Gainward Phantom as I had a great bargain for it (hope it fits correctly in the case) and I will definitely get an extra 16GB RAM. 

    I do not intend to replace my existing 980 with 1080. 

    I'll soon post the results with single and dual GPU if it may be useful to anyone else considering on upgrading their machine. 

  • alan bard newcomeralan bard newcomer Posts: 2,171
    edited June 2016

    my understanding as of my last read... is iray will only use the ram on one video card...  so that an sli multiple card theoretically doesn't make a difference... 
    --
    i was looking a getting multiple cards.. 
    --- 
    once it maxes the card it chooses it goes to CPU...
    --- 
    I bit the bullet last year and put together a machine with dual xeons and ddr4 64 gigs and a 980ti with 6 gigs...
    ---
    it seems that the cuda count doesn't stack either.. but they may have been the older version of iray.
    ---
    but a really handy little mod is battle encoder shirase...  you can limit the amount of cpu any program can grab... 
    --
    without it daz doing 3dlight could still stop the computer... so I limit it by 25% or so and still have 16g to work in photoshop while 3delight is rendering... 

     

    Post edited by alan bard newcomer on
  • 3delinquent3delinquent Posts: 355

    Alan, does battle encoder shirase work with Windows 10? The idea of being able to do what you described really appeals to me.

    My understanding with Iray was that cores stack, vram doesn't. Could be wrong about that.

  • drgmc2drgmc2 Posts: 16

    I found a significant difference using 2 EVGA GTX 980 TI cards in non-SLI, when I ran them in SLI it doubled the the Iray render time. I also noted a significant improvement when I went to 64 gb of ram from 32 gb. My system is MSI X99A mb, I7 hexcore,1200 watt power supply, 1 gb SSD. Have fun!

  • frank0314frank0314 Posts: 14,049

    DS can't use SLI. I would go with eh 2 GTX 980 or 1 GTX 980Ti, you need at least 4GB of RAM to utilize your GPU in Iray. I would also upgrade the RAM to 32 GB and upgrade the CPU to the i7. The combo would greatly increase your render times.

  • MortzeMortze Posts: 184

    DS can't use SLI?

    How does it uses the combined power of, let's say, 3 GPUs? Isn't there any advantage in having more GPUs then? I was under the impression that SLI was to combine computing power.

  • fixmypcmikefixmypcmike Posts: 19,583

    Iray can use multile GPU's, but not using SLI, so you get to use all the cores but the RAM isn't pooled.

  • hphoenixhphoenix Posts: 1,335
    baldorvadras_b61092790d said:

    DS can't use SLI?

    How does it uses the combined power of, let's say, 3 GPUs? Isn't there any advantage in having more GPUs then? I was under the impression that SLI was to combine computing power.

    SLI lets applications treat multiple GPUs as a single GPU.  It does this in very specific ways which are geared toward gaming framerates, not GPGPU computing.  For example, one card renders the top-half of the screen, the other card renders the bottom.

    DS allows you to select any or all recognized GPUs you have in your system for rendering.  DS will run different parts of the render process on the different GPUs.  Iray isn't a simple OpenGL pipeline render like is used in gaming (or DirectX, if that's your preference) and it doesn't work well with the whole "part of the screen" mechanism.  But it CAN share the work across multiple GPUs.

    So you disable SLI for DS and Iray.  You CAN still have an SLI bridge connecting the cards, so that when you run something that DOES benefit from SLI, and has it enabled, it will get the benefits.

     

  • alan bard newcomeralan bard newcomer Posts: 2,171

    I have 64 g of dd4 and dual xeons so the 3d goes pretty fast...
    but I got a 980 ti with six gigs and it has handled all the scenes I've tried on it without moving to the cpu... 
    ---
    it was the most cudas and the biggest ram I could logically afford... the 12 gig card only has a marginal jump in cores and easily twice the cost ... 
    ---
    You need the ram to handle your scene...  depending ... my cat characters take about 1.5 gigs each and I used to have 2 gigs of system 20 gigs of daz which left 2 gigs while rendering.. which required me to sit the whole time and tell windows no it couldn't close any programs to save memory as there was only one...  that was with 24 gigs on my old machine. 
    ---
    the cats below are about 18 gigs of data to go in ram --- but 3d uses the cpus so the ram really didn't matter. 

     

    fourth julyw4w2.jpg
    1800 x 640 - 790K
  • alan bard newcomeralan bard newcomer Posts: 2,171
    3delinquent said:

    Alan, does battle encoder shirase work with Windows 10? The idea of being able to do what you described really appeals to me.

    you'll have to google to find that out... I think I saw it mentioned here somewhere and then I went and found it... it runs on 7 64 bit... 
    it's also called BES ... 

     

     

  • alan bard newcomeralan bard newcomer Posts: 2,171

    you might want to consider this when decided what to do...
    --- 
    the single processor K units... will address up to 8 gig sticks of ram and the boards have a max of 8 slots...
    ---
    I got a dual xeon board (even if I could only afford one processor to start) because a xeon will see up to 64 gig per stick...
    ---
    as it was I got two processors (instead of one at $800 I stumbled on a pair on ebay at $350 each and figured even if one died after a year or so .. I still would be the same cpu wise...) 
    --
    but my 64 gigs is 4 sixteens.. which cost wise the sixteens are the same as two eights.. a 32 is sadly equal to about 1.5 16s 
    --
    but my board has 16 slots... so even with only 16s I can get up to 256... 
    ---
    and while my 2630s are fairly low in the xeon set... there's a lot of upgrade room in the processors two.
    ---
    oh, mobo... $450, ram $150 a 16 g ddr4 stick...  list of new cpu $800 but I got two used for $350 each... and the evga 980ti 6 gig for $650
     power supply about $60 (already had) and a big server case I got used for $20 bucks...
    so about two grand total for the machine.
    ---
    and I have lots of room to grow ... 
     

  • 3delinquent3delinquent Posts: 355

    Thanks Alan.

     

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