RAM Upgrade?
I have heard both sides of this argument but I'd like to ask here since this is the program I use it for.
I have 24GB(my computer allows 64GB max) of DDR4 RAM right now. Some of my environments lag quite a bit when I'm trying to work in them. Only the scene it self is loaded. No characters, no animation. Just the scene. This makes it very hard to do any sort of precise posing or scene navigation. I am under the impression that this is due to low RAM. I'd like to be able to use these scenes and also have more than 2 characters in a scene without the tedious slow motion. If I were to purchase another 16GB of RAM (for 40GB total) would I see a difference? Some say when it comes to RAM, take all you can get. Others say anything more than "X"gb is a waste. It's $80 a pop for 8GB so I wanted to ask here first.
I render in Iray/i7 processor/GeForce 960 GPU/24GB DDR4 RAM
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Comments
I'd think it was more likely due to the GPU than the system RAM - which setting do you have for Display Optimisation in Edit>Prefrences>Interface tab?
Really? I didn't think the GPU did anything until I hit Render. I am ALL ABOUT getting a new GPU too. My shopping cart at NewEgg.com as a Zotac 1080 mini in it and 2 RipJaw 8GB RAM sticks in it. I'll have to check on that setting and see. I don't think I've ever been there before. What setting should it be at?
Here are my current settings there. So the answer to your question is "None"
OK, try setting it to better and best and see how it works (and how stable DS is with either) - with a 960 I'd think best would be safe and should greatly improve viewport performance (the 3D display does use the GPU, OpenGL which isn't specific to a manufacturer as the CUDA used in Iray is).
Good tip! Thanks Richard., I'll try that. And just to check, since I absoloutly am getting a new GPU, I can wait on the RAM for now and see how it performs right?
I'd certainly hold off unless you know you are pushing it with 24GB (which really isn't a bad amount). You can use Task Manger to monitor how much memory DS is using as it works.
Other way round — the Viewport which gives you the camera preview of your scene is driven by what's essentially a third render engine, OpenGL, which is completely dependent on the capabilities of your graphics card. This is the reason why the Viewport doesn't show shadows properly, and has a hard-coded limit of only showing seven lights, no matter how many there are in your scene; these are characteristics of OpenGL. Less powerful or elderly graphics cards just don't have the horsepower to redraw the camera view quickly if the scene is large or complicated enough.
It's a bit puzzling that a 960 card is giving this sort of problem, I would have thought it could handle pretty much anything. Have you got up-to-date graphics drivers? This is a large factor in OpenGL capabilities, if the driver is old it might not be using the card to its full power.
I don't really know how often the drivers go out of date. I bought the computer 2yrs ago and it came with the GPU and I assume the drivers were current then. But yeah, maybe they are a little elderly. That said, Richard's fix he mentioned worked like butter. I was going to include a rendered version of one of my "problem" environments but it would have been embarrasing because I have no lighting set up in it yet. But at least I can navigate the scene now to do that. And I'm super excited to get my new GPU anyway. Thank you both for your input. Knowledge is power!
Next time you load a scene press ctrl+shift+ESC and look at how much ram DAZ studio is using. In my experience 24GB is on the edge of what you need and that is with nothing else open, only daz. Since I also work with with photoshop and other programs at the same time I have a lot more RAM. Ram is also important if you want to preload scenes. If you render once and keep that render window open, all the scene files will be loaded unto RAM which makes subsequent renders start up a lot faster. This won't improve actual rendering speed, although the loading phase itself before rendering does speed up and can take off minutes of wait time depending on how big the scene is, so it is worth it.
Incidentally, that shiny new 10-series card does actually need a fairly recent driver, to go with the last couple of D|S updates. Without it, Iray can't use the card, so rendering will fall back to using only the CPU, which is much slower.
Where do I get that driver? It doesn't come with it? If I remember right, when I go this one, the computer told me that a GPU driver needed to install and then just did it.
Graphics card drivers are not an install-it-once-and-that's-it-forever thing, they're updated fairly regularly to add new features, new game compatibility, and various other bells and whistles. For DAZ|Studio, it's particularly important because of the OpenGL requirements that let D|S run in the first place — until recently (and for Win10 users, sometimes still) Windows Updates had a bad reputation for installing basic graphics drivers with only bare-bones OpenGL compatibility, which made running D|S an iffy proposition, instead of leaving alone the already installed more full-featured graphics drivers released by the card manufacturers.
In your case, with an NVidia card (your soon-to-be-new 1080 is NVidia as well) you'll need drivers from the NVidia website. Select your country, select Drivers from the top menu, and go through the card selection and download/installation process. Note that the GeForce Experience stuff is mainly for making games run better; if you don't run games on your D|S computer, don't bother with it.
Good stuff! Thanks for the info, I'll book mark that for when "the Grail" arrives.