Looking to replace PC -- what's features should I look for to optimize DAZ
Drogo Nazhur
Posts: 1,081
I will be retiring my computer as soon as I get my refund check. What should I be looking for in a laptop that will give me the best performance in using DAZ?
What are my first choice? Second choice? etc? What type of graphic cards? How much memory? Processor? Etc?
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That's a tough one. I just updated my PC as well because I got hooked on DAZ. But I upgraded from a laptop (i5 and GTX 1050) to a desktop that my boyfriend built for me. According to him a desktop is better suited for 3d art because they have better graphics card options. He put a RTX 2070 super into my machine but I haven't gotten the chance to render anything on it yet. What I understand is this: when it comes to rendering, the ammount of RAM on your graphics cards determines whether DAZ will render with the GPU or CPU. I got a card with 8 ram because that will (hopefully) mean I can render most scenes with the GPU. If your scene is too big for the graphics card then it renders on your CPU and that takes a loooooooooooooooooooong time. (3 or 4 hours for some of my renders.) Hopefully I can cut that in half with this new machine.
This should mostly go without say, but just incase. Your performance-per-dollar will be much better if you get a desktop PC rather than a laptop. And even more so if you buy the parts individually and built it yourself.
Either way though, your GPU and CPU need to be as beefy as you can afford. The RAM in the system itself seems to be less important for the actual render proccess, but ram is cheap these days anyway. However the RAM present inside your GPU (I know it's kinda confusing) matters alot. And in terms of render time, make sure whatever you buy, the GPU is Nvidia. Iray is an Nvidia product and so the support on the software side of things (which is deceptively important aswell) is just going to be universally better on an Nvidia GPU.
You do not need a powerful CPU just for Daz. Neither do you need lots of system RAM, the rule of thumbis you want twice as much system RAM as the GPU's VRAM.
so if you get a GPU with 8Gb of VRAM you want 16 Gb of RAM.
On the buying choices. A laptop will be a lot more expensive and will be very limited in uopgrade options compared to a desktop. But if a laptop is a must look for one with at least a 2070 GPU. If you can swing it you'll be happier with a 2070 super or 2080 but those get expensive.
Best Daz Studio performance and best performance that fits within a budget are two completely different things.
Idealy the best laptop for Daz Studio Iray rendering would be a mobile workstation with a Quadro RTX 5000 because it has 16GB of VRAM... Unfortunately that could easily be a $4-5000 computer.
More realisticly you should get a consumer grade notebook with at least 16GB RAM and a RTX 2070 or better. Make sure to check reviews before you jump on a high performance notebook that you plan on using for rendering. The last thing you want is a computer that throttles the GPU mid render because of a sub-standard cooling setup.
Honestly, if you're doing big images a 1080 Ti is a good bet. They're cheap as hell on ebay and have 11 gigs of vram.
Except that the OP stated that the old computer is being replaced with a laptop, so no desktop GTX 1080 ti
For a laptop you really want at least 4c8t or preferably 6c12t CPU, though high thread counts doesn't help DAZ much it helps elsewhere. You also want a minimum RTX 2060 GPU, preferably 2070 or higher with 8Gb VRAM. You'll really struggle with anything less than 8Gb VRAM in any decent quality scenes. 16Gb RAM will be ok but if you ever want to push the limits of your scenes and render CPU, you'll struggle with 16Gb since you don't get compression.
It's really about your budget, how much you're willing to spend on a content creation laptop.
Dell T1650 case and mother board. 32 Gigs non-buffered ECC memory. Nvidia GTX 970. Pick any Intel I7 or Xeon E3 processor. Have fun. This is the best optimum build for the lowest money.
If you want to scale up your graphics hardware, then an NVidia 1080 Ti is sufficient.
That is not, I think, good advice, the 970 has only 4GB of RAM and being a pre-Turing card Iray will use more f that for code leaving less for the scene. I am not convinced on the CPU choice either, though it is true that with such limited GPU RAM more renders would drop back to CPU. I'm also dubious about the benefits of ECC RAM.
First off...
The OP stated that the intended upgrade is a laptop.
Second.
I would not reccomend the T1650 for anything more than entry level computing tasks. The stock power supples are far too weak for even your "reccomended" GTX 970, It only supports 16GB DDR3 RAM [unless it has a Xeon installed and you want to track down 32GB of regular ECC RAM (Not Registerd ECC)] and the CPUs are the old 3rd generation core architecture.
And Third!
If the OP wants to use an old computer they might as well post thier current computer here and ask about upgrade options, because there's a pretty good chance it's better than the T1650 you are reccomending.
As a server IT admin I can confirm ECC is essentiallty worthless. Reguklar RAM is far more stable than in the past. Testing shows no difference in uptime stability between the two up to around 1 year. At present ECC basically protects against the extreaordinarily rare buit flip caused by a stray high energy photon, cosmic ray or some other source like a faulty microwave or x-ray machine.
ECC is also at least 50% more expensive.