More RAM or SSD?

markie37

I'm using Daz and have 16gb of Ram. I also have a GeForce GTX 760 graphics card. I am thinking of doing an upgrade and I wonder if anyone can help. Would it be better to double the RAM or get a solid state hard disk?

Thanks for any advice.

CPU Intel Core i7-3770 (3.4 GHz)
Motherboard MSI B75MA-P45 (MS-7798 ver 1.0)
Memory 16GB DDR3 1333 MHz (4 memory slots. Max 32GB)
Hard Drive 2TB Western Digital WD20EARX-22PASB0
CD Drive DVD±RW

kaotkbliss

While SSDs are much faster to read/write from/to and will dramatically increase speed when working with that drive, I still don't trust them yet. I've ready too many reviews where they've worn out within just a few months and at their current cost I don't find that it's worth it yet.

berriboy

I don't think your HDD has anything to do with rendering efficiency, Its all between your RAM and CPU. The only difference between your system and mine is that I have Kingston Hyper-X 1600 RAM and I don't have any performance problems. If you did want to speed up render times I think a CPU and RAM upgrade would do more than an SSD.

sioc

I have the same dilemma but with also my video card to upgrade, not necessary until I use GPU renderer...

I'll say that searching and waiting for objects/products in DAZ Studio while creating a scene could be less with a SSD.

Look your memory usage and your waiting times while searching for objects and choose what is the more bothersome ;)

Except going for a much bigger CPU like a 6 core I7 or a Xeon, you won't increase your CPU rendering time. So now it's just a do I use so much objects and textures that I need more RAM or I want a faster scene building...

XoechZ

With an SSD, the general performance of your PC will be better, because all disk operations (loading, saving) will be much faster.
So you OS will boot faster, applications will start faster, loading items and saving scenes will be faster.

If you need more RAM, well, that depends on you, your workflow and the scenes you are doing. Here you can do a simple test. Set up a typical scene, render it. While you are doing this, have a look into the task manager. How much RAM is used by DAZ Studio? How much RAM is used by other applications at the same time? How much RAM is still free at the same time?
I have also 16 GB RAM in my PC ant that is more than enough. No matter what I do, there is always about half of my RAM free and unused. So investing in even more RAM would be really useless at this time.

sioc

XoechZ said:

With an SSD, the general performance of your PC will be better, because all disk operations (loading, saving) will be much faster.
So you OS will boot faster, applications will start faster, loading items and saving scenes will be faster.

If you need more RAM, well, that depends on you, your workflow and the scenes you are doing. Here you can do a simple test. Set up a typical scene, render it. While you are doing this, have a look into the task manager. How much RAM is used by DAZ Studio? How much RAM is used by other applications at the same time? How much RAM is still free at the same time?
I have also 16 GB RAM in my PC ant that is more than enough. No matter what I do, there is always about half of my RAM free and unused. So investing in even more RAM would be really useless at this time.

Lucky you! A browser with around 40 tabs + DS with a hudge scene, an other 3D software, hexagon, blender, etc. and a rendering in progress I can use up to 14 GB RAM (I know I have to optimize my scenes...)