Vram needs and RTX/Dforce questions
I have heard and read all sorts of things and in the end I am none the wiser, so I'll ask in a more synthetic way. If any good soul can tell me, based on experience...
Leaving aside the current context of shortage and considering only the thechnical side of it:
1- Cranking down textures and running the scene optimizer like a horse is tedious at best. Let's postulate a scene with a decor like Snorkel Island, fully loaded, with 4 g8m/g8f loaded, hair, swimsuits, the basic beachgoing attire. Environment set to sun-sky, with Dreamlight's Quick Iray Outdoor Presets 1. Your typical beach resort scene.
What amount of Vram should my graphics card have to be able to render that? I'm good with a Ryzen 3700X and 32 GB of ram but I need to know what graphics card can take the brunt of this type of scene.
2- Something I need confirmed or debunked: "the RTX cards improve Dforce simulation speed." True or false?
As things are right now, my chances to obtain a shiny new GPU are very low but hey... one needs to know what they need, to be ready to grab it when they can. One day...
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Made some tests to see how much RAM and VRAM were used during IRAY rendering.
The first is just a G8 figure with lightweight hair and clothing, lit with 3 spotlights
The second was four G8 figures with lightweight hair and clothing, lightweight architecture and lit with 3 spotlights
Third and fourth I was just using SubD to increase the geometry load to see what would happen when rendering drops to CPU
Using W7Ultimate/64GB RAM/RTX 2070 Super (8GB VRAM)
Looking at the island and taking into consideration my experiences with such environments... I don't think 8GB's will be nearly enough without optimisation and tricks
If you can't afford RTX 3090 with it's 24GB VRAM, I would say the second best option is the RTX 3060 with 12GB's of VRAM
Thank you, PerttiA, for getting through the trouble of testing this for me :) That's very helpful and it does confirm some of my worries. The price for any of the two, assuming that one of my suppliers can cough up some unit, will be staggering. I guess I'm going to have to save quite a bit more and wait for a long time before I can get my handfs on this Graal ^^;
All that remains is the matter of Dforce and RTX cards. I reall wonder there.
The RTX 3060 12GB is an oddball within the 30xx line, it is the cheapest version but has more VRAM than the "better" and more expensive 3070 and 3080's
I can buy an RTX 3060 12GB here in Finland for about 500 euro (including 24% VAT) and for the past three weeks, they have actually been available in numbers.
Lucky you... here in France, I can kiss it byebye for now. Our prices will also be way higher. VAT alone is 20% here and the middlemen are taking a huge cut.
I have recently had a PC built which includes an RTX 3060 12GB graphics card. I can easily render a large spaceship bridge with 5 G8 figures and a space view prop. If I remember correctly, it took up about 6gb ish. It is fast too.
That seems to describe the kind of weight I want to lift up. I really need so get one of these, even if I must sell a kidney. After all... nobody said it had to be my kidney :3
Who needs two? lol
okay, spotted a 3060 with 12go and claimed it. Hope I get it... still way more epensive than in Finland.
There's nothing about RTX itself that makes dForce faster. dForce uses OpenCL which has nothing to do with RTX.
But RTX cards are still simply faster in general than older GTX cards, and this includes OpenCL operations. It's just not a huge leap like the raytracing performance of Optix on RTX was over GTX.
I didn't see much speedup going from a 1080ti to a 2080ti.
I can tell you the the Dforce is all CPU. I upgraded from a 5th gen 6 core to a 10th gen 8 core Intel i7 with the same Video Cards [only due to non in stock :-( ]
and the speed difference was amazing 5 seconds to drape a cloth that used to take 10 min and no explosions
dForce, I think, defaults to using the GPU if theer is one with OpenCL drivers. Intel CPUs do, however, have an OpenCL driver of their own and if you have that installed you can set the CPU as the simulation device (unlike Iray it is not possible for dForce to use multiple devices, even if you system has them).
My current cpu is a ryzen 3700x. So I guess it won't be an option.