I need help with Iray and Nvidia and Intel and AMD please

Rowanessque

So I am in the market for a brand new computer, a gift from my Mum, bless her. But oh my goodness what a dilemma. I need a 64 no doubt about it, I need to bite the bullet and get used to Windows 10.

My question really involves this, should I go AMD or Intel I just don't know.

Second question, I want to use Iray in the future, what game card Nvidia or something else should I choose, I am so lost with game cards and what I need.

I have a budget of just under a Thousand, I feel as guilty as heck that she wants me to have this, but then she did say well "I bought a poly tunnel and cut a tree down we are even" bless her.

Thank you in advance, and I know your going to say this question is under so and so, but I would really like some feedback from Iray Nvidia uses please.

Richard Haseltine

If you mainly use Iray, and don't do anything else that is CPU-intensive, then you can go light on the CPU. For GPU, if possible go for the 12GB 3060 as memory tends to be the big limit (if the scene doesn't fit then the GPU is useless, however fast it is) but obviously that depends on the complexity of the scenes you typically render. Still, a 4GB card is going to be of little benefit and a 6GB card will be very limiting.

AMD CPUs seem to eb fine, I'm using one in this machine.

nonesuch00

Well I bought a motherboard that supported Zen 2 when Zen 2 was released. Zen 2 is an AMD AM4 socket motherboard and the brand I bought was a Gigabyte B450M motherboard. AMD & Gigabyte has upgraded the BIOS and designed their CPUs / APUs so that this motherboard was able to use CPUs/APUs upto the current Zen 3 architecture. By the way when it ws released it already supported the already released Zen and Zen+ CPU/APU archtitectures. Next year AMD is supposed to release new CPUs/APUs that are AM4 socket Zen 3+ designs. So the this $80 AMD AM4 socket Gigabyte motherboard that I bought that was designed for Zen 2 CPUs/APUs has wound up supporting Zen, Zen+, Zen 2, Zen 2+, Zen 3, & Zen 3+ since it's release in 2018. The last CPUs / APUs with supports will be released in 2022.  That's 4 years! The CPUs & APUs it supports range from 2017 - 2022. That's 5 years. All of these CPUs and APUs are not competitive with Intel's for performance speeds so that old argument is history now. So now you must look to see if Intel's motherboards support so many generations of CPUs / APUs (well intel has already been APUs for quite a while now) and the answer is they don't to my knowlege. A Generation 10 intel CPU needs a Generation 10 motherboard. Same with 11. Same with 9. Same with 12. That's a big hindrance to end users trying to upgrade their desktops as cheaply as possible.

The GPU is easy. If you are buy a GPU for DAZ Studio you need a nVidia GTX or preferable RTX GPU. You can find GTX 1650s and GTX 1660s for $300 - $600. The price is crazy. For RTX you buy GTX 3060 12GB for in the high $700 range easy enough. The better buy though is the GTX 3060 TI 8GB for low $800 range easy enough. Those prices are crazy.  Those prices though are far above their true MSRP but if that's what you want now that's what you have to pay now. Of course they are businesses that will sell you that stuff at even higher prices but I've told you the cheapest easily available prices already (in USA on Amazon)

    

PerttiA

Your budget will be the limiting factor, as the price of RTX 3060 12GB alone would eat half of it already.

I would say, aim for a system that has an Nvidia RTX card in it (even if it was 20xx from the previous generation), and has 32GB's of RAM (memory), those are the things that matter the most with DS and Iray.

Rowanessque

Thank you Richard, Nonesuch and PerttA, I will keep all this in mind, I knew the game card was going to kill the budget, I will keep all this in mind and weigh everything up before I take the final plunge, thank you again. It Looks like AMD is the better one, and I need a good card too.

JVRenderer

Rowanessque said:

So I am in the market for a brand new computer, a gift from my Mum, bless her. But oh my goodness what a dilemma. I need a 64 no doubt about it, I need to bite the bullet and get used to Windows 10.

My question really involves this, should I go AMD or Intel I just don't know.

Second question, I want to use Iray in the future, what game card Nvidia or something else should I choose, I am so lost with game cards and what I need.

I have a budget of just under a Thousand, I feel as guilty as heck that she wants me to have this, but then she did say well "I bought a poly tunnel and cut a tree down we are even" bless her.

Thank you in advance, and I know your going to say this question is under so and so, but I would really like some feedback from Iray Nvidia uses please.

You have picked the worst possible time to upgrade your PC With the shortage of chip producing material, and the Crypto Mining craze and the demand of folks buying new computers (due to the Pandemic), prices of GPUs, CPUs and anything PC related have gone thru the roof. You are literally paying upward of 50% more than 'normal' market value for a PC at the moment. A $1000 may fetch you a decent render PC under normal circumstances, but in this market you probably have to up it to $1500.  Start with a RTX3060 ($700) and build one around the card.