Graphics card question
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Yes it will work, especially the newer versions.
...but you should think of it as the bare minimum, the 'shared memory' means it takes some of your main memory, and it won't help at all with Iray.
Almost any modern graphics card will work fine with Daz Studio - the sole requirement being that it supports a certain level of OpenCL, which most now should. If you are justing using 3Delight as your render engine then you don't need a massive card, just one that has 'enough' to drive the display.
What you may want to consider are the various enhancements in the rendering arena; in particular the inclusion of Iray in the next release of Daz Studio, but not forgetting things such as Octane and LuxRender. Those can either make use of the GPUs in your graphics card, or soley use them, to perform the rendering. Naturally that sort of thing will require a 'better' card, usually meaning more on-card memory required (a minimum of 4GB is suggested by DAZ for the use of Iray, as an example).
Here are some other specs of the laptop I'm considering. Decent machine or not?
•Intel Pentium N3540 quad core processor.
•2.16GHz processor speed.
•8GB RAM.
•1TB SATA hard drive.
•Microsoft Windows 8.
Display features:
•15.6 inch screen.
•High definition display.
•Resolution 1366 x 768 pixels.
DVD optical drives:
•DVD+RW/DVD-RW (read/write).
Graphics:
•Intel HD Graphics.
•Shared graphics card.
It's a decent machine for non-gaming, non-intensive work. I.e., you should have no problem watching videos or movies on it, doing web surfing, writing Word or Excel documents, running standard apps, and so forth. If you want to do simple stuff in DAZ, it's probably fine.
If you want to do heavy-duty stuff like LuxRender rendering or gaming with any sort of modern PC games (e.g., Shadows of Mordor, Dragon Age, Mass Effect), that machine is going to have a tough time. I just upgraded from a desktop with 8 GB of RAM and 1.5 GB vid card to a laptop with 24 and 8 GB of vid... and even so it is still choppy when I have a lot of things in a big DAZ scene (like multiple characters in an Urban Sprawl setting).
I'm not suggesting you should go for the super-high-end like I did... but if you can find something decent with its own stand-alone vid card and maybe a bit more RAM, say 12 GB, I would definitely suggest it.
It needs to support OpenGL 2 (minimum), OpenCL is for being able to use the GPU like a CPU.
I'm also in the market for a new card for my old mac (thought maybe I get more bang for the buck and get a PC dedicated for Daz work). Can anyone give some definitions to the terms used here and what function they perform? What is OpenGL (other than the opposite, I assume, of closed GL)? What's GL for that matter? Why is having more ram on a card important or different from having more ram in the machine itself?
I did, of course, mean OpenGL, so sorry for that! ;)
It is open meaning that details are published of how it works, so that anyone can make use of it, as opposed to closed, or proprietary. GL just means, I believe, Graphics Language.
On-card memory is better than RAM sharing as it a) is generally faster to access by the card and b) does not reduce the available RAM to the system.
I hoped it would be good for DS and the latest games (like the latest GTA for example). What specs does stuff like that require? And how much do people spend (and how do they do so? Just kidding!) ? I wouldn't be using DS on a "professional" level, but I'd like the ability to do so if I chose.
I'd be interested in what the break is between Mac and PC among pro-level users. I have an old Mac Pro 3,1 that I keep my Daz stuff on. It's been fine but I'm getting more ambitious with my animation and am looking for faster processing and rendering. I could put a better graphics card in my Mac or consider a newer machine.
The latest games require high-end systems to play well (you do NOT want to be at minimum spec to play a video game - you will have to set all the graphics on low quality and you will still get a slide show). GTA requires a stand-alone vid card with 1 GB min, 2 GB recommended. Even my desktop would choke on it, and my desktop was pretty darn solid when I built it a few years ago.
You would need minimally something like this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834231974
That will get the job done at minimum spec of RAM and slightly above minimum vid card. Though keep in mind that as a laptop, everything is a little "weaker" than the equivalent desktop item.
I ended up spending almost 4x that and getting a monster laptop system that is almost as good as a desktop... i7 4th gen processor, 24 GB of RAM, and an 8 GB vid card (that is not a typo). It's nice, and blazing fast. But it costs.
BTW, renders still take a long time on it if you go unbiased. An 800x800 2-light render takes about 4.5 hours using CPU only, though only about 12 minutes using GPU. But, again, this is an 8 GB, very high end GPU. An intel integrated video system cannot handle such things, and you need to make your peace with that if you are going to go with a budget system.
Not trying to rain on your parade here, but you should be aware of the facts before buying.
Depends on what you want to do and how "big" you want to go. I thought about upgrading my current system but when I figured out how much it would cost to upgrade, RAM, Vid Card, and probably PSU, it was half as much as a new laptop. At that point, I just said "time to buy a new laptop." But not everyone would make that decision. (I have wanted to go laptop for a long while just for the convenience of it).
I still look upon laptops as weaker cousins of desktops, which really dates me. I could probably buy a more powerful PC laptop for what it would cost to buy a new vid card for my old mac pro.
Cheers for the info. Need to give this some thought!
If you have a price range you are considering, we can give you some ideas for good systems where you get some nice bang for your buck.
I was thinking about £500
Also, does it really have to be a laptop?
Do you have any have an old monitor, peripherals, parts etc. that you could save money by re-using?
It needs to be a laptop, yes. There are many with quad processers and plenty of RAM, it's graphics cards that may be the issue (I don't know much about them).
If my calculations are correct, that is about $680 USD.
That is a tough price point for gaming laptops, which are the ones with their own vid cards. I don't know much about the places to shop in your area but for example you could try something like this, which is within that budget:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834152586
The vid card is not very high end but it will give you 2 GB of graphics and be solidly better than an integrated video chip.
If you go just a little higher you can get something like this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834152722
That is a much stronger video card.
Neither of them is going to make you happy if you are trying to do Iray or LuxRender renders, but they should be able to handle 3delight all right. You will get some chop and low frame rates playing around in the editor... I know I did on my desktop with 8 GB RAM and 1.5 GB Video ram, which is close to the stats on this laptop.
For vid cards, at least for nVidia, there are some rules about numbering/lettering:
GT and GTX is always better than the same vid card without those letters
The "hundreds" column is the "generation" of the cards. For example, the 800 series is the 8th genration. 700 is 7th generation.
The "tens" column tells you the quality of the card:
x80, x90 - these are generally high end, very high quality, "performance" cards.
x6,0 x70 - these are mid-range, decent quality vid cards
x40, x50 - these are lower end, moderate quality vid cards
x20, x30 - these are the lowest end in the range.
For a given series, higher tens is always "better", with x80 or x90 being the absolute top of the range.
For a given "tens", higher generation is always better. Thus, a 780 is better than a 680, and an 840 is better than a 740.
However, what sometimes confuses people is, will a 740 out-perform a 680? In most cases, the answer is no... it won't even perform as well.
To understand how this works, I am going to simplify (very very much simplify). What you have to imagine (and this is just an analogy), is that each chip has up to 8 or 9 "channels" it can use to pass information to the motherboard (or wherever). When nVidia makes a GPU chip, they are always trying to make their top end for the generation. So if they are making a 900 chip, they try to make a 980 every single time. That means they are trying to make a series 9 chip with 8 working channels. But the manufacturing process is not perfect. Sometimes only 7 of the 8 channels work. This is still a pretty darn good video chip, so they don't toss it. They just sell it for a little less money.
This is what the "tens" column means -- a 750 chip is a 7th generation chip with only 5 of the "channels" working. A 680 is 6th generation with 8 "channels" working.
Because advances come in small increments by generation but performance gets wildly worse as you lose "tens", you are often better off with a 2 generation earlier chip than a newer but lower end chip. So for example, a 580 is probably better to have than a 720. Although this will also depend on VRAM and other things.
So the rule with nVidia is: get the highest generation and highest "decade" you can, but always go for the decade before the generation, if you have to choose. So for example I'd rather see you spend a few more pounds and get the 840 card than the 820. There will be a pretty significant difference between them (the 840M can do 2x as many gigaflops as the 820M, and its texture and fill rates are almost double, although strangely is slightly worse in the shader clock).
Interesting...you know your stuff, I'll give you that!
Being able to play the very latest games isn't really essential, just wishful thinking/optimism on my part. That would just be a bonus but not important.
Rendering wise I've never heard of Iray or Luxrender (I'm guessing they're "high end" ?), I've been happy with 3delight so would be happy to continue with it.
My old laptop (RIP) had an Nvidia graphics card, and was about seven years old, on DS render setting four and deep mapped shadows most of my renders took just a few minutes. That may give you some idea of how powerful a computer I'd like.
I will be looking in shops later today, and probably try for a laptop with Nvidia as the previous one did everything asked of it, and I shall be writing down your information about generations and stuff to take with me.
Cheers and thanks for the information - I now know something about graphics cards!
If you count OpenGL and 3Delight as two renderers, Iray will be the third renderer built into the next version of Studio.
You can never have too many renderers to choose from!
Iray saves a lot of time in the setting up phase but will be slower to render if you don't have the right graphics card for it.
That makes the choice of graphics card much more important than it used to be. :-)
The laptops I'm finding all start at around £700! ...and even then I would say the performance is only just acceptable!
Thanks for the card tutorial. I'm exploring a newer-ish card for my old Mac Pro 3,1. I think a 680 is the best that will fit into that machine. I assume that a 680 with 4gb is going to be better than a 680 with 2gb, right?
Short answer...yes.
For what it will be used for amount of memory will trump speed. a 2 GB with GDDR5 may have a slight edge over a 4 GB GDDR3 card, in performance, but will hold a smaller scene. And it won't that big that it will appreciably impact render times. and a 680 will be a big boost over the old card...no matter what flavor it is.
Thanks. I know they make a Mac Edition of the 680, but I think I can use a regular version as well, though I may lose a start-up screen.
VRAM will affect how much texture you can hold in your scene. Larger amounts of RAM will let you hold larger texture sizes. So as we start getting into these HD models with 4096x4096 pixels and beyond for skin and face textures and the like, you're going to start needing that VRAM. Not for just one model in a scene, but if you start having multiple character and clothing and prop models with large textures, at some point, you are going to start being VRAM limited.
Also in terms of LuxRender, Iray, etc, it seems (at least to me) as if "unbiased" rendering is now where the industry is headed. I'm not saying 3delight is going away any time soon, but just like Genesis 2 items have started greatly outnumbering Genesis 1 items for sale on the marketplace, you're going to start seeing more and more Iray-compatible (and thus 3delight-incompatible) shaders, light sets, etc, coming online. So having a card that can do Lux or Iray would probably be helpful... but certainly not essential.
Hello I am looking to build a small yet iray friendly and powerful desktop computer for windows. My budget is on the small side and I already have the case and the hard drive. I'm basically looking for what you folks who use daz all the time think a good economy rendering rig should look like. I definitely want some type of nvidia graphics card for iray and other than that I'm not sure if I should just copy gaming computer specs or what. Thanks for any responses.
Gaming rigs are pretty much the same things as a rendering rig for DS/Iray...