New hardware advice please
Hello, fellow renderers,
I don't know if this topic should be here or in Nuts and Bolts but here it is anyway, sorry if it is in the wrong place.
I've been discovering and learning DAZ3D as a hobby for a while now and I am considering building a career with it. But to make it productive I need to enhance my render times.
I do not deal with animations, only with pictures. My scenes are pretty simple, with max 4 figures, an average of 5 light sources. My average renders take about 20-30 mins, some more complex are between 1h and 2h30, the more simple about a few minutes or even seconds.
I'm using a laptop, Intel Core I5 CPU 2.66Ghz, 4GB RAM, Radeon HD6370M 512 mb graphic drive, and my content is in an external hard drive, connected with standard USB.
I render in normal 3Delight, no LuxRender or Iray.
I think I have to upgrade my hardware. My goal is to have a rendering time way faster, like x10 faster.
The first question is about what kind of hardware do I need for that. What kind of CPU, RAM, and graphic drive, the minimum to obtain faster renders so I can produce at least 5 or more pics an hour.
Also, my budget is limited and I can't afford more than 1500 USD on it. 1000USD or less would be ideal. I don't know if it is possible to get a setting for that budget. And I don't know what kind of ressources DAZ needs to perform at the level I want. What would you advise me?
The second question is about the possibility to use my current laptop to build the scenes and then use the new hardware I'll buy to render them. That way I can still keep working on the next pic while the rendering is being done. How could that be a possibility. Is there a way to transfer a scene from a computer to another. I know you could save the scene and load it on another computer that has access to the content (external hard drive) and render it from there but I ask if there is a faster and more direct way.
Thank you for your lights on this matter!
Daz 3D is part of 
Connect
DAZ Productions, Inc.
7533 S Center View Ct #4664
West Jordan, UT 84084
Licensing Agreement | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | EULA
© 2025 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
For 3Delight you can't do a 10x increase in render speed for $1,500...to do that kind of increase in 3Delight, you'll need dual or quad CPU motherboard and to fill it with 12 to 16 core CPUs that are around your budget for each CPU...in other words, you are looking at an $8,000 to $10,000 machine.
That said, a reasonable increase of 2 to 3x can be had...in the $1,500+ range.
You'd want as many CPU cores as you can get (a current i7 or new i8 for Intel or an AMD 83xx or 9xxx FX series) and lots of RAM.
MJC is right; but also bear in mind that changing your shader and light setup may add just as much speed.
-Use Advanced Ambient lights instead of UberEnvironment. It's many times faster even if you stick with default spotlights and point lights; but if you need lots of spots and points, using Advanced ones is much faster than using default ones.
-On any transmapped or transparent or translucent object, ctrl+click the ubersurface base onto it, then scroll down and set occlusion to override and 128 samples. This makes 3Delight MUCH faster when it hits those transparencies. You can render entire Pestryakov forest sets in a reasonable time if you do this to all the trees and leaves.
At minimum you should shoot for a quad core with 8 GB of RAM and a good graphics card. Graphics card are subjective but if you want to be able to get the most out of IRay then you will need a card that has 4GB of RAM. Keep in mind that the big card isn't required to use IRay. You can still use your GPU to use IRay. You would be better off getting a desktop rather than a laptop. The bigger the processor you get the faster renders will take since rendering is done with your CPU if using 3Delight. You should be able to get a system like this for $1500. You may have to sacrifice something to keep it at that price though.
The perfect PC would be a Six core processor, 16 GB of RAM, and a nVidia GTX 960 w/4GB RAM and up. I know for a fast that the GTX 960 works quite well in IRay. I just bought one and using it with great results.
Keep in mind that lights, certain shaders or transmaps, and render setting can slow a render down quite considerably.
I did a quick pricing check...and the specs Frank listed are well within the $1,500 budget.
Thank you all for your replies. I sure don't know much about this stuff.
I don't plan to use Iray at all. And I do not use UberEnvironment lighting. I only use standard spotlights, distant lights, and point lights.
I still have to study the shader enhancements I could do though.
For what I know - and I might be super wrong - the RAM is important for managing the stuff you have in your scene. Like the more stuff you have the more RAM you should have too. But for the rendering per se the CPU and the graphic card are more important. Is that correct?
Since I do not deal with lots of figures and products per scene 4 or 8 GB RAM should be ok? I should invest definitly more in the CPU and Graphic card no?
If you ask me what my goal is then it is to work on pics for a few projects and do not have waste time while I wait for a pic to render. Hence I need two computers. While one renders I'll work on the other one. If I can get a faster rendering then that will be the best! I'd work easy renderings on my actual laptop and the harder ones on a new harware.
RAM: manipulating objects in the scene before rendering. The bigger the scene, and the more objects, the more RAM you need for the viewport not to lag.
CPU: Rendering in 3Delight. If you only render in 3Delight, this is where the money goes.
Graphics card: Rendering in Iray or other engines, running your monitors. Nothing to do with 3Delight . If you will never render in Iray or Octane, play advanced video games, etc., you can get by with a cheap one.
4 gb RAM is probably not enough. 8 miiiiiight be but I'd prefer 16 if I had the choice.
For 3Delight the video card has no impact when rendering. It is a pure CPU renderer. So the CPU, number of cores and speed are the main factors. A good RAM amount is in the 16 to 32 GB for both scene management and rendering. Under sizing the amount of RAM can be more of a bother than anything else...more is always better. And as far as it goes, RAM is cheap.
So, yes, for 3Delight, a computer in the $1,000 to $1,500 range would be about right for what you want.
Thanks again. It is a relief to see that, for what I need, I should only invest in a good CPU. 8GB RAM seems enough, but since it is cheap a little more can't harm.
What about the ability to work a scene on the laptop and then render it on the desktop? Is that possible? Is there anyway to share a scene between 2 computers?
The simple solution, but more time consuming, would be to save the scene from the laptop, transfer the save file to the desktop, open it there and render. But I would like a faster way if there exists one.
Cheers
I get by with 8GB of RAM just fine. Yes it would be nice to have more but that's not going to happen any time soon so I manage with what I have.
Faster way is to have all the content in a central location...usually a NAS (network attached storage) device. You have both machines map that as a content drive and use it to save scene files. Then it's just a matter of opening it on one or the other machine.
Another way, is to use the 'Export to RIB' render option, with the standalone 3Delight.
I have one machine that has the same, and for most tasks it seems quite adequate. However, I also have two other workstations, one with 16 GB of RAM, and the second has 32. I use those machines for any of the "heavy lifting" as the saying goes. The problem with insufficient RAM relative to the amount of data that needs to be processed during a render, varies depending upon whether the CPU is being used or the GPU (graphics card). In the latter case the RAM is the VRAM built into the graphics card itself, which typically is less than the system RAM. Unlike the memory subsystem on the motherboard, the GPU is limited to the available ram on the card. Since you will not be using Iray (yet :)), the foregoing won't apply (yet :)). When it comes to the CPU, it relies on system RAM to keep it supplied with data during a render job. If the render job is large enough, it is possible that the CPU will run out of available RAM and will then begin to use "virtual memory", or what is called the swap or paging file. This is a reserved portion of one or more of your hard drives. Since read, write and data transfer operations are much slower when using the hard drive, this will slow the render operations down.
Bottom line is that as long as the scenes that you rendering are typically within the capacity of your system ram, all is good. If you start rendering larger scenes, you may exceed the amount of installed ram and that will slow the render down. Unfortunately, there is no easy way of calculating the amount of RAM a scene render requires - adding up all the files sizes alone, even if you were inclined to do that, will give you some idea, but still be less than the amount the system will use. That is why so often you see people recommending getting as much RAM as you can afford or your system supports, just to maximize the margin of error and avoid having the system thrashing your hard drive part way through a render.
I have one machine that has the same, and for most tasks it seems quite adequate. However, I also have two other workstations, one with 16 GB of RAM, and the second has 32. I use those machines for any of the "heavy lifting" as the saying goes. The problem with insufficient RAM relative to the amount of data that needs to be processed during a render, varies depending upon whether the CPU is being used or the GPU (graphics card). In the latter case the RAM is the VRAM built into the graphics card itself, which typically is less than the system RAM. Unlike the memory subsystem on the motherboard, the GPU is limited to the available ram on the card. Since you will not be using Iray (yet :)), the foregoing won't apply (yet :)). When it comes to the CPU, it relies on system RAM to keep it supplied with data during a render job. If the render job is large enough, it is possible that the CPU will run out of available RAM and will then begin to use "virtual memory", or what is called the swap or paging file. This is a reserved portion of one or more of your hard drives. Since read, write and data transfer operations are much slower when using the hard drive, this will slow the render operations down.
Bottom line is that as long as the scenes that you rendering are typically within the capacity of your system ram, all is good. If you start rendering larger scenes, you may exceed the amount of installed ram and that will slow the render down. Unfortunately, there is no easy way of calculating the amount of RAM a scene render requires - adding up all the files sizes alone, even if you were inclined to do that, will give you some idea, but still be less than the amount the system will use. That is why so often you see people recommending getting as much RAM as you can afford or your system supports, just to maximize the margin of error and avoid having the system thrashing your hard drive part way through a render.
The point, at least for me, is that this computer is all I can afford and therefore I work within its limits and find workarounds, if I want large scenes I render in layers. I do render in Iray its extremely slow for me and therefore not really my go to engine; personally I wish I could change the default engine and switch to Iray if I want rather than the other way around.
Understood, Scorpio, and I meant no disrespect. The key point is that you have developed those workarounds in recognition of the system that you are using, as opposed to throwing money at the problem. The perpetual upgrade bandwagon is a trap, for sure, and not all of us can afford to simply purchase new hardware whenever we feel like it. I know that I am not going to be buying any $800 plus video cards ever, just to use Iray. :)
Thank you so much for this advice (as well as making great content).
I am using an i5 4440 with 8 GB RAM and probably will go up to the i7-4790K and 16 GB RAM. Your reminder about dealing lighting will help me keep render times down.
I was going to also try to render layers and use a shadow plane if I lock down my camera.