Using two video cards, one to drive monitor, one for Studio
lorraineopua
Posts: 635
My system has a 3060 and I'm thinking about putting a 1050ti I have in it to run the monitor so as to free up all the vram for Studio. Is this a viable proposition? I would need to purchase a new mobo with two PCI Express x 16 slots and the one I have my eye on is NZ$225. My other option is to wait till July when the 4060 drops but that would cost far more and I think I'd still want to dedicate all its vram to Studio.
Post edited by lorraineopua on
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Comments
That's not "using two video cards with Studio" per se, because only the 3060 would be contributing to renders. There's no problem using a different video card to drive your monitors, although the benefits to your rendering are debated.
Sorry for being misleading, I have changed the title.
When you say the benefits are debated, what are you meaning?
There is no real results for how much of the VRAM on the rendering GPU is available for geometry and textures, which are the two needing the most when rendering Iray.
If you are going to install another nVidia card to your system, make sure it uses the same drivers as your rendering GPU does.
I have checked and both cards use the same driver.
I have two 3060 cards that I use for rendering, but I drive my display using the on-board graphics.
The reason is that if I drive the monitor with a 3060, if I do anything else while rendering the display
gets very choppy. Such as using paint.net to modify images while rendering. Which I often do.
So not using the 3060s for anything but rendering makes my workflow much smoother.
Can you tell me what you did to achieve this? I bought then returned a new mobo after the shop assured me I could not run one card for Studio and one for the monitor on that board. If I can achieve the same result using my onboard graphics, I'll be $225 better off.
I have decided to get the new 4060ti 16gb when it drops just to have the extra 4gb vram but not having to run the monitor will give me that much more.
It seems to be dependent on the motherboard. I couldn't get it to work on my MSI Tomahawk motherboard, but it works on my ASUS Tuf Gaming board. BUT I definitely can't say that all ASUSes will work or all MSIs won't, since I've only tried these two. Also, that MSI was a B350 (kind of lower mid-range) while the ASUS was an X570 (higher end) so there are too many variables to take into account.
Sadly, this is a niche use case, since most people don't install a powerful gaming card just to run on integrated graphics, so it's hard to find any reliable info online.
But to answer your question, I went into the BIOS and set Primary Video Device to IGFX (instead of PCIE). I'm on an AMD machine, so Intel may be different.
Getting back to your original question, the 1050ti will be fine for running the monitor. I have a 3060 and a 1080ti and sometimes I use the integrated graphics, or sometimes I use the 1080ti for display. The only drawback is I have to turn my machine off, then plug the cable in where I want it. Linux gets confused if I swap cables while its running - it thinks there are multiple monitors
.
What would be the best machine and the specifications of that machine to use for DAZ Studio rendering both still images and animation?
A server with mutliple A series cards, ideally all linked in pairs so that they could pool memory for materials at need, and plenty of system RAM to feed them along with enough SSD space for the desired content. You really need to put some limits on that sort of questuon if you are to get a useful answer (for one thing, does it need to share a domestic space with humans)>
Wow Richard Haseltine was it truly necessary to be such a smart _ _ _?! I would think most people would realize I'm a home PC hobbyist and not a full animation studio technician, because if I were the latter I wouldn't need to ask the question at all.
You still need to set some terms - the A series cards are not impossible for home users (we have some people running them), but they are not the ebst in every other task a home user might have. Without some context on price, what the system is going to be used for, and even how much space you have it is not possible to give sensible advice.
I wonder if it was because I'm running an 11th gen i7 and Windows that the shop said the mobo wouldn't work with the two cards. They didn't elaborate, it was nearly closing time, so I grabbed the refund and left. I wasn't prepared to take the risk they were wrong as I'm six weeks away from my IT son and the refund period would be closed. Sigh. It seemed such an easy process when I first decided to do it
What's best depends on the user and what one considers making something The Best.
What is the best car, a Ferrari that tops at 200+Mph, a Heavy Duty pickup truck that can tow the moon day in day out or a mini car that does 100 miles per gallon?
What I consider best is nothing like what the gaming society considers best, so I'm not going in to details, but if I were to build a new computer, the price range would be upwards of 3000 EUR for just the components inside the case and without the drives. In the US, that would probably be $2500+
I wouldn't trust anything a shopkeeper says about running multiple cards. They're probably talking about gaming, which is what most people buy cards for.
So it's certainly true that you can't use two cards to run a game (well, there's SLI, but that's pretty much dead). But any motherboard made in the past decade or so should be able to use two cards if it has the slots. I've had 4 desktops over the past 15 years and they've all run 2 cards fine.
If you want to run the integrated graphics and a separate GPU at the same time, that's what some motherboards don't support.
If you're still not sure of a motherboard, you can take a picture or get the model number and post it here in the forum and someone can probably give you more info.
This is what I got and returned
https://www.pbtech.co.nz/product/MBDGBM57205/Gigabyte-B560M-AORUS-PRO-AX-mATX-Form-Factor-For-I
Just out of curiosity, what's an A Series Card?
Targeted for professionals = More expensive and not necessarily optimized for gaming, but VRAM goes up to 48GB's on current ones.
Yes like Quadro. They have been playing with the names, the current line is named for example RTX A5000, I think they go from A4000 to A8000
Right. Thanks for the clarification!