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I've mentioned this before but if you know how to set up your scene properly there's little need to go for killer rigs. Anything from the RTX 2000 series to the 4090 will render fine and reasonably quickly so long as you prevent the 3D curse of GPU dropping to CPU.
Sometimes, actually quite often in my experience, simply re-starting DS will free up VRAM to prevent this happening. Some mods at Daz say I must be on the VRAM cusp (some netherzone) of dropping to CPU already but my experience clearly says otherwise.
If one is experienced enough to know how to optimise their scenes with respect to efficient lighting and GPU texture load, anything beyond a 2080 is only saving you a matter of minutes in rendering time, 20 vs 50 who cares. As such I'm not about to shell out thousands of bucks for very minimal returns.If you're buying a pre-built PC, try to avoid a "gamer" rig. You won't need ultra high speed RAM or maximized single-core clocks. Look for the buzzwords "productivity" or "rendering" or "deep learning." Others here, especially LivingPixels, have given good perspective on what you should prioritize.
I will reiterate that VRAM is very important to Daz. It doesn't matter how fast your PC is if you can't fit your scene into the VRAM.
I jumped from a 2080 to a 4090. night and day difference. something that takes an hour to render, now it completes in less than 15 minutes. plus I don't even have to worry about overflowing VRAM anymore. the card is just stupid fast.
I bet it took an hour because you ran out of VRAM. And you ran out of VRAM because you didn't optimise you scene. No problem with except you probably spent several thousand dollars on something you didn't really need.
@Frank22 if I run out of VRAM, it'll take more than an hour. I've experienced it. for example, while rendering at 5K resolution on my 2080 8GB I'd usually get about 8 - 9 iterations per 10s. if the VRAM runs out, it'll be a few times slower, perhaps about 1-2 iterations per 10s only. in the logs, Daz will also tell you about VRAM allocation failure as it falls back to forced CPU rendering.
now with my 4090, I get 40-50 iterations per 10s. and I don't have to worry about VRAM running out no more.
additionally, I do works other than Daz renders. rendering on Daz is just a small hobby. my pytorch/transformers/tensorflow works have been accelerated so much I'm very happy with it.
@Slender331man What do you use machine learning for? I'm curious about it, but haven't seen the benefit beyond a tech hobby. (Said in a Daz forum; I am self aware. 😉 )
@enjoyify frankly they're my pet hobbies as well. one of them is DL-based OCR...but for chinese characters so it's tough. I'm a SWE and so playing around and learning other technologies like ML (out of my current field) is one of my facets to burn time and build my portfolio a little better. perhaps any SWE loves new shiny object and I'm one of em. and finally we can build life-changing predictions like this one: https://dickrnn.github.io/
@Slender331man Yes, truly! https://dickrnn.github.io/ is changing lives!
For Nvidia Iray you want an Nvidia RTX GPU. Right now, as others have said, the RTX 4090 is the best option for maximum performance. However, if your budget is smaller, a used RTX 3090 is an excellent choice. The RTX 4090 is almost twice as fast as the RTX 3090 in some of the Daz rendering benchmarks on the Daz forums. The RTX 3090 has 24 GB or VRAM, which helps with complex scenes. They can be found for $700-$900 US used. Prices in Canada are a little higher, even after the currency conversion. The RTX 3090 ti is similar to the RTX 3090, but has a few more Cuda cores and is slightly faster with rendering, but costs more new or used. If its in your budget, you can use two high end graphics cards and almost double your rendering power and cut your render times in half. I've done tests in Daz with 1, 2, 3, and 4 RTX 3090 cards in one system and the performance increase declines a little bit with every card added past two, but not by much. With a modern Nvidia RTX GPU, you would want to make sure to only have the GPU do the rendering, whish is an option to change in Daz. Adding the CPU to the rendering in Daz often slows down the rendering with newer graphics cards. AMD GPUs are not compatible with Nvidia Iray of course.
Overclocking the CPU and the VRAM has minimal effect on render times in Daz with Iray. Also, modern Nvidia GPUs will go above their rated clock speed automatically if they aren't overheating. So don't get too hung up on GPU clock speed of the same model of GPU if it comes down to saving money going with one of the same model and VRAM size that is rated for a slightly slower clock speed. I have a bunch of RTX 3090 Kignpin cards(designed for competitive overclocking and competitive benchmarking) with no power limits on the cards. Even with those cards at their maximum stable overclock for Daz with Iray, my renders were only a few percent faster between their "stock" speed and their overclocked speed when rendering the same scene.
For Daz, the CPU doesn't matter that much. Any modern CPU with 6 or 8 or more cores will be fine. You will want a newer system with DDR4 or DDR5 RAM. DDR5 has come down in price and become much more affordable. An AMD 5800X, 5800X3D, 7700X, or Intel 13600K would work great with Daz if you are building a new system. However, the new Intel CPUs require Windows 11 for best performance due to the way the Windows task scheduler works.
I completely disagree with LivingPixels about VRAM for Daz or even Blender. I've tried renders with different amounts of RAM in my systems. There is no significant difference in render times in Daz using Iray with 32 GB, 64 GB, or 128 GB of RAM when using 1, 2, or 3 RTX 3090 GPUs or 1 or two RTX 2080 GPUs. It doesn't matter if its dual channel or quad channel RAM. This is because Daz loads everything in the GPU VRAM at the start of the render, which you can see in the log files, then starts the render. Daz only resorts to CPU rendering if there isn't enough GPU VRAM available. There are many ways you can prevent that(CPU rendering) from happening.
I'm not sure if your goal is minimal expense or if you have a higher budget...
For Daz with Iray, you want to focus as much of your budget as you can on the newest and fastest Nvidia RTX GPU you can get.
If you have a high budget, I'd go with an AMD 5800X or 5800X3D CPU, X570 or B550 motherboard, RTX 4090, 32 GB of DDR4 3600 CAS16 RAM, 1 TB NVMe SSD for the operating system and other programs, a 4TB NVME SSD for Daz, 1000 watt or higher 80+ gold(or better power supply), mid tower ATX case, and appropriate cooling for the CPU because many of the newer mid and high end the CPUs don't come with coolers.
If your budget is lower, I'd go with an AMD 5600X CPU, X570 or B550 motherboard, RTX 3060, 3080 12GB 3080 ti, or RTX 3090, 32 GB of DDR4 3600 CAS16 RAM, 1 TB NVMe SSD for the operating system and other programs, a 2TB to 4TB NVME SSD for Daz, 850 watt or higher 80+ gold(or better power supply), mid tower ATX case, and appropriate cooling for the CPU.
If you aren't going to upgrade the entire system and just do minimal upgrades, I'd upgrade the power supply, add a newer Nvidia RTX GPU, and a SATA SSD. You should have Daz installed on the SATA SSD and all of your Daz assets on the SATA SSD. If its in your budget, have a separate SSD for your operating system. I'd go with a RTX 3000 series GPU over thee RTX 2000 series GPU due to better Iray rendering abilities if its in the budget for doing minimal upgrades.
I build custom PCs as a side business and can answer questions if you need assistance.
@FRANK22 The RTX 4090 is just four times faster in Daz Iray rendering than the RTX 2080. It has nothing to do with @slender331man running out of VRAM. The RTX 3090 is about twice as fast as the RTX 2080 in Daz Iray rendering. The RTX 4090 is about twice as fast as the RTX 3090 in Daz Iray rendering. The math works out to about 1/4 the render time.
The Daz forums community run Iray benchmark shows the same results. The 4090 is 4 times faster than the 2080 in Daz with Iray.
No argument from me about that @Bavor, way faster, but I still contend that when your renders take only say 35 minutes with a 2080, 10 minutes with a 4090 doesn't justify the time saving or massive expense, at least not for me and the types of renders I do.
I guess if you're doing it professionally it would pay off.... and/or if you're inpatient.It depends on how complicated your renders are and the render resolution. Renders that take an hour or more on a 2080 take 15 minutes on a 4090. Also, using your example, if a render takes 10 minutes with a 4090 its going to take 40 minutes or more with a 2080. Also, the more complex the lighting and reflections are in the scene, the bigger the difference there will be between a 2080 and a 4090.
Many people throw large amounts of money into their hobbies because they enjoy it. Look at how expensive something as simple such as fishing or bicycling can get for an enthusiast for example. $1600 for a 4090 doesn't sound unreasonable for someone who has limited time for their hobby. I've seen people spend $1600 on a set of bicycle wheels.
True @Bavor it depends on priorities. An RTX4090 costs US$2300 where I live and I can't personally justify a spend like that, or the system upgrade I'd have to do.
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