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I'm puttering along with a GTX 1050Ti and I love the little guy but he's getting old. I'm looking for a new graphics card. I was considering the GTX 3060Ti but it only has 8GB ram in it. There's another version of this card that has 12GB ram and I've heard that it works better for daz3d due to the increased ram. Do any of you have this card and what are your thoughts on it?
Also, should I be considering a different card? I like Nvidia but I've owned ATI cards in the past. I just recall the ATI's running really hot. My system is air cooled and well balanced but IDK if there would be issues if the card is pushing high heat.
I'm into video games & video game creation, daz obviously, digital art and I want to get into modeling/texturing but not right now. Perhaps if you do any of these things you could give me some insight on what card you're using and what your thoughts on it are.
Chime in if you have some thoughts on it, Thanks!
The 3060 non TI is the best one $$ wise. Don't bother with the TI. If you can afford it, a 3080 12GB version is nice, and more so a 3090 which has 24GB.
4070 TI 12GB is also nice if you can afford it, as well as a 4080 16GB, and a 4090 24GB.Rank:@necro
I think I got spoiled with the price vs performance of this 1050ti. I paid $100 dollars for the thing and it's been the best graphics card I've owned. The thing doesn't kick heat or very little and low power consumption. It's run most of my games fairly well with some finagling but not as well as I would have liked.What card are you using and how's the heat/performance? Air cooled or liquid?
Rank:I'm feeling partial to that 3060 12GB, so glad to hear that @gladson1976
So hows the heat and power consumption on that thing? Do you feel like stock air cooling is fine for it? Any issues?
Rank:I'm really glad to hear that. I don't know why but I've felt kind of partial to that video card the second I saw it. Feels like a good replacement for this GTX 1050Ti. Thanks for the info's!
Rank:@gladson1976
Yeah, I'm thinking that the 3060 12GB is it. I don't like to spend 4-500 on graphics cards anymore but it's quite appealing. Thanks for the infos!Only NVidia GPUs can render Iray natively (Iray is an NVidia technology), so from a performance standpoint with 3D apps like DAZ you'll want something NVidia-based. You can have the best-performing AMD/Intel/M1 GPU in the world, but if DAZ Studio doesn't see an NVidia GPU it sends all the rendering work to your CPU. Frustrating as hell, but that's the reality at the moment, and unfortunately the "NVidia or nothing" mentality seems to have become entrenched in the 3D software industry (it's not just DAZ).
In the NVidia lineup, anything in the 30xx series will do the job for you, performance-wise, but you're right to be looking at the VRAM--that's going to be the limiting factor for you when it comes to scene complexity and level of detail.
Consider that HD models from G8.1-9 and 4k/8k/16k textures are going to take up more VRAM than previous generations, and that's only going to grow over time as people start producing higher-resolution props and settings to go with these figures. All of this has to fit into VRAM for it to benefit from GPU acceleration; if it overflows at all, everything goes to system RAM, and the CPU.
Something to keep in mind is that if the card you choose supports NVlink, you can bond two of those cards together to pool their VRAM (e.g. 8GB + 8GB = 16GB), so you have an upgrade path if you decide to get one card now and add a second one later. That said, NVlink has its limitations you need to be aware of. VRAM for textures is pooled (as you would expect), but VRAM for geometry is still duplicated--each GPU still needs its own copy of the geometry data. So if your scene is texture-heavy NVlink can be a wonderful thing, but if your scene is geometry-heavy it won't help you at all--you'll still be limited to the VRAM of an individual card.
Now, having said all of that, we would all probably love to have a 48GB card, right? 🙂 Well, yes, but if you had all the VRAM in the world to play with you'd just develop sloppy habits when it comes to scene optimization. It would make you a lazy 3D artist if you didn't have to think about the elements of your scene that impact rendering performance, so in a way having to limit yourself to 24GB, or 12GB, or even 8GB is not a bad thing.
Having to work with relatively low amounts of VRAM encourages you to learn more about how rendering engines work, how to tweak render settings, use instancing, canvases, ghost lights, and tricks for hiding/removing unnecessary geometry--all things that will make you a better 3D artist. As a case in point, if I sloppily throw a moderately complex scene together with HD models and 4K textures it can unpack to 26-30GB, but when I optimize it it might require less than 10GB, which would fit in the VRAM of a 12GB card.
I would consider 8GB a minimum for VRAM for someone starting out with DAZ, and 12GB to be a sweet spot for intermediate users. Pro users want 24GB or 48GB, if they can afford it 🙂 The difference is largely in the complexity of the scenes being rendered. A 3D artist who knows how to optimize their scenes will always be able to get more out of their hardware, so it's kind of a blessing to learn with less VRAM, because those same optimization techniques will pay huge dividends (in terms of the scale and complexity of the scenes you can create) when you eventually have more VRAM to play with.
Your system RAM also matters. To be able to unpack a DAZ scene into memory, you should have at least 4x the RAM as you have VRAM, so if you have an 8GB card you'd want at least 32GB of system RAM, a 12GB card would require 48GB of system RAM, etc. If DAZ runs out of physical RAM to unpack the scene it will still work, it's just that it will have to page the data into/out of RAM (to SSD or god forbid HD), which slows things down tremendously. If you like to have a lot of other memory-hungry apps open as well, budget more RAM for those.
To put my advice into some context, at the moment my workstation has 2x PNY RTX A5000 cards NVlink-ed together (24GB + 24GB) and 384GB of system RAM. I find this to be a "comfortable" performance point for multi-disciplinary 3D work--DAZ, ZBrush, Blender, 3D-Coat, Marvelous Designer, World Creator, Substance Designer, Substance Painter, Marmoset Toolbag, Unreal Engine, Unity, etc., and working with large assets such as the Kitbash3D world kits (and whatever film/tv/game assets clients send me to work on). Probably overkill for posing virtual dolls in DAZ Studio for simple scenes, but large battlefield tableaus and zombie hordes can test hardware quickly! 🙂
Rank:@queensknight
That's not something I would have considered at all. My system right now has 32 gb ram and I have this dinky 1050Ti atm. Some renders are hitting around 2-3 hours and I didn't even think to optimize anything beyond using a rendering tool that auto removes anything outside the camera view port. Working with engine rendering wasn't something I considered taking time to learn either. Also, didn't know about an Nvidia graphics card being a necessity, that's good to know.I'm leaning into that 3060 12GB but have 32GB of system ram. I suppose I'll need to upgrade that to 48GB. I didn't think to consider later upgrading the system with two of the same cards either.
Thank you for taking the time to write that out, very eye opening.
Rank:I've only done testing renders with daz so far. Mostly to see how things work. I'm thinking that when I get to the point of actually rendering something with a complete environment it's going to take quite some time.
I was actually working on a art project centered around the idea of the 5 rivers of Hades. I was thinking about rendering the foreground/characters/background separately in .png for the translucency values and adjusting/merging the images in photoshop/lightroom. I'm not sure how well I can swing that but I'm going to try lol.
I have a few 3060 12GB's. It's fairly quick at rendering most stuff. MMX has a good texture pack for characters and other stuff if you need to save some memory. The Scene Optimizer is also good for that. Just don't make anything less then the resolution of what you want your image to be or you'll start to see some distortion on closer renders.
@chupacabre409 rendering characters or background separate should work out well for you, I do it all the time. Its much easier to modify later if I change my mind about something in the scene, and a specific object can be moved or even removed compeletely, without having to re-render.
Another benefit, is if doing any kind of post work, you can tweak each character or object individually. Sometimes in post work, making a change to the scene as a whole might look great on some parts but the changes kill another area. If its rendered separately, its not an issue and you get much more control.
When I recently upgraded my computer it came with a 3060 TI, which I used for a while. Zero complaints, that thing was a truly massive upgrade from my 1070 TI.
I did update to the 4070 TI, partially because I decided to just bite the bullet and get all new-gen stuff so I don't have to keep agonizing about specs and numbers that didn't matter in a practical sense. I really don't know why reviews online are harsh about it - compared to my friend's 4080 I'll take the ~$600-$700 savings.
My opinion: If you can get the 4070 TI at MSRP, it is worthwhile if you do a lot of graphic intensive stuff like gaming, rendering, 3D design, etc. If not, the 3060 TI will have you covered.
Rank:@necro
That's good to hear. I'm thinking that the 3060 12GB is what I'll nab. I'm hearing nothing but good things about it. Thanks for the infos.
@gts6
So glad to hear that others do that. I haven't tried it yet but I like the idea of having more control over the different layers as you mentioned. I'm going to have to play around with it some.
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