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I agree with eelgoo. Go with the best you can reasonably afford and don't worry about. You say it's just a hobby, so either one of your options would work.
I have an 8GB vram card and I would love to have a card with more. Right off the bat Windows reserves a chunk of vram whether it uses it all or not. Windows 11 is even heavier on the reservation and Daz dropped support for Win 7 or 8 recently, can't remember which, maybe both. I'm on Win 10. Also keep in mind that higher screen resolutions use more vram, can be a consideration for modelling/sculpting. From your choice criteria I will say get the 12GB vram card and the extra ram. Sometimes with a big scene, photoshop open and a couple of browser tabs open my system shows more than 32GB ram in use.
I haven't used G9 and I'm not planning to, with 8k maps being a thing it will use more vram. Not unmanageable since you can reduce the size with scene optimizer. But the other problem is some assets like certain hairs for example especially Lindsay ones which are cool are very heavy in both geometry size and texture size. The blow wave one is barely useable with one character in the scene.
Daz itself is problematic with vram management. It doesn't effeciently clear vram while using the program, particularly when making use of iray preview. Assets that did fit into the vram for iray preview a minute ago can all of the sudden become too much to fit after making a few adjustments in the scene or having cancelled a render. The more vram you have, the higher the ceiling until Daz chokes.
I'm assuming your motherboard can take 64GB ram, and if you're at 48GB when choosing the 3060, you're already nearing another upgrade path for a 16GB vram card. You might consider getting 1 10TB drive for backups and go for 64GB ram now. Be sure to check what your pc's motherboard can support for every component you want to buy. Backblaze being $7 a month and a 10TB drive at approximately $250 is equivalent to 36 months of Backblaze with unlimited data. It's also a chunk of money you don't have to spend now, with the benefit of having additional backups offsite.
Back to the Daz speed factor, I've seen people with nvidia 4000 series cards complaining about Daz being slow, so the TI version isn't going to help in that regard. Gaming wise, I would be happy with whatever the 3060 can do, and from what I've read, its a lot. It will also be sufficient for working in either Unity or Unreal to develop games. Having a 2070 super 8GB card I'm reluctant to get a 3060 12GB vram card, gonna have to be 16GB at a reasonable price before I upgrade, until then, scene optimizer can go a long way. Here's an awesome site for comparisons between different cards, cpus, drives and so on
https://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-RTX-3060-Ti-vs-Nvidia-RTX-3060/4090vs4105
Rank:
Ok... I think this pretty much nails it. Found this video explaining some things:
3060 12GB vs 3070 8GBThe higher speed doesn't help if the textures are large AND daz would benifit from higher VRAM @12GB instead of @8GB. I can run most games well within 80 FPS @ 4K and considering I run @1080p I don't think the card speed would really matter. I think the higher VRAM is the way to go and adding system RAM from 32GB to 64GB helps daz run full VRAM through the card.
In the video the 3060 12GB outperforming the 3070 8GB in high resolutions. Not that I have any plans in the future to run 4K but having the option AND being able to run multiple progs while daz runs (to some degree) is a nice thing to have access to. I could certainly see myself running 3DSMAX and photoshop at the same time and that would be nice to do if I'm able.
3060 12GB + 64GB system ram appears to be the winner here. Thank you guys, I'll leave you alone now lol.
So I just did a quick scan of what people were saying and I agree with what they say. But one thing I didn't see. If your scene takes 10GB for example. The 3060 TI (8GB) will not Render it. It will use your CPU to render it. If you can't fit all the textures into the memory of the GPU then your done. The whole point of having the faster GPU is moot. Where as the 12GB 3060 will still render it. Doesn't matter if the 3060 TI is 1,000% faster. If it doesn't have the memory, you might as well not have it.
EDIT:
Man I started this post before Chupa responded, but took me that long to get back to it and finish lol.
Glad to see you chose the 12GB 3060.
I managed to get lucky and got 2 x 3090's of my mining friend for fairly cheap.Rank:@necro
Thank you for taking the time man, I do appreciate it. I think I got swindled by the hype and it derailed what I was thinking.I've seen quite often what happens when you run out of VRAM with this 1050Ti 4GB and often didn't understand what was going on. I do now after reading what you guys have been saying and watching some vids on it.
Thanks again!
@chupacabre409
The RTX 3060 12GB cards will work great for Daz if your scenes don't use more than 12GB of VRAM. Because Daz can use two or more graphics cards, you can always add another later to speed up your rendering if your scenes don't use over 12GB of VRAM. The only RTX 3000 series GPUs that support NVLink are the RTX 3090 and RTX 3090 ti. So you can't use a RTX 3060 to pool VRAM. Getting a 12GB 3060 over a higher end model with less VRAM may actually benefit you with higher detailed textures or more objects in a scene.
I'm not sure what your budget is. However, used RTX 3090 cards can be found for $700-$900 depending on the model. They may be the best price to performance ratio for Daz in the current market because of their 24GB of VRAM and high core count. If you render at high resolution and/or high resolution textures, 24GB of VRAM may be better suited for you.
Whatever your upgrade is, be sure your power supply can support it in terms of both the wattage and the cable connectors.
Despite what others say, upgrading the system RAM of your PC past 32GB won't do much to help with Daz rendering speed unless you are running a ton of background applications while running Daz. I have 128GB of RAM in my PC and I rarely use more than 20-24GB when running Daz and other software simultaneously, even with different high resolution textures and multiple figures and objects using those different high resolution textures. Daz doesn't load additional textures from system RAM while rendering. It loads everything into the GPU VRAM at the start of the rendering process. That's also why PCIE slot speed doesn't matter much for 3D rendering in Daz. You can use a PCIE 1X or 4X USB adapter and achieve almost the same rendering speed as the full PCIE 4.0 X16 slot. I've tested rendering times for the same scene in Daz with both the native PCIE 4.0 X16 slot and the PCIE X1 USB to PCIE crypto mining riser cables with multiple RTX 3090s. The difference in rendering times with within margin of error.
Don't use an AMD graphics card with Daz because they are not supported by Nvidia Iray. With an AMD graphics card, you will be stuck with CPU rendering.
About backup drives, you are better off having two separate backups. Its even better if you have both a local backup and an offsite(online) backup.
Also, never use the userbenchmark site, mentioned previously, for comparing video card performance. There is along list of issues as to why the data on the site is not reliable and their data is garbage. Their methods are not up to the usual standards of other hardware review sites. If you are curious about rendering performance in Daz between different GPUs, there is a 3D hardware Daz benchmark thread on the Daz forums.
Rank:@bavor
Thank you for chiming in. So Queensknight mentioned that you need 4x the system ram to support the full VRAM in a system or it'll kick it down to what ever system RAM divided by 4 would be. So...SYS-RAM=32GB/4= 8GB VRAM able to use in daz
I really don't want to spend $500 on a graphics card but the upgrade that the 3060 12GB offers is too good to pass. The card would run me around $380 + another $130 for matching system RAM @ around $510 that would pull me beyond the 48 GB system RAM required; from 32 GB into 64 GB system RAM. I like the forward compatibility option considering that I may down the road want to get a 16 GB card if those become affordable and 64/4=16. I'm bummed to hear you say the 3060 doesn't support linking.
Current System:
MOBO: ROG Strix X570-E Gaming
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 5600X
RAM: G.Skill Trident Z Neo Series 32GB (2 x 16GB) SDRAM PC4-28800 DDR4 3600
PS: RMx Series RM750x — 750 Watt 80 PLUS Gold Certified Fully Modular PSU
AIR Cooler: Noctua NH-D15
SSD1 (OS): 980 PRO PCIe® 4.0 NVMe SSD 500GB
SSD2: 980 PRO PCIe 4.0 NVMe™ SSD 2TB
HHD: Western Digital 6TB WD Blue PC Internal Hard Drive HDD – 5400 RPM, SATA 6 Gb/s, 256 MB Cache
CARD: GTX 1050Ti 4GB DDR5This mobo would support 128 GB PC4600 at max but I'm running right now with 32GB PC3600. The idea was to upgrade much later with RYZEN9 and faster RAM when/if prices dropped. I love this current settup btw, I've built a few but this one has been the best. It's just missing a decent graphics card atm. Built this in 2021 and the system I ran before that was based off amd phenom ii x4 955 lol.
EDIT: forgot to mention, I'm to the point that I don't trust any reviews on PC hardware.
The data that DAZ stores in VRAM is compressed (by default), and while it remains in VRAM it can be used very efficiently by the GPU, but at various points DAZ needs to work with that data outside of VRAM, especially when it comes to post-processing filters, exporting, saving the rendered images, etc. When it does that, it needs to uncompress the VRAM data into system RAM. The compression ratio varies by the type of data (texture images vs. geometry data), but typically ends up around 4:1, so a scene that compresses into 8GB of VRAM will want 4x8=32GB of system RAM to fully unpack into memory without having to page any of it to disk. That's where the "4xVRAM" recommendation comes from.
@chupacabre409
The idea that adding more system RAM (or filling all the motherboard's RAM slots) will "slow down" your system is a pernicious myth. It is true, however, that there are some RAM configurations that are more efficient than others, and this depends on your motherboard, its chipset, and your CPU(s). Typically these days CPUs process memory in "channels", and to get the best performance you usually want to balance the RAM across those channels, using modules of the same size, speed, and latency (ideally identical DIMMs from the same manufacturer). If the channels are not balanced, you can experience a performance hit, and that's what leads some people to mistakenly think that "adding RAM slows things down".
The manual for your motherboard will usually advise you on how best to allocate the DIMMs to do this. Often this will involve filling every other slot, or leaving certain slots empty unless you can fill them all evenly with identical modules, etc. Consult the manual for more specific advice for your board.
Also note that your system will run at the speed of the slowest DIMMs you install, so if you're adding RAM be sure that your new DIMMs are at least as fast as the ones you already have.
Mixing DIMMs of different capacities, speeds, timings, and brands is where people usually run into problems, because they don't want to have to replace all of their existing DIMMs if they don't have to. For instance your system might have 8 DIMM slots and you have 4GB DIMMs in each of them, so you might think, "I can just replace 4 of those DIMMs with 8GB DIMMs so I'd end up with 48GB", but now you're mixing 4GB and 8GB DIMMs and you may be unbalancing the memory channels in the process. You don't want to mix DIMMs of different capacities in the same channel, so depending on your board's configuration there may be no way to efficiently balance that configuration.
As a rule, you want to fill each slot with identical DIMMs, and filling all of the DIMM slots is always going to be a channel-balanced configuration in this case. From a performance standpoint it can be worth considering selling all of your existing DIMMs to purchase a full set of performance-matched DIMMs of a larger size, rather than trying to upgrade your RAM partially.
Having said all of that, the performance gains/losses we're quibbling about here are often only measurable in benchmarks. In the real world, the biggest performance hit you'll encounter is the one in which you run out of RAM (and end up paging to disk), so even if your DIMM configuration isn't "optimal", the added RAM will improve your quality of life! 🙂
Rank:@queensknight
Thank you bud, that clears up some things.I bought G.Skill Trident Z Neo Series 32GB (2 x 16GB) SDRAM PC4-28800 DDR4 3600 in a pair off amazon about a year ago. I just figure I'll purchase the same and fill out the slots. This mobo is pretty sweet, I splurged on this one because I had problems in the past with crap boards.
Thank you all for the info, I certainly appreciate you guys/gals taking the time!
Look for used 3000 series cards on ebay and criegslist.
I managed to get a 3090 for 650 last year when Eth went to proof of stake.
the thing limiting your performance might be your system RAM–the 4070 TI has 12GB of VRAM, so DAZ will want a minimum of 48GB (4x VRAM) to fully unpack the scene data. With 32GB of system RAM, DAZ can handle scenes that use up to 8GB of VRAM (out of your 4070TI’s 12) efficiently, but if your scene requires more than 8GB of VRAM you’ll hit the system RAM paging wall. Upgrade to 48GB of system RAM and you’ll be able to use the full 12GB of VRAM at full speed.
Interesting! Thank you for the info - I have two slots on the motherboard free that are looking awful lonely all of a sudden. 🙂
Rank:@daishi
man, I feel like that's kinda dodgy. IDK if I have enough trust in used graphics cards. I might try to do that if I could get a 4090 @ $500 but that isn't going to happen lol.@chupacabre409
You can trust used if you can trust the seller. I have picked up some bargains in the past but due diligence is always key in any deal. If you buy a used card just benchmark it like the world is ending tomorrow. If you leave it running for a few hours or at least 24 as I did that should give you some headroom for a return if it fails.
Rank:@inversekinematics
You're probably right. I've just never done anything like that. Maybe if I knew the person I wouldn't mind it so much.
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