System requirements
Daz 3D Forums > General > New Users>System requirements
System requirements
taftdavidhaynes
Posts: 37
in New Users
A friend of mine tells me that my computer will not run Daz 3d. I have a Compaq Presario. it has a 2.2 gb processor. 9 g og RAM memory, and 120 g free on the hard drive. I say it will run, but it will be very slow to render. He says it won't work at all. Please tell me minimum requirements.
Thanks
Dave
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Comments
I assume for CPU you mean GHz? How many cores does it have? I would guess you won't have an nVidia GPU with CUDA support so you'd be limited to CPU rendering, but I'm not sure - as long as your GPU meets the minimum OpenGL requirement - that you will be blocked from running at all.
Another issue may be "what constitutes a render". If you are the next Rembrandt then what does an overnight, eight-hour render mean in the broader scheme of things. Bring 'em on! On the other hand if you are seeking to generate 20 frames per second of 1280 x 720 pixels of animation (or if you are are a beginner in a very big hurry) then a slow computer would be a force (or lack of force) to reckon with.
There are also ways to trim the work flow... for example if that strip of lush grash at the front of the scene, or the puffy clouds in the distance are not going to move or change much, perhaps they could be rendered just ONCE as a transparent layer, to be assembled later.
Also if you are very clear-headed as to what you want, and you don't need to get into all sorts of interesting but (computer) time-consumbing "experiments" and rabbit holes of creativity, then one or two relatively low-powered computers may be enough to get you to where you want to go.
Example: my tow-headed little dog Sticky is always in a hurry and prefers to "whizz" through the driveway of the local fast-food outlet. I can tell the story in a single frame, in 3Delight... but it took about a year to figure out the positioning and ray-tracing in DAZ Studio on a dinky 4 GB ram/cpu-renders-only Toshiba laptop (4 TB external storage though) and several hours for each of several "final" renders - not every render will turn out *exactly* the way you want it on the first or second pass.
You assume correctly. Just a typo. My system is 64 bit, so I do have Nvidia Iray. It did render, and it only took 4 hours for a 30 second video. How much of a computer do I need to get a computer that will render faster. That didn't even have background.
You might find this useful: https://helpdaz.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/207530513-System-Recommendations-for-DAZ-Studio-4-
Having a 64 bit system doesn't equal nVidea card. If you have an nVidea card, which model do you have?
4 hours for a 30 second video is a very good time. Iray renders, even with nVidea cards, can take anywhere between a few minutes and several hours to complete, depending on what is in the scene, lights, shaders used, etc.
Here's a benchmark test that might give you a more realistic idea on how fast or slow your system really is, compared to others. http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/53771/iray-starter-scene-post-your-benchmarks/p1
EDIT: The benchmark test says it needs 4.8, but it works the same with DAZ Studio 4.9
It isn't the computer that does it, it's the graphics card. And it isn't enough to have just any NVidia card — I have an old and low-powered one that can't handle Iray rendering, so I'm stuck with CPU rendering. The amount of memory on the card must also be kept in mind, since the whole scene must fit in it; 4Gb seems to be the lower limit for anything more than a small, simple scene.
FWIW, many people here seem to prefer a 9-series card, or one of the new 10-series cards, but it very much depends on what you can afford — the new cards are expen$$$ive — and whether your computer's power supply can run a high-end card as well as everything else.
Huh, that's an interesting point, about needing a suitable power supply. I never thought of that, although I assume that "gaming" systems that you see in stores have already taken care of this part... anyway the ads usually don't mention the feature, just a reference to which Nvidia and how much dedicated graphics.
Don't forget the external storage aspect; once you really get going on rendering and collecting shaders and so on, the necessary disk space can grow quickly.
What's theh rule of thumb in using an external power supply to power a card. I did it successfully with a gtx 680 card, but when I put a 780 card into the same computer, the card spark and emitted a puff of smoke....no more card. What happened?