Can't Render, Won't Buy
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Are there figures showing how much advantage hyperthreading gives in Studio? In Bryce it's about a ten percent improvement, which is nice to have all else being equal, but maybe not enough to spend hundreds more on a CPU when funds are tight.
Sorry @AndyGrimm - I didn't check that (meant to but forgot).
It isn't a complex scene - could hardly be more simple, really. I don't have much luck with a GTX970 but that was in my older spare PC (2010 vintage i7). I sent it back to Amazon for a refund.
@Kevin, My iMac has an i7. It also has a 2GB Nvidia card but that goes bonkers with pixellation artefacts all over my display if I try to use it. That's apparently a common problem on iMacs. I've read conflicting articles about the value of hyperthreading with Skylake Intels. Many seem to indicate that the i5 is pretty damn quick in single thread, 4 core mode and that hyperthreaing doesn't add much value.
The 680mx has 1530 cudas... and you cant use it? that's really a pity. did you try to render canvases direct to files ?
I've been on the Mac forums where others have been complaining abot the pixellation but no solution. Apple recalled some older iMacs with different GPU's but not the 2012 iMac that I have. It isn't just IRay - if I try to use it for Luxrender GPU renders it does the same thing. I'm getting closer to the decision to sell it and move back to PC. The iMac is fine for 2D work, plays games pretty well and videos are nice in HD. Just not 3D rendering.
This is what I'm looking at to replace the iMac. I could probably get most of the cost back if I sold the iMac ...
Peter, from the 3Delight FAQ: "On the more recent CPUs (such as the Intel Core i7) some of our clients have reported performance gains of up to 30% by enabling hyper-threading. But on older CPUs the gains were negligible, if any. So you may have to do rendering tests with and without hyper-threading on your computer and decide for yourself. Also consider that if hyper-threading is enabled, rendering will consume more memory and if you dont have enough, it may start to slow things down. So, if you encounter a situation where you are running low on memory and your computer starts swapping too much during rendering, you may want to try disabling hyper-threading (or as effectively and more simply tell 3Delight through the rendering options to use only half the cores during rendering)."
And the difference in cost between a 4-core i5 and a 4-core i7 is only $100 at Newegg. Marble said he wanted to reduce render times to something more acceptable on what I assume are just stills. If animations were involved, I'd advise HT. If it's stills or if everything is going to be done on the GPU, then it doesn't matter so much.
SSD drives, Marble, are good loading programs, large data files, and the OS (but since Windows 7, it loads much faster even off a standard hard drive), but it won't help your render times so much. You could shave some money off or put it to good use instead with the CPU, RAM or GPU. But it depends again on what you ultimately see yourself doing.
I'm not so sure you could get much back on a used iMac but check around and see what they are going for on ebay.
The only time SSD drives help when rendering is if you do not have enough memory and you are swapping to disk...and since part of the point of a new build is to have enough memory, there isn't much benefit vs cost. RAM is still cheaper.
Yeah, I do mostly still images so I'm not too concerned about hyperthreading. When I had the GTX970 for a short while, I ran GPU-Z and my typical scene was 2.8GB. As for SSD drives - I only need a 128GB because all of my data files will go on an HDD. I think 16GB RAM should be OK for starters. I have 24GB in the iMac though. I wish that IRay was more versatile so that it could combine VRAM and main RAM instead of all-or-nothing.
My model iMac is going for around 800GBP on Ebay. US citizens are lucky with computer prices because where you pay $1,000, we pay near enough 1,000 GBP even though the exchange rate has been hovering around 1.5.
@marble. How do you feel about postwork/a bit of compositing? photoshop (and similar) have some very good denoising tools.
Also the one thing I really do like about luxrender was that tool to give certain parts of the render more priority. Now Iray doesnt have that, but what you can do is, if 80% of your render is done and clean looking, you can save that and then do a spot render to a new window of just the trouble bits (like somewere with glass or more shadows).
A lot of my renders with scenery are actually quite piecemeal this render
Is actually 3 renders The background above the water with victoria and her clothes deleted (which needed relatively few samples to complete) The part of the background with water again with no victoria (which needed a lot of samples as the water was volumetric), and then just the area of the scene victoria was occupying (more samples than the BG less than the water)
That's a really nice render - I saw it in another thread and am truly impressed.
I'm ok with Photoshop/Gimp, etc. but it would be nice to get to 80% - I've never had the patience to wait that long :) The noise pen thingy in Luxrender doesn't work with the new CPU acceleration.
With compositing - I don't have much experience but I always wonder about how to get shadows to appear on a separate render?
It not compositing in that sence, its actually much more basic these are the three renders (well the black would be transparent)
In this instance what it mostly came down to was the water needed 5000 iterations to denoise the figure something like 1500 and the non water background 500. now if I had rendered it as 1 unit the whole thing would have had to get to 5000 interations so Iray would have spent a bunch of time doing unnecesary calculations on the already clean areas and each iteration would take longer because the genesis figure was there using memory.
Just a note on CPUs with hyperthreading. I tested my new computer against my old computer on my biggest scene done in Daz studio using DS4.6
The scene:
http://mattymanx.deviantart.com/art/The-Girls-Dorm-499661182
Old PC - Intel Core2 Quad Q6600 2.4Ghz - 8GB RAM - 3 hours 10 min
New PC - Intel i7 6700K 4.0Ghz - 32GB RAM - 48 min
Marble, don't rush into that specification. Seems a bit expensive to me, assuming no OS or monitor included.
Typical, my regular hardware site has decided to become irregular. Tomorrow evening now...
Your assumption is correct - no monitor or OS. I still have a Windows 7 install disk although I'm not sure I can use it again becuase I upgraded my old spare PC to Win10 recently using that Windows 7 as a base for the free upgrade. Monitors are cheaper from Amazon.
But yes, it is more than I wanted to pay but I couldn't find anything cheaper. Another option is to use what I can of the old PC which has a 650W PSU, a 1TB and a 500MB HDD (SATA) and, of course, a Mid-Tower case. But all of that is 6 years old.
@Marble, I've owned macs for 12 years. Currently I have two side by side...I run one with windows 10 where I'm able to update the video card drivers which enables the cuda cores because of direct x and the nvidia drivers...runs like a beast when rendering scenes in dazstudio. My nvidia card is a 755m 2gig. Windows runs so much better on a mac then a pc (which I always found strange) but cost wise have you thought about using bootcamp and installing windows....much cheaper solution than replacing your imac because looking at your specs it would seem to be perfectly capable of running it (studio). As for pixelation I have nvidia cards on both macs and have not had any of those issues.
It is an idea that I've considered but not followed up on because the Nvidia in my Mac has only 2GB. The pixellation might be a driver issue but, from what I have read, it seems to be more a heat thing. That doesn't explain why it runs games OK but then I don't have many games and what I do have are not very demanding, render-wise.
@Marble my video card is only 2gig as well and it does fine and even better on the windows side. I have neither interface issues or rendering. Not once have I heard the fan kick on, so heating issues have not been a problem whatsoever. At least on the windows side I can get the drivers updated and the fact it allows me to use cuda/GPU rendering which has sped everything up and I'm only running 16g ram on the windows mac machine and 32 gig on the non rendering mac...which I need to swap ram out soon...but so far it hasn't been an issue. I'm also doing modeling and rendering in Modo 3d/blender and zbrush and have not had any issues. As I said, it's a cheaper solution and personally (for me) I love my macs and they've been workhorses...in fact I still have a titanium 17" mac laptop from 2004. Bought an Alienware 17" Laptop with all the bells and whistles and had to take it back two days later because it was a 4k monitor (warning: do not buy any 4 or 5k monitors etc as dazstudio becomes microscopic to the point of not being able to use it, it's so small) So until dazstudio updates to that ability, please stay clear. It will also affect other older programs as well.
Thanks. I'll try bootcamp out of interest. At least it will tell me whether the dispaly thing is a software/driver issue. Will have to wait a couple of days before I can get around to that though.
Elton John! Even the papers down under have been coy.
The Right Honourable member might think that, but I couldn't possibly comment. ;-)
I thought as much ;) Don't know why the local papers are keeping stum, very strange.
Ian Richardson delivered that line so brilliantly - Kevin Spacey wishes ...
How about this one, Peter? Less expensive, includes Windows 10 but still no Monitor.
http://www.chillblast.com/chillblast-fusion-krypton-gaming-pc.html?category_id=412#product-details-tab-features
@marble.. i am not Peter but still following here.....
While this is a fair priced system the Asus Z170M-PLUS Motherboard has only one GPU slot... i would pick a system with minimum 2way sli support. The Asus MAXIMUS VIII GENE Z170 Motherboard (configuration) would offer 2 pci 3.0 slots. Also i recommend that you pick a powersupply with minimum 750 watt... (in 2- 3 years you can get titan x for 300 usd secondhand/refurbished).
The more the merrier. Sorry Marble, still stuck at work for now.
Oh, and not even our Members of Parliament are permitted to mention the threesome celebrity.
If it was, say, an aging musician looking to revive interest in his back catalogue - then good strategy.
This was just covered on the BBC news. They reported that although it could be mentioned in the House of Commons by any MP, the speaker of the house had reminded them that they should exercise their freedoms responsibly and not undermine the courts without good reason. So yes technically they could mention it, but at the risk of irritating the speaker and getting sent to the naughty step - and who would want to get stuck there next to the Beast of Bolsover?
Edit, see - you've sucked me back into this Peter! You are a bad influence.
@AndtGrimm : As it looks like a mini case, I'm doubting that it would take a pair of GPU cards. Adding your suggestions takes it back over the 1,000 GBP (1,105) but again I suspect I would have to order a different case. I'll keep looking - maybe I'll stumble on a bargain.
Me, bad? It, it was Pam who had to be moderated for being naughty (alright, by herself). I've been all legal and proper. And I did say it was late and there was wine. Now it's all sensible and on topic.
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I've got a can't-mention-name-for-legal-reasons "celebrity" related to the Archers.
That's Ambridge, not Jeffrey.
But I know you're not one bit interested in the Archers. Not one little smidgeon whatsoever...
(off to look at computer hardware)