Can I render IRAY without using NVDIA graphics

kyoreona

Hello everyone, I would like to ask you a question.

As for the hardware requirements of DAZ IRAY, I know that the normal is INTEL CPU plus NVDIA independent graphics card.
However, considering that the size of the model in the scene is too large, it often exceeds the video memory of the independent graphics card, and thus jumps to the CPU rendering during the rendering process.
So, I was thinking, since the current NVDIA more than 16G video memory graphics card is so expensive, why not change the idea, such as abandoning the independent graphics card, just use the CPU rendering.
I would like to know whether DAZ software and IRAY can be normally used for rendering under the following three configuration ideas.
1. AMD CPU (built-in core graphics card)
2, AMD CPU + NVDIA 4060ti 16G
3, INTEL CPU (built-in core graphics card)

Of course, in the process of operating characters and scenes, it is best not to be too slow, otherwise you will give up before you reach the step of rendering.

crosswind

Iray can use CPU to render no matter you have AMD or Intel, while it is just slow in terms of rendering speed ~

Opt 2 is certainly the best, as you still can render with 4060Ti GPU as long as the scene won't run out of 16GB vram ~

PerttiA

There is nothing preventing DS from rendering on GPU with option 2 (AMD CPU + RTX 4060Ti 16GB)

Rendering on CPU takes 10-20+ times longer than even the slowest RTX cards, so one is rendering over night instead of getting it done in 10-30 minutes

If 16GB's of GPU VRAM is not enough, one should start thinking about how one builds the scenes.

Falco

Yea, I think it should be emphasized just how slow the cpu rendering is, CPU only is something you should try to avoid at all costs.  I would highly recommend the nvidia card, and then spending $30 on the scene optimizer product in the daz store to get your scenes to fit within the gpu memory.  If the CPU takes 20 hours to render something, and the nvidia version takes 30 minutes, you might as well get the nvidia gpu and spend an hour optimizing your scene to fit within the memory and it'll still be done 20 times faster. 

kyoreona

crosswind said:

Iray can use CPU to render no matter you have AMD or Intel, while it is just slow in terms of rendering speed ~

Opt 2 is certainly the best, as you still can render with 4060Ti GPU as long as the scene won't run out of 16GB vram ~

Thank you, that is, there is no such thing as having to use an INTEL CPU.

kyoreona

PerttiA said:

There is nothing preventing DS from rendering on GPU with option 2 (AMD CPU + RTX 4060Ti 16GB)

Rendering on CPU takes 10-20+ times longer than even the slowest RTX cards, so one is rendering over night instead of getting it done in 10-30 minutes

If 16GB's of GPU VRAM is not enough, one should start thinking about how one builds the scenes.

Thank you. That's a big gap. So I really need to research and learn some techniques to reduce the use of video memory.

kyoreona

Falco said:

Yea, I think it should be emphasized just how slow the cpu rendering is, CPU only is something you should try to avoid at all costs.  I would highly recommend the nvidia card, and then spending $30 on the scene optimizer product in the daz store to get your scenes to fit within the gpu memory.  If the CPU takes 20 hours to render something, and the nvidia version takes 30 minutes, you might as well get the nvidia gpu and spend an hour optimizing your scene to fit within the memory and it'll still be done 20 times faster. 

Thank you for your explanation. This made me decide to take a closer look at how to simplify my engineering, rather than just weighing the configuration of the computer.

chris-2599934

You can definitely render everything CPU-only (Intel, AMD or whatever), it works just the same, but more slowly. If that's how things have to be for you, you just have to adjust your workflow to take account of that reality - spending online sessions posing your scenes, and leaving them to render while you're asleep/at work/otherwise engaged. I found it used to take 3 or 4 hours to render a scene in CPU to a point where I was happy with it (often far short of 100% converged). A couple of other things to consider:

• Without an nvidia gpu, Iray preview mode is really painful to use. Even a low memory nvidia card will be a vast (and worthwhile) improvement in this respect.
• I've never used it myself, but consider https://boostfordaz.infinite-compute.com/ for access to powerful GPUs via the cloud, if you only need them for occasional big scenes.

I suggest you ask Santa for a nice big nVidia GPU though!