Please give me some advice (ram)

[P!X3L]

Hi all!

I want to create production quality, near photo-realistic renders for animations @ 1080p. Would a memory size of 3gb from the Tesla c2050 suffice? I know it depends on many things, and I would test this out, but I have an ati card at the moment. I was considering getting a gtx 285 2gb to see how much memory I would need. However, this seems pointless to me now because I know I will eventually go over 1.5gb if I went for the gtx 480 route. Then there is the c2070 coming out in a little while, utterly expensive but it has double the memory and it is clocked higher too. I am trying to decide between the two.

I would get a second c2050 sometime in the near future, but if 3gb is not enough (honest opinion would be appreciated), then it might be a little harder...doable, but harder.

Any input would be appreciated, if you need any information please ask. Thank you.

[Chris]

It depends on what kind of viz you are doing? Architecture, product, character animation etc.

[kubo]

besides it's amazing how many polys you can crunch in my small 260, mostly my problems don't come from scene complexity but texture size and that can be solved. You should check in the gallery the scenes that are around and compare it with the author sig (usually we put there our specs), you'll be amazed

[timbarnes]

One of my scenes (an architectural scene) has a .obj file of over 1Gb, and it uses almost 8Gb of main computer RAM while voxelizing. It then occupies almost 900Mb of graphics card RAM (GTX 470).

This is a model that absolutely chokes Sketchup, so it's probably on the upper end of what you might need, although its textures are very simplistic (most of the size comes from geometry).

I would expect that RAM utilization both in the computer and the GPU will improve as Octane is optimized over time.

tim

[P!X3L]

Thanks for all your input guys, I appreciate it.

I have decided to wait a while, nvidea is just crazy asking us to spend 2,300 euro for a 3gb card. It is unacceptable for me. If I was looking for a solution to just play around with, then sure the 480 would be a cost effective route, however I want to implement the renders I do into my work in the near future, so it really would not be cost effective for me. I'll wait for opencl to mature, then there may be some sense in spending thousands of dollars on a build, until then I don't see the point (for my needs).

Best of luck to everyone.

[ericiseric]

One of my scenes (an architectural scene) has a .obj file of over 1Gb, and it uses almost 8Gb of main computer RAM while voxelizing. It then occupies almost 900Mb of graphics card RAM (GTX 470).

This is a model that absolutely chokes Sketchup, so it's probably on the upper end of what you might need, although its textures are very simplistic (most of the size comes from geometry).

I would expect that RAM utilization both in the computer and the GPU will improve as Octane is optimized over time.

tim

SketchUp model over 1G?!

man, da's huge!

did you make the surrounding build us well?

Eric

[radiance]

note that we're working on a new import option in 2.3 that will practically halve the memory requirements for meshes in octane in 2.3 (we hope, halve, or nearly halve),
with no visible differences. (it's optionally however).

We're also working on making the voxelisation stage quicker and consume less memory.

Radiance

[foxid]

Good news from hour to hour.

[P!X3L]

note that we're working on a new import option in 2.3 that will practically halve the memory requirements for meshes in octane in 2.3 (we hope, halve, or nearly halve),
with no visible differences. (it's optionally however).

We're also working on making the voxelisation stage quicker and consume less memory.

Radiance

Thanks Radiance, that's good to know