Today, I was making a video card recommendation for my friend. I told him that if he is going to do rendering on the card, that 8GB GPU memory is a bit worrisome. This morning it was a gut feeling…
This evening, it was reality. I did a test and hit the wall. I have an average scene, perhaps more complicated than a single product on a white field, but less complicated surely than a cityscape.
I wanted to try an 8K render 7680*4320 render and then downsample, but it used all but 200mb of the GPU memory, and it didn’t want to start rendering.
[It would have rendered fine on the 12-core 3900x, but would have taken 4.16 days at 6000-passes : ) For the final, perhaps, but not until I am sure. The image will be cropped in a vertical 4:3 format, so I may go higher than 4k.]
While 8GB seems okay for most, but not all 4k renders, I recommend 12 or more GB if doing GPU rendering on Cycles for 4K and above.
If you only do 1080x1024 then 8GB should be okay for almost all render–unless the texture load is especially cruel.
On my system the GPU runs quieter than the CPU. It pulls less power, too.
If you are going to be doing a lot of renders, once in a while blow out the machine with compressed air–whilst holding the fans from turning. If a fan spins up by compressed air, then it could damage the motherboard, as it might generate power. A spudger or a pen could be used to hold the fan from turning while you blow out the machine. If you have them, check the case filters. It’s dusty in here, and I can hear when the filter on the rackmount case needs to be cleaned.