Size Matters...
#11
(Aug 30, 2016, 23:26 pm)Morlock Wrote: Edit: and YES, it's a disease. I call it digital hoarding. DS/Poser content is only the tip of the iceberg. There's only so much of it to get, after all. But total digital content? I have 23+ tb of hard drive space (current and active; don't ask me about how many dead drives I have laying around, lol). Maybe 60% or so full, at least. All digital hoarding. Movies, TV, Comics, DS/Poser, Music, Porn, Books, RPGs.

Thissss, im just glad my hoarding tendencies extend upto daz/poser content only.
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#12
(Aug 30, 2016, 23:26 pm)Morlock Wrote: Trety, I doubt putting your runtime on an SSD would really save you much time. Unless you really find yourself waiting much for stuff to load, which I don't, on my consumer-grade IDEs. Big graphics card would probably be your best bang-for-the-buck hardware investment, assuming your hardware's fairly recent (e.g., my rig (i5, 24gb RAM, GTX 760) was mid-grade (well, except maybe that RAM total) about 2 or 3 years ago when I upgraded, and it handles DS pretty well).
I posted in Daz forums a while and got the advice that putting things on SSd's in this order would help. Daz Studio>Daz Content Manager> data (runtimes, etc..). I currently have the first 2 on SSD, so data is next in line. Slowness is mostly in searches and loading some things. My rig in general is up to par.: i7 @ 3.2GHz, 48GB RAM, dual GTX 980's (Soon to be 1 980 and 1 1080 in Oct, then a 2nd 1080 next year.)...
I just want to eek out as much speed as possible.
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#13
I wasn't kidding. There is virtually no difference for the data between being on an SSHD and an SSD. Fractions of a second for searches and loading, if that, in most (practically all, in my experience, but there may be an outlier I haven't used yet for some reason) cases. It is, without a doubt, your own money to spend as you see fit, Trety, but I would consider it a waste if you are purchasing extra SSD space solely for a speed boost on that data. The cost/performance ratio is just ridiculously small upgrading beyond an SSHD. Just my own opinion, at the end of the day, but your rig isn't too dissimilar from my own (i7 5960 @ 4.0 GHz, 64 GB DDR4, 4 x 980ti). Buy what you want and can afford, I suppose, and if you are truly looking to eke out every nanosecond of speed improvement, I suppose you may gain some. Just not much, not in Daz Studio, anyway, and for far more money than I would personally consider it worth.

As a reference Stonemason's Streets of Asia 2, since I have that in both old Poser and new Daz formats (geometries located on an SSHD and SSD respectively), loads in ~ 7 seconds, regardless of version. If I check the log file, it tells me the Poser .pz3 version was imported and loaded in 6.5 seconds, while the Daz .duf version loaded in 1.7 seconds with a significantly longer material list, but both took ~7 seconds to appear in the viewport and me able to move the camera, etc. There aren't a whole lot of items that are 1-to-1 for loading, and I'm sure these aren't quite either, as the new one's supposed to optimized for Daz Studio. Regardless, at the end of the day, they load in what, to my perception, is identical timeframes. If you happen to be a frame counter, you might notice a difference I don't see, as I can't really consciously tell a difference between 60 and 120 fps either, though I may or may not notice things move more smoothly, depending on the application. In that scenario, I would liken moving from an HDD to an SSHD like moving from a 30 Hz monitor to a 120 Hz monitor. It is significant, and immediately noticeable. Going from SSHD to an SSD would be like swapping out the video card and keeping the same 120 Hz monitor. The card pumps out frames faster, but the monitor can't display them anyway, so there's no practical value. Daz Studio is not optimized for SSDs, and is the monitor in this case. It only loads so fast, regardless of where it's pulling from beyond a certain threshold. That threshold seems, to me to pretty much align with an SSHD's speed, as far as the data/content side is concerned. I would seriously consider how much more space you get with an SSHD for the money over an SSD, as the speed thing is honestly, truly negligible between the two. This will all be completely nullified when/if Daz ever actually bothers to optimize Studio for SSDs, of course, and at that point, I would likely heartily recommend the upgrade from SSHD to SSD. Before then, it's throwing money away that could be better spent, IMHO.

Not that it supports my 'argument' any better really, but a bit about me and my stance. I am impatient to an extreme. As in, I bought Octane and the Daz Studio plugin because Lux looked better than 3delight, but took god'sawful long to get pretty. I still use it because Iray is still too slow for me, despite poring over a thread back at Kat before it went down, and several other places on optimizing Iray to get it as fast as possible. Iray's just too slow to start up, and I can get stuff done in Octane way faster after minimal setup work, and probably still get a render 'done' before Iray would be done loading, configuring shaders, or whatever the heck it's actually doing while I can't do anything else in many cases. I really dislike waiting. I had my runtime on an SSD. I moved it to an SSHD because it wasn't any slower. I am a person who still uses (and recently upgraded for I think a total now of about $530) an alternative render engine to save a minute or three off of rendering small things like tooltips for Daz Studio for my own use because I dislike waiting. If you're upgrading from an HDD, yes, an SSD will seem blazing fast, but so would an SSHD. Identically fast, with far more space at a lower price point. I spent gobs of money on speed, most likely will again when they have a 1080-whatever that actually offers a speed increase in rendering over my 980tis, and I wouldn't waste the money on an SSD just for data for a program that wouldn't utilize it. I'm not saying that whoever responded to you over at Daz doesn't know what they're talking about, by any means, but I'd be willing to believe, quite easily, they went straight from an HDD to an SSD without checking in the middle, so from their point of view, it's phenomenal. It is, but it's the same phenomenal you'll get from a lower price point, so logically, it seems kinda pointless to burn the extra cash for no practical return, else we wouldn't be here, ostensibly trying to save money on the stuff we want to render pretty.
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#14
Thanks for the detailed explanation! I think I will try out your idea SSHD first and see what happens...My SSD idea was most likely not coming for a long while because I was waiting for a good priced 4TB SSD to be made so that I had a nice space buffer for my data, so an SSHD would be a good alternative for the near future. It's nice to have someone who has already been the guinea pig and tested performance. Wink

As for Octane, it is on my wishlist, but pricing has always been out of my reach and I have been happy with iray and Reality. Faster rendering would be nice though for sure. Reality is usually a late night/overnight render or I will start it when leaving for work. iray is sometimes the same, but since the iray engine doesn't run forever like reality, I will sometimes do renders while working and just wait and multi-task.

I just read that Octane may have some sort of $10 or $20 subscription pricing and that may be more to my liking if/when it comes out.
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#15
It does kind of hurt, in a way that Octane is never on sale. Once you do buy it though, version upgrades usually come extremely (well, relatively, I guess) cheap for the standalone and one plugin (prices low enough I keep doing it, anyway). Plus access to the student versions of all first party plugins if you have access to a .edu email (yes, they check it). I myself despise subscription models for software, but that is a personal preference, likely based on my experience with Adobe CC. I prefer "owning" software to "renting." If it gets you on the boat though, I'm all for it. I need more "I needs mah renderz FASTAH!" people to hash out Octane stuff with Tongue

When I started getting into SSHDs, it ironically wasn't for speed, it was because they were the "new thing," so they were actually cheaper than their HDD counterparts of the same size. Speed was a bonus, and they're usually so close in price to this day, that I don't even think about it. If I need speed, SSD, if I want space, SSHD. I think the 4TBs are roughly $150? Been awhile since I got my last one, and I usually get them from Amazon, since they're constantly on some sort of sale/promotion.
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#16
My runtime is a modest 28.8GB
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#17
71.2 Gb for me ! I thought I had a lot more !

I came just with the Genesis 3 generation.
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#18
(Sep 07, 2016, 14:44 pm)__Xav__ Wrote: 71.2 Gb for me ! I thought I had a lot more !

I came just with the Genesis 3 generation.

too much - roughly 100 Gb, but I blame ancient stuff I never use for it Smile
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#19
Embarassingly large archive.

We're talking terabytes. :00

The actual runtime I try & keep slim, for obvious reasons. Smile
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#20
My "runtime" as of now is 545 GB and growing, although I may need to prune older figures and items since I've moved to almost exclusively to Genesis 3. Still, I have about another 500 gigs of unsorted files to install or delete, and more is uploaded everyday.
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