Do you REALLY need a good GPU for Blender?

[@CurtisHolt]

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[@SouthernShotty]

Great Video! Thanks for putting this all into such a concise message. Sharing a bit of my own journey here from potato PC to my new RTX card :) For anyone struggling because they aren't able to afford high end PC components. You can still make great renders if you lean into render friendly style. Even if that's not your preference. When I first started I was on a very low end PC and did a lot of NPR rendering, because I couldn't do the realistic Cycles renders I wanted. Eventually those simple renderings led to better opportunities and better equipment and I was able to transition into the style I have now. There is absolutely no denying that better PCs make 3D easier, but don't let the lack of a new RTX card prevent you from pursuing 3D as a medium. My school art program wasn't funded very well and we didn't have the best tools available. My teacher told us that by learning to create good artwork without the better supplies would force us to get better at the fundamentals and we'd excel when we were able to afford better supplies. I feel this applies here as well. Get good at colors, composition, motion, and more. Eventually you'll gain access to better tools and have a strong foundation to take advantage.

[@AggelosAnimations-y3h]

idk, i have a very old laptop with prob the worst graphics card... - it can barely run blender.

[@bonnymich]

thats a good advice for someone who is starting out indeed, but sometimes the learning curve is absorbed more easily with better hardware instead of feeling like wanting to give up, its a huge boost up to have proper hardware that doesn't limit you, and if someone is serious into pouring actual work for money should seriously consider the higher tier components

[@BobSmith-pn5mo]

In 2023 I had some free time to work on blender projects, only the computers did not have any GPU. 9th gen cpus and modest ram. The process was liberating. It forced me to only focus on modeling, and modeling as light a mesh as I could. I was able to make much more progress on my projects in a shorter amount of time. I then polished and did all the heavy lifting at home. I suffer with a lack of pipleline focus and tend to bounce from task to task within a project and end up making little noticeable progress. This kills my motivation to finish the project at all. Long story longer; Blender is still light enough to run on a weak machine. A super powerful GPU is not necessary.

[@ghostcookie882]

I started using blender on a regular laptop with no graphics card. But as I progressed I realised that the hardware was sometimes completely incapable of executing my vision no matter the cutbacks or optimisation used. That's why I stopped making renders cause its very disheartening when you cannot make an epic scene on your potato laptop while the neighbour's kid is using his 3090 to write his assignment on MS word.

[@Capsicumh2]

Its for school dad! - that neighbours kid

[@coolunusual]

Get an m.2- pcie adapter, should be able to find for under 50 tbh, get your used gpu and a cheap psu. Feasible that with 300ish you could get running with a 3060/4060

[@_the_ambient_gecko_]

🗜️ As a casual user with a M2 MacBook Air and a M1 iMac, limitations are a lifestyle for my blender experience 😂 however I’ve been quite impressed with what I can actually get done, and have always found that when things start to chug it’s more likely an understanding issue on my part, and not my setup. I’d absolutely love to see a video about render farm workflow, or techniques to isolate GPU-heavy tasks in different contexts.

[@IZ.3d]

I bought a new computer about 6 months ago just for Blender. I was on a budget so I decided to go with no GPU at all and use the iGPU and got the best CPU, RAM and SDD that I could for my budget, I thought if I got a gpu back then I would have got a low end one and downgraded the other components. And as someone who works on AR, VR low poly animations plus some geometry nodes I can tell you 6 months later that it was the best decision I could have made, very rarely did I feel the need for a faster gpu for my work, and now I have generated enough from it to buy a high end gpu to add to my setup if I want to

[@locinolacolino1302]

And you can work on far larger scenes than what fits into VRAM this way

[@hammerheadcorvette4]

@@locinolacolino1302 Isn't there a way for GPU's to directly access your SSD now, so VRAM shouldn't be a stumbling block?

[@Animation__1]

which cpu you buy ???

[@stealthproductionz6648]

consider threaders. It'll quicken the renders by a lot.

[@autolove9171]

what's cpu? pls

[@1zymn1]

I'm running an i7-2600, 16 GB PC I've had used since 2013. The only thing that makes it work is the RTX 3060 12 GB I upgraded to last year. I'm amazed how much better it is, I can do all sorts of things with a good GPU. Sure baking takes forever and you have to be smart with simulations but I'm animating a music video for a client right now and it's handling things I never would have dreamed it could.

[@viipeditz]

Wow ... Congrats dude & best wishes for the future... I'm going to buy i5 14500 with 32gb 5200mhz ram, z series Mobo (for cpu upgrade) & our fav 3060 ✨ I hope it will be the best combination for now ... Will upgrade to i7 ,i9 & 4070 or higher in future 🌱

[@ingorotfuchs1267]

Absolutely YES! My RTX 4090 OC has put the render-time down to 50-45 % of the previous values of my former RTX 3070ti ! ! If you use optiX in all parameters possible, not only in the "System"-setup, Cycles and Eevee can come to almost the same render-time for the identical scene! For the opposite: If I turn off my Threadripper 3970X (32 Cores), the rendering-time doesn't change more than 1 % maximum! With my other 3D-Software (Lightwave 3D), it is twisted world: Changing the GPU brought abolutely NOTHING in speedup for the rendering-time! But changing to a 64-core Threadripper, would have a great effect, because Lightwave is still CPU-rendering-only.

[@hugoantunesartwithblender]

I dont think so. Only if you do animations. Otherwise you are ok with cpu rendering or renderfarm. I worked professionally with only 2Gb vram

[@ingorotfuchs1267]

Well, most people use Blender for animations, I think. For 2D-stils, most people use drawing-software. Of course you can do stills with Blender, too, but that is not the majority. Even at video-games, many loading-screen-graphics or title-pages look drawn, not rendered to me. Only the trailers, intros or cut-scenes inside the game are rendered animations. But you can create nice atmosphere and effects for stills, too, of course. I would like to see some of your art, to have a better idea, of what you are creating. :o) @hugotunesartwithblender

[@LazyLoonz]

Of course the absolute latest best graphics card will be the best at rendering

[@coolunusual]

Wait wait, as someone that was looking to get into some older versions of lightwave (don't ask, also if you know where one could get v9-10 that would be nice) lightwave renders on cpu??

[@panik735]

Just think how fast it eill bewhen you fill all 7 slots woth 4090s

[@chrisjames6424]

i learned blender on a 1660ti mobile gpu with 6gb of vram, it was a bit rough but manageable. I upgraded to a 3090 when I could afford to. The higher end GPU definitely let me experiment with different techniques, but watching the mem usage on my gpu I think most of the times I could get away with something in the 12GB Vram range. 4080, 4070 or even the 4060ti with 16gb would probably be more than enough for rendering still images. I think if I was on a super tight budget and didn't want many limitations the 4060ti with 16gb of vram would be the way to go. The only drawback to that card is the memory bus, it'll take longer to build bvh and load the scene into vram. The advantages of Optix in nvidia cards (even the slower ones) is so high you just have to avoid out of core rendering or cpu bound rendering and you're good to go unless you're trying to render long animations.🛠

[@Валентина-н5о6х]

Hello. How much did rendering speed up? From 6gb to 12gb.

[@hazar357]

I'm using M1 Pro since Blender 3.0.0 and its Blender benchmark score is around 400 (RTX4090 is 11000 btw) and it handled all my use cases and I use Blender minimum 5 hours a day. I create stock images & models, generate hundreds of 3d models for my employee, generate scripts and workflows that utilize Blender CLI for studios, etc. All my use cases is possible with an entry level Macbook Pro despite I can get a much beefier GPU with the same price on a Windows system.

[@chidorirasenganz]

it’s crazy because now that base m3 is even faster at ~800 😅

[@thanatosor]

@@chidorirasenganz how many in M3MAX-40 core? I heard it's still slower than 4060 Mobile

[@chidorirasenganz]

@@thanatosor ~3500 which is around 3070-3080 performance

[@thanatosor]

@@chidorirasenganz Great, exactly equal to my 4060M

[@kameleongreen]

Rendering performance is great and all, but where I look for the best performance is the rendered viewport, the faster this updates, the quicker I can see what affect my changes are making. Reduction of final render times is just a cherry on top. Currently have a Quadro RTX 4000 mobile gpu.

[@mbarros92694]

Thanks for bringing this up. I deal with very large number of assets and collections on my models. I have a Dell Alienware with 32GB RAM and a RTX 3070 mobile with 8GB VRAM. I have no problem with rendering times. What I really struggle is a lagging viewport which forces me to constantly disable collection views

[@viipeditz]

​@@mbarros92694which's your cpu ?

[@matiasgarate2387]

🛠I actually spend about 6 years using a mid -end computer (2 VRAM + 4 RAM), and ended up designing my workflow around what can I do without making my computer lag, and always rendering from command line to avoid crashes. Now I have a new laptop and everything just feels blazing fast.

[@beansnrice321]

The one thing that I would say different from your tip on, "just make a gaming pc," is that I have found that lots of ram is just the best thing ever for production. So I'd say, make a gaming pc and fill it with as much ram as you can and drop the generation down a peg or two if it helps you get a lot more ram.

[@trickedraptor]

I spent my first year or two of blender without a GPU. I had one, but I didn't know that I had to turn it on, so I had no idea that I wasn't using it (though it was a laptop gpu so it wouldn't have been much faster in any case).

[@mind_of_a_darkhorse]

Great video! I'm getting ready to get my next computer and this is a big help in deciding what components to add to it to get the best of all worlds with a budget! 🔧

[@SupaKoopaTroopa64]

Having good single threaded performance is super useful for animation. Even with GPU subdivision, I've always got one thread at 100%, and 11 others at ~30-50%. I do work around limitations though. Optimizing my topology to use as few faces as possible, and avoiding any unnecessary modifiers helps a lot. It would be nice to use the cloth sim/cloth brush in real time though.

[@akoras3222]

I largely agree and balancing your PC is always important. Thought as Others have pointed out in the comments there are certain thresholds that allow you to experiment with techniques that you just couldn't before. 🔧

[@askeladden450]

I personally have been using blender on an old intel integrated gpu, for 10 years now. Ofc, that has forced me to focus more on modelling, game assets, grease pencil and low poly rendering, but i never felt like I was held back. Of course if you want to render complex scenes, animations, physics etc, a good gpu is a must. But there is still a ton you can get out if blender without a GPU.

[@icephoenix174]

I can't install blender 4.0 on my Intel HD :( and it means I couldn't participate in the kaizen contest because I couldn't open the scene with blender 2.8

[@askeladden450]

@@icephoenix174 Yes, 10 year older gpus are have just been dropped support on blender 4.0, although blender 3.6 still works. Have you tried that. which is also why i am looking to finally get a proper gpu now (6700xt)

[@icephoenix174]

@@askeladden450 I'll give it a shot. It's a 3rd gen Pentium so I'm pushing it 😂 I had to learn Linux to get it to run even remotely well. I'll look for 3.6 Edit: also thanks :)

[@nrdkraft]

Even tho I’m a Blender user of over a dozen years, I must admit I haven’t gotten around to wrapping my head around hardware, and the intersection between hardware and software. I’m honestly not fully conscious of the difference between the CPU and the GPU; I just need to make art.🤣 Thus that is one area I need to get more familiar with, and I’d love to be informed about the quilt as you said of what hardware factors would be more suited for different niches of Blender use. This vide mostly talked about rendering which is important. So also what about physics simulations or Geo Nodes simulation. I assume that’s a RAM thing, but is it also a GPU thing. Or for animating, compositing, or those who sculpt, et cetera et cetera. Btw I’ve been a viewer of yours for awhile but I’m kinda quiet but I always watch your videos to the end.😆 Always love the content and hope you are well🔧

[@Sam-pm9vy]

Interesting food for thought. I have a 5yo laptop with an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060. It works, for an old-ish laptop I’m sure it could be a lot worse, but I have no chance of rendering animations locally, and I want that. I have a £2000-3000 budget for a desktop so I know I *could* go pretty top end on both CPU and GPU. God knows what I actually “need” though, making that decision has me just delaying upgrading at all when I could’ve bought something so much nicer to play with by now

[@IrocZIV]

Been working on a large project, and VRAM really became an issue. Its faster to render with CPU than the tiny tiles it required to render with GPU, since I only have 12GB of VRAM.

[@viipeditz]

12gb is less 😢 So which one do you use now ?

[@IrocZIV]

@@viipeditz I Use my CPU when I want do do big faster renderers, but I get better looking results for final when I use the GPU, so then I have to do a lot of small small tiles. been eyeing getting a 3090 to double my VRAM, but they aren't cheap yet.

[@mbarros92694]

I do a lot of large scale models for EV charging stations site development. I bought the QOL full collection and it is just genius, a lot of stuff I have been looking for to speed up my workflow. Thank you Curtis for the recommendation.

[@erikmattson2507]

That philosophy can also apply with disk space. Not having an extra 10 TB space forces me to clean up clutter and regularly discipline myself in organization. Better discipline in more efficient renders is important. But sometimes, spending an extra 500 dollars on faster GPU is a lot cheaper than forcing an expensive artist work an extra ten hours tweaking to get the render to work.

[@Delusional3d]

Very interesting. Thank you. ⚒🔨🔧🛠 I’ve used an nvidia 1650 4gb, looking back I’m amazed what I created, I remember having to close the viewport just so I could render out an endless engines competition submission. I’ve now upgraded to an Rtx 3060 12gb. It’s so fast now (comparatively speaking of course). Pc spec: I5 cpu and 16gb ram on an old dell motherboard it has served me well and fingers crossed will keep doing so until the forecasted price drop of pc components due later this year. 😳 mmm we wish.

[@viipeditz]

Same here ☺️... I'm going with i5 14500 ,32gb 5200mhz ram ,z series mobo & our fav 3060 ✨... Will buy a i7 / i9 cpu with 4070 or higher when the price will go down

[@Валентина-н5о6х]

Hello. How much did rendering speed up? From 4gb to 12gb.

[@Delusional3d]

⁠I’m not sure wether it was my understanding of blender improved or the increase in ram that sped up the rendering. The fact that the denoise is using optix on the nvidia cards sped things up a lot. But I’m have noticed a vast reduction in render times.

[@sarahwilkins8664]

🧰 working in a studio environment that has just started doing a 3d pipeline has been "fun", in figuring out how to get the most out of machines that were not built for it. like we have some artists working on laptops with 1070s, so it's been interesting trying to make sure they have run the sets we have as you can't brute force the problem.

[@tarjeimykland8994]

Writing this before watching. Just want to mention that memory is a thing. It is a literall 1:1 Measure of how much you can put in a scene until you have to just throw the gpu away and use your ram and cpu. So yes, but no… but yes. After viewing: my point stands. If you want to make environments, which is basically everyone, there is a minimum vram you need. If you don’t have that minimum (which depends but is usually above 3gb) you might as Well run on internal graphics and buy a beefy cpu. Aka there is a sweetspot. I did all my client work on my 2019 MacBook.. it got fried. Invest Well. Oh and if ur a gamer, you’re usually good.

[@antonvoloshin9833]

Very true actually. I've being saying it for many years now - in many cases limited hardware doesn't limit you, it forces you to grow as a professional, especially if you are just in the beginning of your journey.

[@LegendaryLife]

There are many parts of 3D work, like modelling, animation, lighting etc. Each is a separate field and requires different kind of computer. Like modelling requires so much GPU that it may crash/ Freeze even with best of the best GPU.

[@jaakanshorter]

🔨 I 100% agree with you. I learned 3D CAD about 20 years ago and got back on to it in the last year. I got my GF daughter ( 10 year old ) in to blender using my old desktop, CPU rendering only. She is loving it. I got a cheap desktop and dropped a GTX 1650 in it that I use in my free time. I could get a 4090 but its overkill.

[@tolisgamer]

I have RTX 4080 16 vram,i9;13900K and 64 GB RAM and when I use big brushes in painting or sculpting my computer lag.wtf?

[@zathraus]

🛠 Great advice and thanks for sharing the QoL tools. 🔧

[@jeezy3390]

So, should I wait for the 5000 series, I want to get into 3d rendering and game development, I dont have any pc atm, I have a budget of 2000euros-2500euro, and Im really confused on what should I get

[@ChroniclesofUnreal]

Man, this has got to be by far the most nuanced take on this topic. I got so much out of this. I use after effects at my job which is known to be slow at times. There is certainly something to be said for learning how to optimize vs assuming you NEED a new piece of hardware.

[@louismajor4394]

VRAM was the problem on my 2060. Adjustments and optimization helped but high res and big scene rendering was a problem. Upgraded recently and it makes a huge difference. 🛠️🔧

[@viipeditz]

Upgraded to 3060 ... I assume 🫣

[@louismajor4394]

@@viipeditz 4090 now actually

[@viipeditz]

@@louismajor4394 ohh 😯... Congrats dude 🔥👍🏻

[@gcharb2d]

I have yet to see a scene that I can't render with my RTX 3060 12G, most of the Blender demos render under 2 minutes at 512 samples with it, I just might get a RTX 4070 Super 12GB and use it with my RTX 3060, and hopefully triple my speed for cheap, that is assuming that Cycles scales well, It's kinda hard to find info on that subject!

[@GillMestari]

Nice video Curtis, you brought up a very interesting topic! I use blender both at work and at home and some time ago one of the points of conversation with the senior engineer at work was: "how come at home on a 7 year old workstation with 2 nvidia 1080ti running on Linux I have rather better performance than with the latest machines we have here in the office?" I'll just let you imagine the whirlwind of comments that arose after this comment of mine...

[@Dianaranda123]

⚙ Interesting, i will be reconsidering which card to buy for my next machine, which i am planing to use mostly to work on Blender and 3D stuff in general.

[@KameBaukunGrayTrace]

Great video! Very nice hints and very well explained! 🔧

[@01_zenyobi]

🔨🛠 I tend to finish video i watched. Planning to build 5600 with 3080 Ti. I waver quite a lot whether to keep trying ti reach 3080 ti or just settle with 3060.

[@jesse00077]

How to install "studio drivers" ?

[@prestonwhite6423]

Well, i have an i7-13700k and 4070 gpu, and everysingle time i use both, it literally cuts rendering time by half compared to just using gpu, idk know why, but they both are running when rendering (regardless of tile size, though for me, 1024 by 1024 tile is the fastest). Sidenote: i have a 3060 not installed, and my motherboard can hold up to 3 gpus. I have a 850 watt gold modular power supply, is it worth adding on the 3060? Will it speed up rending?

[@kiep-qm1bf]

are you happy with 4070? im about to get one, but dont know if its an overkill for my skils :D

[@viipeditz]

How was 3060 ?? Why did you upgrade?

[@themarvinsod]

this is exactly the video i was looking for! thanks a lot for the insight!

[@ScoutOW2]

But if you were to making a rendering farm, separate from your pc, which oooonly renders the animation. Would GPU focused be better?? Or still CPU??

[@Zimbob2424]

For me what I don't like is all the Blender benchmarks and videos are all about rendering. I spend most of my time modeling and would have loved to understand that the gpu is only going to help so much in the 3d viewport, from what I understand it has a lot more to do with the cpu and it's single core speed or power. but I would love to see a video to help understand what computer parts effect which aspects of blender, especially before my next build. I dought I even need my 3080 12gb since I use blender for 3d printing and designing stuff to print, so almost never render. it does help but not as much as I thought it would.

[@gcharb2d]

That's why the BI is targeting Vulkan for the interface, assuming that they do it properly, which remains to be seen, I am not convinced that they will do it at all, it just might be more hype, but if they do it, then it should, hopefully, significantly speed up the interface!

[@Zimbob2424]

@@gcharb2d Thanks,I didn't know about that, I look into it

[@suburbanview]

I have an Alienware x17R2 RTX 3080 i7 12700H 664 RAM 4T ssd in a simple project, just color on the mesh (no textures or complicated noods), when I want to work with the cycles viewpoint selected, the image starts to lag. So I need to wait a few seconds to see the image catch up with the color. It gets worse if I want to watch a video in the other screen on youtube. Rendering for simple mesh takes time, even in black and white. Im talking simple mesh for a background for a webpage just to have an abstract shape in the back. Suggestions?

[@EduardoCardozo3D]

I love your videos, thank you very much for sharing your knowledge with us. My intention it´s to work in 3d industry, I currently use Blender for my studies and personal arts, but my GPU, a Rog Strix RX 570 it's not being detected by Blender coz its a old GPU. I have no money at the moment to buy a new pc, but your video helped me find a more accurate direction to decide on the best upgrade for my PC once I have the money. I almost forget the 🔧🔧🔧.

[@Redserpent2000]

🔧 As a complete beginer in Blender I found your video very enlightening. I am at the moment thinking of buying a new pc because my Windows 7, Intel i5 2500k, 16gb ram and the old Geforce 430 just takes way too long to render anything, even a simple image can take 15 mins lol. On the upside, I have no problems actually using blender with this PC so far but like I said, it's only very simple stuff. I need to upgrade to Win 11 to be able to get the latest Blender 4, so that will mean getting a new pc. The info you gave on cpu vs gpu was really helpful, thank you. If you have any other tips on what kind of pc I should be looking for, please feel to let me know. P.S. I did build that pc but that was over 10 years ago.

[@yksinainen11]

I'm going to buy a RTX 4050 (6GB VRAM) and it also has 32gb ram and Intel i7 (13 gen). I am wondering if I can sculpt simple animals and give them joints because I want to use them as references for my drawings. I'll add lighting too, but that's it. I'm not going to do animation. Is 6gb vram enough? I don't intend to do anything complex because I'm focused on my drawings and 3D is just something to help with the poses of the characters.

[@thefanman664]

Personally i still run a 1050 ti 4gb for blender. i got a decent increase in render time after adding a Quadro K4200 4GB out of a system with a PSU-fried motherboard (GPU survived somehow). CPU is a Xeon W-2135 (6C 12C, stays at 4.5GHz under full load). definitely and upgrade from my old combo with a 3770k, GTX 760 2gb + gt 730 2g (gk208b). surprisingly the gt 730 subtracted some time from the render ( like 3-5% max tho) I plan at maybe going for some sort of 3080 or 4070 in the future with a new CPU if I get really serious about blender

[@rIP2693.]

😅my GTX 1650 dying to render even a realistic 3d model in default resolution, I can't even make a nature scene in latest blender version with this GPU earlier it was possible but, right now its gets impossible to see in 3d viewport.

[@bububirb]

Wonderful insights on the topic. I really enjoyed this one 🛠️

[@petebateman143]

Agreed. I learned Blender on a 6G 2060. I was forced to learn a lot about optimization before I could afford to upgrade to a 3090 and I still use the knowledge I learned while bouncing off the VRAM ceiling of the 2060.

[@Dmitry2184]

Hold my 1060 and i7 7600

[@RoseKindred]

@@Dmitry2184 Ditto, except my processor was lower lol. It worked, but only barely.

[@suburbanview]

I would like to see how your viewport mode cycles react to your machine's capabilities.

[@MichaelSeamanpmp]

⚒ Closest thing I could find to a tool emoji! Great video! Thank you.

[@griingopolski7018]

very well explained. thank you! 🛠

[@RoseKindred]

I don't need as much power as most of you since I am using it to make printable 3D (so don't need in-depth renders for example) models but I got lucky I think. I went from a 1060 to a 3080 right when the 4000 series came out. The whole new PC (minus more RAM) was less than a 3080 alone a few months prior. Although I am disappointed my top two USBs don't work, but oh well.

[@SAMZIRRA]

If I knew you I would bear hug you right now. This is extremely informative and helpful sir! Thank you for real❤

[@cepheus3d]

I do more animation oriented work, which requires rendering thousands of frames. I'm planning on upgrading to a 4070 in particular due to a nice boost of rendering speed compared to my 2070, while also not drawing as much power which is good for saving money on electricity bills. Frankly, I've noticed recently that I keep running out of memory so the extra boost of vram will be handy too.

[@mifyitaad]

I woukd go for the 4070Ti SUPER (16 Gb) was it I think. I sometimes hit the limit with the 12 Gb VRAM of my 4070Ti, but probably running to many apps at the same time. Price difference is minimal.

[@ingorotfuchs1267]

That's exactly the reason, why I switched to the RTX 4090 OC! I am only a hobbyist, making no money from my 3D-work, but I was really fed-up of letting my PC run for 6-8 hours over night, or waiting 2 hours, just for a 10-seconds video. Now it is less than 1 hour, for more complex-scenes and if I keep it simple, I was able to do 2700 frames in only 56 minutes with Eevee!

[@cepheus3d]

@@mifyitaad I really want to go for the Ti or Super variant, but I'll see how the prices will come out. In Europe, GPU prices have been terrible for years now.

[@hugoantunesartwithblender]

Only if you do animations in my opinion. Otherwise you are ok with cpu rendering or renderfarm. I worked professionally with only 2Gb vram

[@berl1n26]

can you help me figure it out? i have a rtx 4070, it has 12gb vram of course. i am working on a big project on blender and the problem right now is that i am really low on vram, with my current budget i am looking to buy a rx 7900xtx with 24gb. i dont know if that is a good choice or not because i am worried that the 7900xtx is not worth the upgrade or will have many problems with 3d like some information i have found

[@synkrotron]

interesting stuff... when I had my i9 pc built is was mainly for music production and the graphic card was chosen for being near silent, until being used for graphics stuff... but it is quite a poor card... not even RTX, and I am now thinking of investing in an RTX card to improve the graphics capabilities more research needed... 🛠

[@DidacticEditions]

Not to mention the power consumption of the larger GPUs. The most time I wasted, was in viewport due to crashes. A powerful processor is much more important along with a large RAM card. At the end of the day, you can just look at Blender's requierements and you'll be surprised.

[@ryuukeisscifiproductions1818]

actually a powerful GPU can help speed up blender viewport speed as well. I noticed a huge difference in my viewport performance when i swapped from a 1070ti to a 4090, even though all the remaining components where the same. At the time i was still using the 1070 ti, i had a Ryzen 7700x CPU and 64 gb of DDR5, so pretty top of the line CPU and ram. But the older GPU really held back viewport performance.

[@DidacticEditions]

@@ryuukeisscifiproductions1818 interesting to know this. Thank you

[@zartamus]

gtreat explanation - same levels doesn´t mean speed - IT MEANS QUALITY - thanx for the video

[@MikeHayesDesign]

GPU doesn't greatly affect my blender usage, as most of my assets go into game engines, as opposed to natively rendering in Blender. Different jobs/workloads, different needs. 😀

[@cricket12ish]

Yes. There I saved you 13 min

[@WunderTune]

thanks

[@j_shelby_damnwird]

Thank you Curtis. This is very helpful, top notch content, as always!

[@Dark-Animates]

I have a GeForce GTX 1660. It's fine for the most part, but with models with a lot of vertices, edges, faces, triangles, etc, it is LAGGY. And with renders, cycles in particular, it can take quite a while to render 10 frames. I'm hoping that I can reduce the lag and render time without having to invest in a higher-end GPU.

[@h3late3]

Thanks you so much! Super helpful 🛠️

[@C.D.CProductionsNY]

🛠🛠🛠 first off I'm definitely getting QoL. This video has just helped me understand what I need to do when I build my PC. Sadly I have a laptop so all I was able to do was invest into an eGPU/GPU (unable to upgrade RAM on this one) but the biggest thing I got out of thus video is that if I have high render times, I am just garbage at blender 😂😂😂

[@kjelm]

🛠Thanks Curtis. This is helpfull. QOL Tools are great.

[@skypowergb3842]

What if you do beginner or mid level stuff so nothing profesional in blender do you need nvidia as with amd you get more power for games

[@ryuukeisscifiproductions1818]

blender is dramatically better optimized for Nvidia GPU's over AMD, so unfortunately the price for performance in blender heavily favors Nvidia.

[@01_zenyobi]

Get Nvidia for Blender. RX 7900XTX, the best current AMD gpu, is weaker than RTX 3070, in terms of Rendering in Blender.

[@LordGareth_Gaming]

🔧 I want to start learning blender and I currently own a gaming laptop with Ryzen 5 5600H and RTX 3050TI 4GB. I intend to learn blender to make art for games, slylized games in the styles of overwatch and blender. Will such a laptop be able to get the results I want?

[@illiameleshko179]

1. If you already have one - install the Blender and give it a try. Golden rule of PC/Laptop upgrading: upgrade only when you have troubles with something you want/need to do, or your device is not capable of doing it. 2. If you already considered an upgrade option: 4GB VRAM is unfortunately nothing in the modern world. For the future you should go at least with 6 or 8GB instead, if you want to save some money. Or if you can save a little more money, go with 10-12GB, it will last minimum for a couple of years. I have a laptop with RTX4060 with 8GB VRAM and I’ve already had some crashes in 4K-rendering, because I’ve ran out of VRAM. Sure, you can say, that you don’t work on large scenes or with big amount of objects, but it will be mega-disappointing to not be able to make a render in good quality because of VRAM limitations. Another upside of having 8+ GB - you will be able to play all modern games on high settings. Some modern games on high/ultra settings just eating 10-14GB of VRAM, and this negative trend just keeps going. In a week NVIDIA RTX5000-Series graphic cards will be announced, so in a couple of months prices for 4000-series should drop a little and you can find a good option for your budget. RTX4060Ti or 4070 will be good options for next couple of years, all above them will be a little overkill, if you are a beginner.

[@LordGareth_Gaming]

@@illiameleshko179 Thank you for this, I really appreciate your input. I'll give blender a try and see where I have limitations. I was thinking of a 16gb card actually like the 4080 Super for a new PC build, I'm waiting to see what the new 5 series look like and cost first. I have decided to go overkill just so I can be set for a bunch of years so I want nothing less than 16gb VRAM.

[@illiameleshko179]

@ good choice. I am currently building a PC, and now waiting for 5000-series to buy used 4080 or 4070 Ti Super, exactly because of 16GB VRAM. 5070 Ti is also rumored to have 16GB VRAM - so if it will indeed have 16GB and cost under 900$ - i’ll wait for it.

[@LordGareth_Gaming]

@@illiameleshko179 ah nice same boat, can't wait to see what we get with the 5000 series, I know my PC can currently be used to learn blender so I'm probably building a pc in October or something I have other priorities currently. I'll likely catch some discounts by that time I'm sure.

[@01_zenyobi]

​@LordGareth_Gaming I'll fight tooth and nails to get the 3060 laptop instead of 3050 laptop. The improvements between 3050 to 3060 were massive. 3070 laptop would cost more, and 3080 laptop even further, and so they're not worth if if you dont have the budget.

[@thanatosor]

Talking from GameDev perspective, it's always about optimization, or doing more with less, so lowest PC specs to get the job done is our goal.

[@jaykun3]

What do you think of the new m3 MacBook for blender?

[@bytethatt]

I'm planning to buy my pc next month with gigabyte rtx 4070 as i want to start with blender and unreal engine, please don't tell me it's a waste to buy it.

[@Валентина-н5о6х]

Hello . I have a GTX 970 4 GB, 32 GB DDR3-1333, I5-2500, pci-e 2 0. If I install an RTX 3060 12 GB, how much will the animation render speed increase?🎉🎉🎉

[@666Azmodan666]

first you need to try turbo render and then consider whether to replace the GPU...

[@notremarchedelafin]

I have a Ryzen 5 5600 with 32Gb of RAM and a GTX 1650 (4Gb). Am I ok? I'm starting to learn blender. I'm worried it will not handle smoothly what I do, because of the weak GPU.

[@noobzone5291]

You can learn on it and with the fortune you make, you can upgrade later

[@sc4ndi]

You're very articulate. Extremely pleasant for my ears.

[@reaganmonkey8]

This is actually a video where I was actually curious about the sponsor. 🛠️

[@lordiari7110]

Great video. Worth considering if you are making music, also, for example.

[@joelmulder]

The easy answer is that you only need a top end GPU if you already have a top end CPU. Even on the highest end gaming Intel CPU you can buy, a regular cycles render will never use more than about 50% of my RTX4090. (You’ll probably get a lot more GPU utilization with a workstation CPU though) In most cases, the CPU will bottleneck long before the GPU will.

[@ChrisSh1984]

I think the results are skewed heavily because so many Blender users don’t work professionally and so buying a new 5090 is out of the question. Almost all 3D artists I know will always get the most powerful GPU they can afford and Nvidia cards are the best due to their CUDA cores. Regarding hybrid rendering (CPU+ GPU) it’s terrible on all 3D platforms. Having a super fast CPU and GPU but only using the GPU for rendering is easily the fastest way.

[@CGPython]

🔧🛠 Great points and a great video! Thanks Curtis

[@CurtisHolt]

Thanks Victor! And haha, this is the first time I'm seeing one of our Member emotes in use. Gives me a good laugh 😄

[@Motionlinestudio]

I love what you said here👍. With this now, can someone continue to use blender without any kind of GPU and still be ok using only the CPU power? 🛠🔧

[@IvanFlack]

I have made so many rookie mistakes with Blender that I realise I am the ultimate "Blender Tool"...!!!🔧🔧🔧 Great information. Thanks Curtis!

[@rhoharane]

I was hoping for a bit of comparison and analysis between one card vs another in Blender, and certainly with one GPU brand vs another. But that would require buying multiple cards so I don't hold it against you. It would've been invaluable information though. Radeon cards are faster at a lower price at everything I use except Blender. I don't know how much I'm willing to make that sacrifice or what the sacrifice even is without actually seeing the numbers. I've been looking for this info for years, and it's especially relevant these days as the companies have gotten increasingly unwilling to make good, affordable cards on the lower end.

[@metalsiren]

🧰 I have been on Blender with my RTX 2060 for more than 2 years… I was going for the 4090…. No I am rethinking it😓 I mostly do modelling/texturing and animations… 2080 Ti🤔 I will get the QOL pack! The measurement addon alone looks great!

[@jasonvaughn1658]

Thnx🔨🔧

[@chryssdale5747]

As someone with a notebook series gpu which is Nvidia 920m . I agree with this video

[@kiep-qm1bf]

Bought 3800x 2 years ago on good mobo and with 16gb of fast ram, unfortunately got myself rx580 later, which is great GPU for the price, but is not supported by blender. Here i am checking the options from cheap 1660 to 4070. I think i will get 4070 as its relatively cheap for its performerance.

[@MaxArchitect]

4090 top GPU, not only is it twice as powerful as the 3090, but it is also very cold and quiet. If you need to render complex animations with a bunch of details, I would recommend only this GPU

[@daveindezmenez]

Short answer: Only if want to render faster. It seems to me that a render farm would be a better solution for big renders.

[@NameUserOf]

Animators for sure don't need powerful GPU. All of the deformers that are used run on CPU. Noone is using Cycles with its RT in the viewport to animate things around, it's still faster with Eevee and even then you don't enable all eye candy of the final/semi final renderer while animating. Simulations run on CPU and eat RAM for breakfast. Modelers need to make not too high poly models anyway and they don't require RT, raster all the way. You can even get away with Eevee renderer most of the time as a single person for animations. And if you're just doing stills it won't matter much whether it's taking 5 or 20 minutes when you just need 1-10 pictures per project. I'd say grab the most decent CPU that you can and if know you're doing sims then as much RAM as you can get(timings and speed in memory benchmarks mean nothing), SATA SSD is more then enough(there is little to no speed increases for random read/writes on NVME only sequential that's used in video editing). Then go for monitor and the mouse, and only afterwards for GPU, MB, PSU, keyboard and the case. I think this is the best way of thinking about building cheap 3d workstation. And if you have money to throw around you wouldn't need any advice anyway.

[@thanatosor]

There is point of diminished return on higher end GPU upto 4090 that it become not worthy anymore.

[@VertexRage]

🔧 🔨 Beginners give you an answer, but experts almost always say "it depends". But also I would still call 2080ti very high end GPU😅

[@Subcoder]

Is that an Oura ring you're wearing?

[@oic165]

I needed to hear this, though I'm currently working with a RTX1660ti, it's a bit brutal. 🔨🔧🛠️

[@fatbobfatbob]

🛠️ well I watched till the end, now my poor brain is near frazzled, because im old n dim. I'm trying to make, what I feel are simple, moulds to pour plastisol castings from. Im not using any textures, colours, complex shapes or making complex models but my computer/notebook (Acer spin) is just pathetic. I create what I see as a very basic object (part of a worm) made from a 6 sided cylinder, I create just 1 half segment with 2 extruded legs, then copy and paste the segment, resizing as I go to make a tapered tail end and round head end fatish part way down from the head. Legs extruded 4 times, reduced diameter each time and slightly bent to give a slight 's' shape. So after CnP-ing the original half segment I then, select all and 'join', after joining I go and 'merge' each pair or group of nodes, thinking this reduces the count of flats/shapes/poloys! not sure the correct term to use but I now have an entire half worm (which doesn't deform when I 'subdivide' surface by 2 to reduce the flat blocky look) Next I CnP and mirror that half worm and again go to each node pair and 'merge' them, a complete worm which looks great for my need. Making the mould- I add a cube size to suit, CnP that and position then so the 2 face planes are cutting the worm model in half and hide 1 half. I use cylinders with 12 sides to make sprues (voids where material to cast mould is poured) and location lugs to align mould halves to pour. Once sprues, lugs and worms are laid out time for 'boolean' modifier, sigh 😞 and this is where it all goes bad. My computer simply cannot subtract the elements to be the negatives from the solids (mould sides). I have tried grouping all to make operation, tried a few together and even individual parts but no, my machine grinds to a halt almost, if I leave it alone for several minutes it can mange to d a little subtraction but when I try to do more.... BLENDER is not RESPONDING 😭. So after my long winded method and explanation could you advise me as to what steps I can possibly use to reduce the count/values of my simple model so that I'll be able to subtract it from 2 basic blocks, export the file as a .stl file to be 'sliced' then sent for 3d resin printing. My apology for such a long drawn out dull comment/question but I'm very stuck and tutorial videos on here are helping me. Thanks for reading if you got this far and I hope you have a bit of advice for me. Bob

[@Zev_Reef]

Upgrading to 8 GB Gpu did help though, a lot