So, I just invested in a new computer recently – Xeon 2683-v3 with 14 Cores ; GTX 1070 ; 16 Go of RAM – and I’m enough satisfied with my new system for my work with Blender.
However, as I’m working on sculpting models about 8 Millions tris, the system freezes too much – for nothing it seems, because Blender uses 7000 to 8000 of memory normally, but it goes 12000 to 20000 when it has unexplainable freezes peaks ; like when I’m simply moving an object or selecting another Brush in Sculpt mode ; or simply when sculpting.
Undoing anything with Ctrl+Z is the absolute worst I can do, with freezes that last up to 10 or 15 minutes.
So I have to say it’s very annoying when you count on a brand new “high-end” configuration.
In order to have less freezes – or no more freezes at all even – I’m wondering if I should invest in :
More RAM (additionnal 16 Go)
An SSD (Samsung SSD 960 EVO 250 Go).
Which one of those could make my system faster and make freezes melt ? (lol, sorry) – beside having less detailed geometries of course, which I will have with Retopology.
I’m also planning to move to Linux (Zorin 12) as I saw it’s much faster than Windows may it be on the Viewport or for the Render times.
I’m assuming 20000 “of memory” equals 20GB. You are running out of physical RAM, which will cause your system to freeze, because now memory has to be paged out to your harddisk, which extremely slow. Not only Blender, also your operating system and other programs will consume physical RAM, so to work on 20GB (peak) scenes, you’ll want at least 24GB.
Having said that, you should also get an SSD, otherwise you’re missing out.
I’m also planning to move to Linux (Zorin 12) as I saw it’s much faster than Windows may it be on the Viewport or for the Render times.
It’s faster on rendering, but that’s rather because the Linux compiler (GCC) is better. Viewport performance is rather going to be worse or equal, as OpenGL performance tends to be inferior on Linux. Also, I suggest not to use an obscure distribution like Zorin, but rather something like CentOS or stock Ubuntu, which also have some degree of commercial support.
Actually, it lags even at 8GB of memory (out of 16) when I sculpt ; when I Pinch my model and want to drag a part of the geometry for example, I click, it freezes for 5 to 15 seconds, and drags the part where the mouse went during the lag. Same when I simply move the view around the model when sculpting. It’s so annoying and I just wonder where this lag comes from ; the HDD speed or the lack of RAM ?
Why Zorin is not reliable ? Otherwise I thought about Manjaro.
Why Zorin is not reliable ? Otherwise I thought about Manjaro.
Hi, if you are a advanced Linux user you can work with such exotic distributions but it is hell for beginners.
I guess nobody on this forum use Zorin or Manjaro, who can help you when you get problems.
Blender viewport performance is bad compare to other 3D or sculpt software.
It should be possible to sculpt on a 10-20 million poly mesh easy with your system, depends mostly on the mesh and usage of multires instead of subsurface, for example.
If you’re not running out of RAM and it freezes, that’s just Blender doing its work. Blender does not update the UI during most long-running tasks. There’s nothing you can do about it, no RAM or CPU that you could buy would make a significant difference here. The HDD/SSD isn’t involved at all.
Why Zorin is not reliable ? Otherwise I thought about Manjaro.
I’m not claiming it’s not reliable (I don’t know), but these obscure distributions will not be tested properly, because so few people use them professionally. If you run into problems, it will be more difficult for you to find help, as well.
8 million is just too much for blender. unless you get crashes, then i dont think you are running out of RAM, but you can never have too much of that stuff. hopefully 2.8 will include viewport speed ups.
i use MSI afterburner to monitor hardware usages, since blender isnt always accurate.
SSD FTW. it wont help blender much, but it will make everything else crazy fast. just be sure to have a solid backup system. SSD’s are considered less reliable then traditional drives, but thats slowly changing.
Where you’ll notice the SSD the most is during those CTRL+O moments. You’ll see massive speedup during that intermission openings on larger .blend files … other than that blender is still going to be slow, I avoid ctrl Z whenever possible! Saving often and reopening is faster.
Well, for some obscure reasons, the system isn’t slow as before these last days and I have less freezes and micro-freezes… and I’m sculpting on a 9.5 Million polygons model. Viewing it in Render mode on the viewport is fast again, while it freezed the system for more than 10 minutes some days ago when I posted this topic. Maybe I had all those problems because I had 2 models of 8 Million polys in the scene as I mentioned ; and only 1 now. So I guess I should not be over 10 Million polys in the scene in order to work properly. Maybe I’ll just get additionnal 16 gigs of RAM because Blender uses more than what I have sometimes, but just sometimes. Same for the SSD ; the faster the better.
Oh man, I can’t believe you’re getting performance issues on that type of hardware.
Well, optimization isn’t for everybody, it take a huge amount of time and effort. I’m obsessed with optimizing my models, textures, lighting and rendering.
The lowest I have gone with Blender (2.69, as this is my favorite version), is 64MB of RAM, at that point, do I actually start to freeze up, but this is probably due to the operating system.
The lowest I have gone CPU wise on this version of Blender is a 1.50Ghz Willamette Pentium 4, which is impressively fast for Blender, but again, due to the operating system (Windows XP Service Pack 3), it does use quite a bit of CPU and RAM usage, I should try Service pack one or two.
I have never tried out an SSD, I have seen specs sheets approximating their speeds, seems awesome. In my main animation workstation I have a 5400RPM 100GB hard drive. Heh.
Just wanted to chime in that I use Manjaro. I’ve done a fair amount of work on Linux systems and have tinkered in a lot of different distros. Manjaro xfce is fast, easy, and intuitive. I even have it on my older laptop and blender is very useable on it, whereas when windows 10 was on it blender was barely useable. I can’t really speak about the sculpting speed unless you want to upload your blend file. I could test it on my I7 manjaro desktop with 16gb ram and let you know how it compares.