RAM vs GPU card? Which is important

[Wereriche]

Hi guys,

I'm currently on the fence between buying a desktop and a laptop.

My initial thought for a laptop is that I can move out quite easily in the event I need to go someplace else to stay. Sadly, the laptops I can purchase within my budget are GTX 1050 laptops. For the desktop, it's the 1060.

So my question is: In terms of performance when using Blender modeling and rendering images, what's more important? RAM or GPU. Stock i7-7000 laptops on sale have 8GB of RAM but I can pay extra to make it 16GB but I'll only have a 1050 as a graphpics card.

Hope to hear to thoughts on this. Thanks!

[Sean]

If it's for gaming, get the desktop. For rendering, you probably don't want to use either gpu. The most vram in a 1060 is 6 gig. An i7 and 16 gig of ram will serve you well. The desktop will be better for gaming, but if that's not a big concern, the laptop will give you portability. The choice is up to you, but this is just my opinion. Neither choice is wrong. The question is gaming vs. portability. I wish you the best of luck in chosing what's right for you.

[Zenogias]

Depends on a lot of things.

As you have realized the difference between laptop and PC is mobility.

If you are using very heavy graphic, laptop may not serve you well as pc.depends on your skill as well.

In term of performance I recommend using PC no matter how your laptop is,one day it would performance drop unlike PC which you are barely get any performance drop from old hardware.

PC is much more stable than laptop in my opinion.
If you are always out for the event you did better use laptop.

You need to depend on GPU more than ram, as above mentioned high graphic card also has a high capacity and fast for VRAM as well.

Getting more Vram just help you do better in a large screen,where there are a lot of objects in the screen
8GB is quite enough for the works of modeling,16GB is kind of wasted unless you are using high end graphic care GTX 980 like me.
Usually 16 GB is good for gaming not modeling.

With my current works most of the time Blender would take up only around 450 MB of ram while I am using it,so yeah no need for 16 GB of RAM unless you are going for gaming.
Beside if you are using around 1050-1060 there is no need for 16 GB or RAM.

If you just create a single object ram won't help you much compare to GPU.

[Wereriche]

Actually, my current laptop is a i7-5500, 8gb RAM and a 940m

You think it's good to enough create something like this w/o any performance drops?
http://atelierjordan.tumblr.com/post/166375948297/commission-of-koko-for-stephen-diduro

I'm not really aiming for a hi-def, realistic models. I lean more on cartoony and/or stylized stuff like the example above.

or something close to the Green Lanterb 3D animated series.

[The Renderer]

I think your current laptop is more than good enough for this kind of stuff.

But why not just try it out first and then you can see yourself whether you will need a new one? You can just download a model of comparable complexity to what you will want to do and see how it handles in the viewport and how fast it renders.

[Wereriche]

Ok, thanks for that assesment. I'll find out soon enough as soon as I dl Blender again.

Any site I can get those cartoony premade models?

I had a model in mind on Sketchfab but it wasn't open for downloads :'(

[The Renderer]

I don't usually download models but I guess blendswap.com is a good place? There are tons of cartoon characters. You will need to create a (free) account to download stuff.

Maybe one of those:
https://www.blendswap.com/blends/view/66293
https://www.blendswap.com/blends/view/89743

[Monochroma]

u know wat, just buy a pc with top specs and problem solved

[Wereriche]

buh mah wallet~! ;n;

@The Renderer: Thanks for sharing! I'll go look into. :)

[Wereriche]

One other question: There is no difference the blender proper and the steam ver, right?

I'm planning to put blender in my SSD

and all my steam games in the tera byte

[◢ k r i s ◤]

Correct. And Steam can automatically update your Blender install as a bonus.

[Sean]

Publicado originalmente por NG-neer:

One other question: There is no difference the blender proper and the steam ver, right?

I'm planning to put blender in my SSD

and all my steam games in the tera byte

There is one difference. If you kill steam, blender will close without asking you deleting anything you were working on.

[The Renderer]

Blender doesn't profit *that* much from an SSD (definitely less than games that need to load content all the time). But yeah, the Steam version has no benefits vs the non-Steam one, use whichever is more convenient for you. Also, you can install your Steam stuff on different drives, so you could do what you want even with the Steam version.

[Wereriche]

Ok, cool. Good to know :)

[Chiran]

The GPU is like, 20% faster at rendering. It isn't much though, unless you are rendering a big film.

[The Renderer]

Publicado originalmente por MadDummyOnline:

The GPU is like, 20% faster at rendering. It isn't much though, unless you are rendering a big film.

Uhm. No. It depends on your GPU and CPU, of course, but usually it's a lot faster.
If you only have a 20% faster rendering speed with your GPU, then either your GPU is extremely bad or you didn't correctly set your rendering options. Make sure your tile size is quite big (e.g. 512x512) for GPU renders.