Aikitio Node Pro with RTX 2080

shaneseymourstudio

I recently got the Aikitio Node Pro and an RTX 2080 to use with my laptop. I am using the 419.67 WHQL drivers. Running on Windows 10. The laptop has a Quadro P5000 in it, for which I removed the drivers for it prior to installing the 2080 drivers. I noticed something very interesting that I did not anticipate. Usually Windows holds some vram from the graphics card if it is not  in TCC mode, for which only quadro/titan cards can do to my knowledge. This does not seem to be the case with the 2080 through the Aikitio Node Pro! I have not noticed it holding any vram until running DAZ and rendering. Some scenes I am actually even able to run with the P5000 but sometimes it does not act right, which I didn't expect it would work at all with the RTX drivers. Furthermore, if I have any scenes that are running close to the 8GB threshold of the card I disable Optix and it allows me to squeeze out even more headroom. Just wanted to put this bit out there with my experience and see if anyone else has noticed this or experienced it.

Also I am using 4.11 Beta (latest available).

ebergerly

My understanding is that Windows makes sure (as any good operating system should, as the manager of hardware resources) that no single process hogs all the GPU VRAM. It does that via the Windows Device Driver Model (WDDM), and that limits any ONE PROCESS to use only up to 90% of GPU VRAM. However, multiple processes can, together, use virtually all of the VRAM. I've tried it, and that seems clearly to be the case. I believe MS is supposed to re-consider this limit in the future at some point, but that's unclear AFAIK. 

Therefore, the question becomes:

• Are you sure you're measuring the memory usage of just a single process, or are you in fact seeing usage of multiple processes? You can check that using Windows Task Manager. I've been able to utilize at least 10.9 of the 11GB of VRAM in my 1080ti across multiple processes, and I also believe at some point it will transfer over to a disk cache as I recall so you can use even more. 
• Are you still using WDDM? You can verify by firing up GPU-Z and under Advanced tab select WDDM from the dropdown and see what it says (probably WDDM 2.5 which I think is the latest)
• Is the latest WDDM relaxing that limit? If you look at the WDDM 2.5 docs I don't see any clear mention of that, though it could be hidden in a bunch of mumbo jumbo.  

shaneseymourstudio

Here are screenshots of both the cards without opening DAZ, they remain at 0% utilization, and then after opening Daz. I also have the WDDM screenshots for each from GPUz. Let me know your thoughts or any other way to test. I had alot of tabs open and a secondary monitor all coming off a dell thunderbolt dock from back of Aikitio.

2080 Daz Closed:

2080 WDDM GPUZ:

P5000 Daz Closed:

P5000 WDDM:

2080 Daz Opened (I right click and choose to run with graphics processor):

ebergerly

Keep in mind that in order to see the GPU cards utilization in Task Manager you need to select the correct engine from the dropdown. Next to "3D", for example, you should hit the down arrow and select "compute_0" to see the actual utilization.

Also you can see the VRAM and GPU usage by process if you go under "Details" tab and right click on the headings (Name, PID, etc.) and select "Select Columns" and it will give you the option to select all the pertinent GPU-based usage info. Keep in mind it might add them off screen on the right and you may have to adjust column widths to see them.  

shaneseymourstudio

From the Compute_0 it showed no utilization ( I let it sit for half a min or so before capturing screenshot to see if anything happened:

The details tab does sporatically have utilization from GPU 0 which is integrated 630 graphics but no action from the boys: