DS is going straight to CPU
Wonderland
Posts: 7,137
in The Commons
I have a 1080 ti and suddenly DS is no longer using the GPU with just one character and no hair! I have GPU checked and not sure why this is suddenly happening...
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What does the log say? Is it starting on GPU and falling back or never using GPU at all? Obvious suggestiosn are to look into the nVidia driver in use. I think a new one (for me in Win 7) was 'promoted' by the GeForce Ex[erience utitlity (and, as usual, I ignore that as what I have is working!)
Yes I had just installed the newest NVIDIA driver...
This is happening like crazy to a lot of people, myself included. After a lot of testing, I've found that it seems to be triggered most often by changing material settings while the Iray preview mode is active. You can get around this by either switching back to Texture Shaded preview before making any surface adjustments, or by docking the Aux viewport with your main Viewport, leaving Aux set to Iray preview, and then switching back to the Viewport before making any changes. The most important thing is to NOT make ANY changes to anything in your Surfaces panel while you've got a live Iray preview going. If it does revert to CPU, you have to restart Studio to get it to recognize the GPU again.
Ugh. I guess that's what I was doing wrong but I've always worked that way with live preview. So this is a new bug?
Oh interesting, thank you for the tip. This has been happening to me for a long time and I pretty much always use the Iray preview when changing materials, so I'll have to try this.
Nope. Closed DS and reopened the scene and it goes right to CPU. My last render that should have taken minutes took over 10 hours! How can I fix this??? I reinstalled the previous NVIDIA driver and that did not help either!
Rolling back your Nvidia drivers might do it.
Already did that...
Stupid question because you have probably already tried this, but have you tried a scene you know renders with Iray. The reason I ask is some of the new outfits and characters will drop straigt to CPU on an 8 gig card.
Another stupid question, but have you tried rebooting your computer? Have you tried render ing a simple primative to see if it also drops straight to CPU? If it does, it may eiher be your drive (you might need to go through the process to do a full clean driver install), or it might be the card died??
Sorry I'm probably less than helpful, just throwing a few things out that might help diagnose the problem.
Wow, didn't realize that about new characters and outfits! I'm rendering something now but will try your tests after. Rendering a portrait with hair (no clothes or background) and after 37 minutes just at 40%.
..exactly, I found that out and after using Iray View for a while. Even a test render of a single character on my assembly system dumps to the CPU unless I close Daz beforehand.
Check subD levels. Last time it happened to me, subd got cranked up to like 16 somehow lol.
>>So this is a new bug?<<
I think it's been happening since the latest public release because I used to keep Iray preview on too when adjusting materials. I'm using the latest beta and I have the public version installed to test stuff, and both will revert to CPU under those circumstances. Also using latest nVidia drivers.
The only other time I've had it revert to CPU without being related to surfaces was trying to render two characters at subD 3 to show HD morphs. I have a feeling that the last few versions of Studio have memory issues, as there's quite a bit of discussion in the Studio forum about changes to how memory is allocated and how the renderer calculates things. It could be messy for a while until all that is straightened out.
I bet that is it! I have been busy moving for over a month and finally hooked up my rendering computer and upgraded to the newest Beta...
Yeah, I think some PA's that are developing with 11 gig (or more) cards don't realize we all don't have them
. Actually, most that I have run across have lower resolution and resource intensive settings, but I have loaded up the HD and high res versions of a figure and an outfit a couple of times and dropped right to CPU.
It would really be nice if Nvidia would wake up and get with the rest of the GPU render engine world and give us out of ore memory. Doing things with DS would be sooooo much easier.
If this is happening with no chnage in hardware or content (scenes that worked before failing now) then a driver or Windows update may be involved.
I think I have noticed this too. I also use Iray view while fiddling with surfaces, but I always switch back to Textured view before rendering. When it happens, the usual cure is to save the scene, exit DS, and reload. Then it's usually fine. Watch out for texture sets that use 4K or 8K textures for simple things like walls. Reducing memory hungry texture files by 50% is also a simple fix for VRAM memory issues.
Same here. I've also noticed that textures may go weird when it happens, like this:
I've read lately that the best two drivers are 430.60 and 430.86. More recent ones have problems. 430.86 comes up the most often as good when searching DAZ forums through Google. Also saw that a recent Windows 10 update changes the driver to another.
The discussion has been around Iray, which apparently has OptiX Prime locked on for non-RTX cards with a memory overhead for those who previously had it set to off
...it still can be turned off, I have Maxwell GPUs (4GB and 12 GB) and was able to manually disable OptiX in the 4.12 beta.
And did it have any effect?
This has happened to me before and the first thing I check is if a driver has dropped from NVIDIA. If that doesn't help, the next step is to pull up a scene I knew I rendered on the GPU in the past...and if that doesn't help, I try the same scene in an older version of the Daz beta I keep on hand. So far, if the driver wasn't the issue, it's always just been Daz. I've had scenes that rendered fine on the GPU in the past consistently drop to the CPU in the latest version, but then render just fine on the GPU in the old beta. That's how I narrow it down to not being windows or my hardware...that sometimes it's just Daz being difficult. I'd also like to note that this has only happened since updating to 4.12.
I have a 980TI and Nvidia driver 430.86. I never use Iray preview and Studio never drops to CPU if the scene fits the VRAM. Same for both 4.12.0.86 and Public rElease 4.12.1.40.
@melissastjames
FWIW, I have been using Nvidia GPUs as long as Nivdia has been selling them and my experience has shown that a new Nvidia driver has about an equal chance to be a problem. I generally never update the Nvidia driver unless it is a specfic requirement for Studio. If you have successfully been rendering, and haven't just updated Studio, it's not a driver issue.
That is exactly why Studio is not dropping to CPU for you, you're not using Iray preview. That's where the problem lies, and I'm fairly confident this is a recent Studio issue and nothing to do with nVidia drivers or Windows updates.
Perhaps it's an issue with DS not releasing memory in VRAM allocated for the textures in preview mode when renders start. Maybe it allocates new memory for the render on top of the memory for preview mode. I'd recommend running GPU-z while using DS to see if the VRAM memory creeps up while using preview mode. It probably will. The issue would be when you drop out of preview mode, does it give back all the memory it grabbed for the preview mode? If VRAM usage keeps going up the longer you use preview mode, that could be the issue. I haven't noticed this, but my scenes generally fit easily into 6GB VRAM. I'm also still using 4.10.