My GPU isn't used while rendering
mlolya
Posts: 36
I have a NVIDIA 1050 GPU with 8 gig. It's working and it's being used while I'm on Daz, but when I'm rendering and I open Task Manager I see that the CPU is at 100% usage and the GPU is at 0% I assume that this means that the CPU is doing all the work. Shouldn't the GPU be used to render?
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This is rendering with Iray, and you have the nVidia card checked 9and indeed showing) in the Advanced tab of Render Settings? If it isn't showing, which version of Ds (Help>About Daz Studio) and whicj driver version (right-click on desktop, nVidia Control Panel, click the Home icon in the toolbar)
It depends on a number of factors. The big one is whether or not the combined size of the mesh and textures used will fit in the VRAM of your video card. With large scenes, this is likely to happen.
I'm assuming that you are stating that you have 8GB of System RAM.
The GTX 1050 that you are listing is a 2GB GPU, you are not going to be able to use a 2GB GPU for much more than a portrait render because as stated above the entire scene needs to fit into the GPU's VRAM.
Side note (A few notebooks configured with the GTX 1050 have 4GB of VRAM)
I do have 8 gig of ram and 4 gig on the GeForce GTX video card. On the render settings tab NVIDIA Iray is the engine. Under the advancedd tab both CPU and GeForce GTX 1050 are checked. I tried unchecking the CPU but either way, whether I'm rendering a large scene or a tiny one figure scene, Task Manager shows 100% CPU usage and 0% GPU usage.
I'm using DAZ 4.10 and the the GeForce card is new,
Go download and install the newest GPU driver directly from Nvidia.
The driver published by Microsoft (The one that Windows Update installs) does not work with Iray. You need the Nvidia published version.
How are you getting Task Manager to show GPU usage? Mine only shows CPU, RAM, Disk, and Network. I use MSI Afterburner to monitor the GPU.
Is this a Windows 10 thing?
Since last update my Windows 10 taskmanager also shows GPU usage. However, one cant count on the number its showing. While rendering my GPU0 (first one) shows 100% but GPU 1,2,3 show numbers between 0-40% which is wrong. GPU-Z shows all running between 99-100%.
Bottomline
Nice Microsoft added this after all those years it could have been done already. Bad thing that its nothing worth.
So, download GPU-Z and see your results there. If you have checked GPU rendering in DAZ and it doesnt do it, maybe the scene is too big for GPU ram. Check your logs and try a very simple scene.
First I want to thank everyone who offered advice. I did update the driver and there was a better driver available. I also downloaded GPU-Z.
After all is said and done my GPU still doesn't seem to contribute anything to the rendering of my images. It makes no difference whether I render a small image or a large one, whenever I render the CPU still works at 100% and the GPU does nothing. I understand that a larger image might not be able to fit in the 4 gigs on the GPU, but I've tried even tiny images with the same result.
The question that it comes down to is why spend a lot of extra money for a GPU with 4 GIG if it contributes nothing to the render process?
Is your scene too big for the VRAM? I don't see where you checked that. Try rendering a sphere sitting on a plane.
So, this is an older thread, but it happened to me today after trying to render for first time after updating DS to 4.11 (though, I think the problem started a few months ago and I didn't notice)
So, my machine was using a 2016 driver by MS and DS clearly wasn't able to use that for rendering but the card was showing up just fine under advanced settings on Render Tab. Finding a valid driver, though, wasn't as easy as you would hope. When I searched for Geforce drivers, I ended up with one, by NVidia, but from 2015. That didn't work. When I searched again, I found a page that let you choose which model, etc and had to choose "Gaming" to get them to show me a download link (there is another option for Creator?)
Anyway, I ran that, opted for a "Clean install" and all seems fine after yet another reboot.
I say I think it started a few weeks/months ago, but I could be wrong. I just rendered a couple of images that I did a couple of weeks ago and they rendered about the same as I seemed to remember them doing. So, I'm wondering if a fairly recent update by MS reset the drivers back to microsoft's prefered version.
The reason I noticed was I was just doing a dumb little test render to make sure everything worked after updating to 4.11 and it was just a naked G8F with no hair or anything changed from the default load. It was still rendering 10 or 15 minutes which I hadnt expected.
Doing the same render after getting the drivers set up, the log says it finished in a little over 3 minutes, which seems right.
Maybe the OP's driver install wasn't the newest after all?
Hi there I'm new to all this forum stuff so please bear with me ... I have updated my PC with a NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 GPU read all the above but DAZ is sill not using the GPU in renders. I 'm running Win10 i9-9900K 3.60processor 32 GB ram. I believe the driver is up to date - I did have the gaming driver loaded so updated I it again this morning to the studio driver to see if that worked but still no luck. Baffled ... so some guidance would be very much appreciated thanks.
I have the same problem and asked in a few places too. Tried latest driver, and then the studio driver. Some people were helped by selecting their card in the nvidia control panel manage 3d> program settings cuda GPUs> selcet you card here. You can do the same specifying DS in the programs tab. Didn't work for me but did for others.
First and this is very important, when you're told to get the latest driver go to Nvidia.com and download the driver from there, and only from there. Disable Windows Update installing drivers completely.
Second if that doesn't fix your problem you need to look at the DS log and find the error message where it failed to use the graphics card. That could provide valuable information as to what is going wrong,
The log can be found, under Windows, at %appdata% -> DAZ3D\Studio4
I did that, the error log for me was peppered with:
2019-06-07 22:31:40.340 WARNING: ..\..\..\..\..\src\pluginsource\DzIrayRender\dzneuraymgr.cpp(301): Iray ERROR - module:category(IRAY:RENDER): 1.4 IRAY rend error: OptiX Prime error (Device rtpModelUpdate BL): Memory allocation failed (Function "_rtpModelUpdate" caught exception: Encountered a CUDA error: cudaMalloc(&ptr, size) returned (2): out of memory)
2019-06-07 22:31:40.387 WARNING: ..\..\..\..\..\src\pluginsource\DzIrayRender\dzneuraymgr.cpp(301): Iray ERROR - module:category(IRAY:RENDER): 1.2 IRAY rend error: CUDA device 0 (GeForce GTX 970): Scene setup failed
2019-06-07 22:31:40.387 WARNING: ..\..\..\..\..\src\pluginsource\DzIrayRender\dzneuraymgr.cpp(301): Iray ERROR - module:category(IRAY:RENDER): 1.2 IRAY rend error: CUDA device 0 (GeForce GTX 970): Device failed while rendering
2019-06-07 22:31:40.387 WARNING: ..\..\..\..\..\src\pluginsource\DzIrayRender\dzneuraymgr.cpp(301): Iray WARNING - module:category(IRAY:RENDER): 1.2 IRAY rend warn : All available GPUs failed.
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This eventually led me to turn off OptiX and no crashes since then. I have reinstalled DS too so I guess I will leave it off until there's a fix.
I don't think I have ever tried such an unintuitive programme before. Everything seems so cumbersome and prone to fail. I am a novice, but normally I learn things quickly. With Daz 3D I keep stumbling into the same holes with different scenarios and triggers x) not very userfriendly. I am aware that with all the different PC setups out there they will never be able to satisfy everyone, but still... it is version 4.11 now. As you can see on their webpage they ought to be making quite a lot of money with the prices on the items there, so maybe hire some more people working on making this a little more fun, instead of being frustrating 80% of the time.
I will try some of the things above since it does the same for me; switches to CPU instead of using the GPU. i5 (bottleneck), 1070 GTX(8 GB VRAM) and 32 MB RAM here on Windows 10 (Second to newest driver directly from Geforce Experience).
Edit: Okay, My scene is a Trog, a woman(with grafts), Cabin in the Woods (with furnishings but no lights), 4 Ghostlights from Ghost Light Kit 2 (Set up), A HDRI with the Milkyway. That is it. I simply couldn't get it to render using the GPU.
Then I started deleting stuff. The first thing that went, was the HDRI, then the furnishings from 4/5 rooms in the house; I even deleted the ground, stones, trees and stuff from Cabin in the Woods. NOW it uses the GPU x)... but seriously, if you can't make a scene with anything else but a man, woman and a poorly furnished house and a few lights how big of a PC do you need to make something that actually looks good!? Plus when you delete the stuff I've deleted the light won't fall as it should anyway. Are you guys all buffing your images in post-work?
To let newbies like me know if they come to this thread as I have: The first time it fails to use the GPU, do NOT bother continuing to try to fix it with deleting things until you have closed down and reopened Daz Studio, because it will jump straight to rendering with the CPU again if you do. Optix Acceleration has no effect whatsoever on wether or not it will use the GPU for me on my PC. At the moment it is rendering the image (a close-up) of the Trog and woman just fine (18 minutes in / 85% done). To sum it up - be sure you have nothing more than the bare minimum of what you need for each scene you render, and make a lot of subscene saves I guess :-/ this will clog up the save folder in no time xD
Try the newest driver.
I would have thought you should be able to render that scene with your card. I'm not sure how resource intensive the Cabin in the woods is but other sets from that vendor aren't particularly heavy.
You must have a GPU with relatively little VRAM. You have to be aware that everything in the scene takes up VRAM during the render and if you exceed the amount on your card the render will drop to CPU.
kenshaw011267:You must have a GPU with relatively little VRAM. You have to be aware that everything in the scene takes up VRAM during the render and if you exceed the amount on your card the render will drop to CPU.
Relatively little VRAM: I wrote it in the post (8GB).
Okay, then explain this. I just turned on the computer, opened Daz 3D... same slimmed down scene as before... I MOVED the Trog and the woman to the next room. Closed the shutters on the windows and set up three new cameras in the Living Room and dimmed 2 of the 4 ghostlights.... Renders to CPU.... Netflix not open (just fyi)
I then SAVE the "new" scene I've made and close Daz. Reopened Daz, loaded the scene and started rendering. NOW it uses the GPU (Netflix streaming) :-) this programme just stinks xD From the rendering box I could read that the geometry, textures and rest take up ~5.4GB of VRAM in TOTAL.
In addition I can see that this time the render takes only 10 minutes, instead of 35 minutes... There is no correlation between instances and it is insanely frustrating.
Was the Viewport using nVidia Iray preview mode?
I cannot definetely say no (can't remember). The same happened just now again, with the window 100% not using Iray preview though. Had to close Daz, open it anew and start rendering right away; that seems to work most times. I do wonder how you guys manage to do anything at all with older videocards though! If a 1070 can't handle a simple scene, it is a pretty expensive hobby to have :-P
Well, Iray can be used on CPU so it isn't the end of the world if it won't render on the GPU - just slow (and you can at least set the CPU Affinity in Task Manager, for Windows, to make the system responsive during a CPU render - I find that even typing becomes sluggish while my ancient 750Ti is doing a render).
It's not a simple scene if it filled an 8Gb card. What you described is definitely a drop to CPU because you ran out of VRAM. Get Scene Optimizer or find what ever is using up all the VRAM, my bet is something has a very high SubD l;evel.
It's possibly just DS/Iray being stupid with video memory. I've had occasions where I'd do a quick test render on GPU, and then change a pose here and there without moving the camera, and then when I try it again, it drops to CPU. Shutting down DS and then reopening the scene can help. But yeah, when you're getting up there, Scene Optimizer can help a lot.
Thank you for your help with this! It has definetely helped keeping an eye on the VRAM consumption. In all honesty though; 2 female characters with hair and clothes take up around 2Gb of VRAM. That is insane. It really is an expensive hobby. I will look into getting Scene Optimizer that sounds like something I could utilize to keep frustrations at a minimum.
Since I have been keeping track of the VRAM usage and minimalized scenes, it hasn't dropped to CPU yet.
Yeah, scene optimizer is such a great asset to have, I use it all the time. Unless I am doing a closeup render where I need skin detail, I end up using it and cutting every map 1024 and bigger in half in the scene I am rendering. It gives a bit of a speed boost cutting down map sizes as well as far as I can tell.
@Sevrin "I've had occasions where I'd do a quick test render on GPU, and then change a pose here and there without moving the camera, and then when I try it again, it drops to CPU"
If you are leaving the render windows open, you are not clearing the GPU's VRAM. Depending on the scene and the number of test renders, you will eventually run out of Vram.
Once you are ready for the final render, either close all the test render windows, or close all but the last test window. GPUz is your friend.
Has anyone found a way to get the gpu running?
Make smaller scenes? The OP's specific problem was having scenes to big for his card. If you're having an issue it could be that or something different. We'd need some information in order to help you.
This thread shows up high on the google results. I also came here looking for info.
I think a lot of people miss this. But having viewport open in iray, uses a lot of graphics memory.
The log shows I run out of it memory when starting the render, making it default to cpu (GPU-Z then shows hardly any use of GPU)
Closing it did not do much in terms of rendering time/memory.
I changed it to cartoonshaded and later to wireframe and that went waaay quicker. (GPU-Z has GPU at 77% and higher)
Is there anyway to reduce it even more, giving more to the render? It's weird to see 1.8GB to be used for the render and not being able to use the 6GB Videocard because viewport is also open.
Underneath the render settings, in the tips window. There is a link to a video. But the video uses daz 4.0 beta.. and there was no iRay then..
You realize that the contents of a render window are held in VRAM until the render is saved or the window is closed so you can resume rendering where it left off instead of starting from scratch, don't you?