1 card good, 2 cards bad? Tweet

[Rik]

Just tried hiding everything but 1 object and it rendered ok.
Turned everything back on and it failed.
Here's the log. Might have something useful in?

[paride4331]

Hi Rik,
I meant the Octane device control panel (attached screenshot). Could you share screenshots by selecting GPU1 only, GPU2 only, and both together. While rendering, of course.
Regards
Paride

[Rik]

Ok. When I have the Octane devices preferences window open I'm unable to do anything else, like start a render. Is this normal? I got around it by opening it once the render had already started. Here's the results with the GPUs separately...

I tried turning RTX on whilst only having 1 card activated but it crashed Max.

When I tried both cards activated, without RTX or denoising, it crashed as seen in the octane log. I tried to snip the info as normal but it froze the whole desktop so had to take a photo of the screen

Please let me know if you need anything else that may help

screen photo with both cards activated

[paride4331]

Hi Rik,
Could you run the test again, deactivating the aov option and setting the same options (in the device panel) for both GPUs?
Also, update the Nvidia drivers as follows:
1 Updates windows 10 to latest build available.
2 Unistall the Nvidia drivers using Nvidia unistaller drivers tool
https://developer.nvidia.com/cleanup-tool
3 install latest Nvidia "studio driver"
https://www.nvidia.com/it-it/drivers/results/209374/
Please don't install GeForce Experience and make a clean installation.
Also try to run the following GPU stability test on both single GPU:
https://geeks3d.com/furmark/
Regards
Paride

[Rik]

Hi Paride

Still getting failed render messages when using 2 GPUs. Works alot better when I only enable 1 card.
Have done clean driver installs.

I'm using the latest version.OctaneRender_Studio+_for_3ds_Max_2023.1_-_14.05

I also installed the latest standalone and once I'd worked out how to see anything I got this...
Can you see if there's anything on the screengrab that might tell you why the renders fail?

[paride4331]

Hi Paride

Still getting failed render messages when using 2 GPUs. Works alot better when I only enable 1 card.
Have done clean driver installs.

I'm using the latest version.OctaneRender_Studio+_for_3ds_Max_2023.1_-_14.05

I also installed the latest standalone and once I'd worked out how to see anything I got this...
Can you see if there's anything on the screengrab that might tell you why the renders fail?

Hi Rik,
Have you tried increasing the 'out-of-core' option?
Regards
Paride

[Rik]

Yup.
OOC is set to 4GB but don't think it's required - if you look at the render stats info on the this image the gpu memory is only on 4.277GB and the cards have 11GB so don't see how it can be a memory issue.
This was rendered on 1 card as 2 just won't work.

When using Blender the 2 cards work no problem with Cycles.

I've also attached the detailed log which I'm hoping you guys might be able to use to work out what's the reason for the fails when using 2 cards...

Thanks

[paride4331]

Hi Rik,
Try setting the out-of-core to 8GB. I believe the issue might be related to this, as the first card is also handling the monitor/s, the operating system, and all applications that are using GPU resources.
Regards
Paride

[neonZorglub]

Yup.
OOC is set to 4GB but don't think it's required - if you look at the render stats info on the this image the gpu memory is only on 4.277GB and the cards have 11GB so don't see how it can be a memory issue.
This was rendered on 1 card as 2 just won't work.

When using Blender the 2 cards work no problem with Cycles.

I've also attached the detailed log which I'm hoping you guys might be able to use to work out what's the reason for the fails when using 2 cards...

Thanks

Hi Rik,
Thanks for the log file.
I can see only 1 issue before the memory errors:
Can't connect node 'tx-Map #772863' (NT_TEX_FLOATIMAGE, 00000001DB6AB370) to static pin 'displacement' (P_DISPLACEMENT, type PT_DISPLACEMENT) of node 'Glossy material' (NT_MAT_GLOSSY, 00000001DB80B720)

There seems to be an invalid Grayscale Image named 'tx-Map #772863' connected to the Displacement of a Glossy material.
This could happen when loading old scenes ..
Try to locate this material, and clear the Displacement, to see if that fixes the issue..

Thanks

[Rik]

Solved!
After months of doom and despair, I appear to have Octane working properly again.
Not sure what fixed the issues but I did 3 things yesterday;

1. Got rid of a load of crap from my ssd as it was pretty full. There's now about 50Gb free on it rather than20Gb
2. Set the windows pagefile to only live on my ssd and let Windows control the size of it automatically (I previously had the pagefile on an external drive to free up space on the ssd.)
3. Put the ALC_fixup_v1_2.ms and CRP_fixup_v1_2.ms scripts back in the 3dsmax startup folder.

No idea which one made the difference but all is now good...
Parallel samples and max. tile samples are now turned to highest settings - 32 and 64
Denoiser works, and on both cards
RTX doesn't crash max
Octane has stopped failing renders and telling me my GPUs ran out of memory
I can have other software like chrome open whilst rendering

As a massive bonus, I discovered that un-ticking the priority checkbox in the devices panel for both cards has increased the 'GPU load' in GPU-Z to 85-100% usage rather than 50-65%. No idea why but it speeds up renders around 27% !!!
That, coupled with the maxed out parallel and tile samples means my Octane is now fastest I've ever seen

Hopefully this will help anyone else having similar problems.