Serious errors when using Octane C4D

[mbutler2]

I have felt your pain. Some things I did in similar situations...

1) Try an older version of Octane, I've had luck with this. Uninstall both the plugin and stand alone, and install both from an older build. The first 3.0 worked better for me than the next two did, when I was getting crashes. (In my case, I ended up getting a fancier motherboard, but I had a lot more GPUs.)

2) Run the stand alone Octane and see if that gives you the same problems as the plugin Octane in C4D.

3) Run Windows Memory Diagnostic Tool just to check that your RAM is working okay.

4) If there's any way you could remove your GPUs and try others, that would be a good test. Borrow a GPU from a friend? Buy a cheap 970 used.

5) Are your GPUs getting enough power, is PSU big enough?

6) Install free Blender and render with GPU using Cycles. See if you get similar problems. In my case, Octane could blue screen crash my whole system, and Blender Cycles would GPU render fine. I think Octane uses the GPUs a lot harder than Cycles. In my experience, Octane can push GPUs to crashing Windows when nothing else will GPU crash on the same setup. But it could be a useful test.

7) Can you run your GPUs hard with something else, like a game, and see if you get similar results.

8) Physically remove one of your GPUs and try rendering just with one of them. Maybe your motherboard doesn't like two GPUs for Octane.

9) Trying GPUs in different slots could be useful. Read your motherboard manual for suggestions. My old MSI motherboard just wouldn't boot if it didn't like where the GPUs were.

10) For your rebooting problem, if it won't post, push the BIOS reset button on the motherboard. Sometimes I still couldn't reboot and I had to remove the GPUs, try to boot, put GPUs back in, boot, and then it would start up. I had to reset the BIOS every time I tried different slot configuration.

11) Keep detailed handwritten notes. One time I got everything working and wasn't sure why. But looking back through my detailed notes, I could see what I did that worked.

12) If you think the power is bad out of the wall, but it on a UPS, which will clean and stabilize the power a bit. Or take the whole rig to someone else's house and plug it in there. This sounds unlikely though.

13) If your GPUs are getting that hot, take off the cover and run it open air, maybe with a household box fan next to it, just to see if you can run with lower temperatures and see if that helps. See if your crashes take place only when temperatures rise. When you first start running on cool cards, does it crash then? Yours are certainly hotter than my open air 980 TI's are.

14) Check priority for all cards in Octane Settings, just to be sure it's on for the card you're using for monitors.

My crashes happened right away, bluescreen out of windows by just starting Octane. In my situation I just had too many GPUs on a motherboard that didn't like it, so I got an Asus E WS that works better. With yours, how it works for a bit and then goes bad, maybe its a bad piece of hardware somewhere, I don't know.

In the end, I built two duplicate computers. Now, if anything ever goes bad like this in the middle of a project, I won't have to stop working to do weeks of diagnostics.

Best of luck, let us know if you figure it out.

M

[lideborg]

Man thank for all of this, will look it through when I have time. Company decided to send me and the computer down to a lab and sit there to try and recreate the problem so we can find a solution, switching out parts and such!

But again, this is awesome, thank you sooo much!

Best
/Hampus

[lideborg]

Just a lil' update here!

Actually sent my computer to some pretty techy guys to go through it and they said they couldn't really find any error. In the beginning when they did some test it looked like one of the GPUs would crash and give similar glitch errors. But then they switched place on the cards and ran all the tests and after doing that for two days without any errors I came and picked it up (this morning). Been running the live viewer in a few old files that made it crash and have not got any errors yet. So hopefully it was just something weird going on with the placement of the cards. Will update here if something new shows up! Just happy everything looks ok now!

Thanks for all the help guys!

[lideborg]

Allright, back again. Took me around 48 hours before same things happening again. Because it wont happend right away i guess the technicians couldnt find it. Anyhow I'll try remove one card, run on that and the other as well to see if its something with the cards. This gets me so fucking stressed out, hope its something with the cards.

[mbutler2]

What a pain. I spent a few months on this sort of thing, its so frustrating.

If its crashing only after using for a while, maybe it's a low-power problem or a high-heat problem. How big is your power supply? Did you try my suggestions to keep cards cooler for testing?

If you got improved results after putting cards in different slots, then I feel like that might point to your motherboard. If you want to do a full attack, replace your motherboard with something like an Asus E WS. Does it run okay with one GPU? If so, consider switching a fancy motherboard like this that handles multiple GPUs better. What motherboard are you on right now?

Let us know how the continuing saga goes!

M

[lideborg]

Yeah it really drains the energy out of me! Anyhow, took one of the GPUs out and put it through some tests and it looks like it works fine. It needs maybe 2-3 days though before I'm sure as when I got everything working it took about 2 days before got the problems again. So will update here when i've used it a few more days to be sure. Then switch the GPU out for the other one and seeing if it's something with one of the cards.

Anyway here is my setup atm http://pcpartpicker.com/list/rN6wxr

[lideborg]

Allright update here!

Now took both of the cards out just to be trying to see which one had an issue. Strange enough they both works. Been trying in both slots and it looks like on their own they work totally fine. Only when I'm using both of them I get the errors described earlier in this thread. Anyone know what this can be a cause of? Feels a bit boring to see one of the cards just laying outside the case!

[lideborg]

Update here again.

Allright, so after sitting for about two weeks only working on one card it really seems like it's not an issue with the graphics cards. I have 3 slots on my motherboard and I've tried both of the graphics cards by themself in every slot and working on it for 2-3 days or so and it seems to work fine. After two weeks of this I try to put both of them in and i get the same errors almost straight away. So after that I actually had a pair of GTX 970 laying around, put one of them in so now running the old Titan X and an older 780 and had no problem with this since I installed it three days ago. Feels a bit boring to have an Titan X laying around not doing anything though.

Anyway, not sure if anyone even cares but thought I give an update. Not sure what I'm gonna do with the Titan, a bit expensive to buy a new rig just to use the card maybe?

[mbutler2]

Well, if I were you, I'd stop torturing myself and get a new motherboard. (-:

That's what it sounds like to me. At least try to find out if there's anybody else using your same motherboard to do what you're doing. I've been flying high since I took Tom Glimps' advice and got two ASUS E WS motherboards. Running 10 GPUs between the two of them.

This article is a little old, but has some great thinking:
http://tomglimps.com/value-based-multi- ... ne-render/