Severe Slowdowns & Artifacts in Path Tracing After Updating to Octane 2023.1

[annajoy]

Hi everyone,
My name’s Anna, and I could really use some help figuring out a strange issue that started after updating to OctaneRender 2023.1. I’ve been troubleshooting for days and I’m honestly at a loss.
Since the update, rendering in Path Tracing mode causes:

• A massive performance drop (much slower than when I was using a 3080 Ti)

• Strange colored square artifacts during progressive rendering, especially in scenes with a lot of GI

• GPU VRAM usage spikes and frequent CUDA crashes

• Unwanted banding and fireflies in render passes like Diffuse and Emission (not present in PMC)

Is this a known issue with 2023.1? Could it be a problem with RTX 4090 compatibility or the Blender plugin specifically? I’d really appreciate any advice, suggestions, or similar experiences you can share.

[NoraKim]

In the kernel, increasing or adjusting GI Clamp or Path Termination Power can reduce strange color artifacts, especially with complex GI.