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.

[rickrode]

The path tracing kernel struggles with small light sources and caustics, leading to noise or artifacts like fireflies (hot pixels) if not properly tuned.

[coeddie11]

Hi Anna, several users have reported similar issues with OctaneRender 2023.1 on RTX 40-series cards—try disabling RTX acceleration in the settings or rolling back to 2022.1.1 to see if stability improves, and make sure your Blender plugin and NVIDIA drivers are fully updated.

[bepeg4d]

Hi Anna,

version 2023.1 is outdated, now we are at 2025.2.1 with several fixes and improvements:
viewtopic.php?t=84873

ciao,
Beppe

[skientia]

In complement, a guide on sampling with several debunking, covering the general cases with specific situations to be added in the foreseeable future (applicable to nearly any version but latest is recommended as pointed out by bepeg4d).