OTOY Forums

Hi there,

after installing the latest certified nvidia driver for my laptop graphics card (nVidia quadro FX1600m in Dell Precision M6300) Octane doesn't want to work anymore. It's telling me Cuda wouldn't be installed, while I'm sure it is. Is there something I'm doing wrong or are there any plans to adjust the code to support these card as well?

I ask because this seems to be an issue on Octane side as other things running only on cuda work. (Seti@home via Boinc runs on graphics card since updating the driver, while octane suddenly doesn't want to do it anymore.)

Otherwise: as I use the laptop for my daily work I don't want to install hundreds of drivers to check which one might work again. And then there's the issue with the manufacturers support and drivers - one more reason ot to mess with it and just install any driver...

would be happy to hear a solution for my problem as I cannot use Octane atm.

greetings from Overijse/Belgium,
Stefan

Is that a Quadro driver you installed? 258.96? and which O/S is that? Which Octane version?
Is that a Dell driver or is that off the Nvidia site? Which driver did you have before that worked?
Why did you change it? Did you use a driver cleaner after uninstalling?
If you dont give full info you cant expect people to help you out.

I installed the newest drivers I could find when I purchased Octane and since then Windows Update (Vista Prof. 32bit) was telling me to install the last Dell approved nVidia driver. Version 186.21 is installed at the moment. not sure if this is a dedicated quadro driver, but the one that is the latest certified driver.

I installed that one because the last whql-certified driver gave me crashes and strange errors on windows and Cinema4D every now and then.

My Octane version is 1.022 beta 22 and beta 22b for win32bit.

sorry for forgetting this info, but I had a busy day...

OK first thing to point out is that the Quadro 1600M is an older card apparently based on the 8700M GT - 32 cuda cores and 256mb vram so for Octane this will not give a very good experience.
It seems to be a G84core which is related to the 8600GS,GT,GTS ie about the bare minimum to run Octane at all. BTW this card has Cuda compute 1.1 capability which is the min required for MLT(metropolis light transport) implementation coming in later Octane releases.
I am not sure Octane antialiasing/supersampling is supported on this card though.

Second thing is that 186.21 is an older driver with I think cuda 2.2 and cuda 3.0 is required for the beta22 demo. I think this is the problem you have with running Octane now - cuda is there but its the wrong one. You actually 'updated' to an older driver.
To be honest I cant even find a 186.21 listed anywhere at Nvidia. I can find a 64bit one at guru3d. I can find a 186.21 for the NVS160M via Dell. There is a 186.21 Win7 32bit for the M6400 with Quadro 770....
In short I dont know how you ended up with that particular driver but I dont think its one you want.
Uninstall it and use a driver cleaner to make doubly sure you get all the stray bits.
http://www.guru3d.com/category/driversweeper/

Third thing is that Dell list 156.20, 174.31 and 175.51 as cert drivers for the M6300 which is obviously outdated and also not cuda. The drivers I found at Nvidia with cert for Cinema4d - 162.65 - were for XP and were also not cuda. Probably that web page needs updating.
I couldnt find any drivers at support at Maxon.

If you want the latest cuda 3.0 driver for your card it is 197.16
http://www.nvidia.com/object/notebook_w ... _whql.html
The 256 series are cuda 3.1 which might be ok but I would stay with the above for the demo.
These Quadro drivers should work well with the Octane demo and pro apps like Cinema4d and are best idea with a Quadro card. If you dont know already you can choose driver optimsations for various apps via the Nvidia control panel in Windows after installation.

Fourth MS updates often serve you up strange drivers. To prevent this happening again I would hide any video drivers offered once you have ones installed that are to your liking and do manual updates at your own discretion.

HTH and I hope you appreciate the time I spent on this for you

Thank you for the effort - i'll see what I can do with that useful information!

you need at least 197.45 or higher.
read the driver release notes and see if it supports cuda 3.0

nvidia have a 'verde initiative' to give drivers for laptop chipset for more recent cuda operation:

http://www.nvidia.com/object/notebook_drivers.html

that said, your card is SLOW as hell so i would'nt expect any pleasant real-time editing,
and your video ram is just enough to hold a small render image and a small model with only a few textures.

i'm afraid you won't have much fun with octane on this GPU.

Radiance

The 197.16WHQL I linked to is the last/latest cuda 3.0 driver in the Nvidia archive for vista32 and the Quadro 1600m
The next one given is 257.15beta and is cuda 3.1

Other cuda 3.0 listed for his card are 195.39, 195.55, 195.62 and 195.81
AFAIK verde doesnt have to do with cuda but is an initiative to publish notebook drivers in step with desktop ones. 197.16 is a 'verde' driver.

works fine here - thanks for all your effort!