Hello everyone. 1st time posting here. This is a long winded story as lots of background info to try and get some help. I have a brand new desktop to carry out rendering work and product animation with SW Visualize. The machine had an Nvidia RTX3070 GPU, but this has been removed as Visualize does not yet support its use, it was only launched Oct'20 I believe, and wont have support until next VIZ SP2, around April/May 21.
So I've installed as an interim card an, AMD WX5100 but it just wont work. I have done a clean install, removing Nvidia drivers, on-board graphics has been disabled in Bios at request of SW support. It appears that no programs on the PC, running Win 10 business are utilizing the GPU, I have also unreal engine installed but it wont even open the program, as its defaulting to the CPU graphics, it hits 100% on task manager and freezes, GPU in task manager sits at 0%
Until today 12/1/21, we couldn't get the GPU to do anything in VIZ, When you open the viewport options, it shows 2 instances of the graphics card when only one installed. Also in System Info, the GPU shows up, but only with 1GB of Ram when this card has 8GB. Today our re-seller asked me to delete info from an app data folder, which we think was housing some old configuration info from the previous GPU. After this when VIZ was opened, it detected the WX5100 and asked if this was to be used, clicked yes and reset the location for Visualize content folder.
This was progress but issue not resolved. 1st time opening after the app data folder cleared, and in the viewport settings, CPU check box ticked, but greyed out and set at 100% usage. Underneath the GPU does not show. Only once I've opened a project and adjusted the viewport preview setting, does the GPU then show up in the viewport options screen, and again there are 2 instances shown. I've tried flicking between the 2 but it makes no difference to rendering performance.
I've had the task manager performance tab open(I know its not 100% accurate) to see what the CPU and GPU usage is when attempting to adjust viewport or render.
On viewport adjustments, setting it to fast render mode, we get the GPU doing what I'd expect. 30 Passes in less than 10 secs and GPU usage bouncing up and down accordingly, 70-80%.
If viewport set to Accurate setting at only 50 passes, the GPU does not go above 10%, it spikes initially then drops back to 4-5%, CPU usage does increase up-to 70% until the passes are complete.
When I attempt a final render, the GPU initially can go to 6-7% then settles back down to 3-4%. CPU usage is low. I've been testing this using the camero car project that comes loaded in Visualize. The final render settings were 3500 pixels at 1000 passes and the render time is over 2 hours which just isn't right. I have a workstation laptop with a 1GB GPU which will render the same scene at same settings, in around 1 hr.
Info was fed back to SW and they have apparently discussed with AMD boffins with no solution as yet. I firmly believe the problem isn't SW, its something within the machine needed set up right but right now running out of ideas. Any help greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance
Graeme