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I have a workstation with two GTX 970 boards. Using Blender 2.78c, regardless of the settings under File | User Preferences:

No Cuda Use one GTX 970 Use two GTX 970s

the workstation immediately becomes unstable as soon as I try a Cycles render. This either makes the workstation unusably slow or blue screens altogether.

Are there alternatives to Cycles that work with CUDA?

System Info:

Windows 10 Pro
Version 1607
OS Build 14393.1358

Processor:   Intel Core i7-6700K @ 4GHz
System Type: 64-bit OS, x64 based processor
Installed RAM: 32 GB

Two NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 Driver NVIDIA 2017-Feb-23 21.21.13.7878

Updates

  • The NVIDIA Drive has been updated to 2017-Jun-27 version 22.21.13.8476
  • The resource monitor shows CPUs at 100% as soon as a render in Cycles is initiated. (Even with both GTX 970s selected). Should the use of GTX 970s reduce the burden on the CPUs?
  • I was able to close Blender 2.78c during one test and saw CPU usage immediately drop when Blender was closed.
  • A complete hard shutdown is required after trying a Cycles render.
Doug Kimzey
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  • Same setup, works flawless. What OS? Latest drivers? Related: https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/7486/31447 – brockmann Jul 08 '17 at 14:10
  • Added system info to question. – Doug Kimzey Jul 08 '17 at 15:27
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    Try to update your drivers. February is outdated, obviously. Also windows 10 has some serious issues: https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/68311/blender-2-78-with-windows-10-lags-when-interacting-with-the-ui/68583 – brockmann Jul 08 '17 at 15:50
  • February 2017 is the latest version recommended by Windows 10. – Doug Kimzey Jul 08 '17 at 16:21
  • @DougKimzey If you are serious about your computer performance and overall health don't trust "Windows 10 recommendations". I'm pretty sure there are more up to date drivers from the source they should be downloaded from: NVidias official site And avoid installing drivers (especially critical ones like graphics) from Windows update. – Duarte Farrajota Ramos Jul 08 '17 at 18:51
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    Also make sure your scene is not too big or complex for your hardware and available memory. Slowness and unresponsiveness is highly probable and totally expected while rendering, especially with bigger tile sizes and the closer you get to your memory limits – Duarte Farrajota Ramos Jul 08 '17 at 18:53
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    Probably worth mentioning that issues like this are usually due to drivers or hardware (ex, cooling) rather than Cycles. It is highly likely that any other CUDA-based renderer would exhibit the same issues. – JtheNinja Jul 09 '17 at 03:21
  • Some additional notes - the scene is a very simple tutorial file from a PluralSight course. If you let Windows tell you what the proper drivers are, it will install the Feb 2017 driver. If you go to NVidias site (as recommended by Duarte) you can install a driver from June 2017. I will be taking the course today (I hope) and will post notes on if it works on not. – Doug Kimzey Jul 09 '17 at 12:03
  • An update - installed the 27-Jun-2017 drivers for NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970. Still encounter instability as soon as a render is initiated with Blender Cycles. This occurs regardless of the Cycles Compute Device setting in User Preferences (even if "None" is selected). Tried a run involving CUDA on the same machine in Wolfram Mathematica. No problems at all. – Doug Kimzey Jul 09 '17 at 15:42
  • One additional note - the scene is fairly simple. It is the Blender Tutorial file from the PluralSight course: "Introduction to Materials in Blender". – Doug Kimzey Jul 09 '17 at 15:50
  • Unfortunately I don't have access to digital tutors as well as my OS is Win7. However, might be a scene-file issue so I'd probably test with official benchmark scenes: https://code.blender.org/2016/02/new-cycles-benchmark/ instead. If you are able to reproduce the issue, consider to report a bug: https://developer.blender.org/ @DougKimzey – brockmann Jul 10 '17 at 10:05
  • I will check the benchmark scenes as well as BIOS settings and post findings. – Doug Kimzey Jul 10 '17 at 13:04

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