Fill limited and unuspported GPUs list #70520

New Issue

Brecht Van Lommel · 2019-10-04T15:47:47+02:00

Brecht Van Lommel commented

2019-10-04 15:47:47 +02:00

After D5955: GPU: Platform Support Level we have a mechanism to show one-time warnings for some GPUs on startup.

However we still need to fill in this list. #61936 (EOL GPU problems tracking report) provides a starting point, along with other reported bugs. It may be most reliable to test for the driver version when possible, since often the bugs are in the driver, and old cards don't work with new drivers.

We will need to parse the driver version which can get tricky, need to look at a lot of OpenGL strings to figure out the patterns.

Intel Windows
Intel Linux (no known issues with OpenGL 3.3 drivers I believe)
AMD Windows
Latest GCN 1st gen drivers: 19.Q3.1 (pro), Adrenalin 2019 Edition 19.9.3 Latest Terascale 3 drivers: 15.201.2401.1010 (pro), 16.2.1, 15.7.1
** Warn for driver version 16 and older. Or 18 and older?
AMD Linux
** No obvious way to distinguish between Terascale and GCN. Maybe just don't warn as drivers are still being maintained for both.
NVIDIA: official driver
Latest driver for GTX 2xx: 342.01 Latest driver for NVIDIA Quadro Tesla: R340 U14 (342.00)
** Warn for 341 and lower.
NVIDIA: nouveau driver unsupported
** Always warn.
macOS
** Test if operating system is 10.12 or newer.

After [D5955: GPU: Platform Support Level](https://archive.blender.org/developer/D5955) we have a mechanism to show one-time warnings for some GPUs on startup. However we still need to fill in this list. #61936 (EOL GPU problems tracking report) provides a starting point, along with other reported bugs. It may be most reliable to test for the driver version when possible, since often the bugs are in the driver, and old cards don't work with new drivers. We will need to parse the driver version which can get tricky, need to look at a lot of OpenGL strings to figure out the patterns. - [x] Intel Windows - [x] Intel Linux (no known issues with OpenGL 3.3 drivers I believe) - [ ] AMD Windows **Latest GCN 1st gen drivers: 19.Q3.1 (pro), Adrenalin 2019 Edition 19.9.3** Latest Terascale 3 drivers: 15.201.2401.1010 (pro), 16.2.1, 15.7.1 ** Warn for driver version 16 and older. Or 18 and older? - [ ] AMD Linux ** No obvious way to distinguish between Terascale and GCN. Maybe just don't warn as drivers are still being maintained for both. - [ ] NVIDIA: official driver **Latest driver for GTX 2xx: 342.01** Latest driver for NVIDIA Quadro Tesla: R340 U14 (342.00) ** Warn for 341 and lower. - [ ] NVIDIA: nouveau driver unsupported ** Always warn. - [ ] macOS ** Test if operating system is 10.12 or newer.

Brecht Van Lommel commented

2019-10-04 15:47:47 +02:00

Added subscribers: @brecht, @Jeroen-Bakker, @fclem, @mano-wii

noki paike commented

2019-10-04 18:49:35 +02:00

Added subscribers: @Ton, @nokipaike

noki paike commented

2019-10-04 18:49:35 +02:00

I would like to bring to the attention of you devs and managers @Ton an issue that I believe is best made evident.

These dated GPUs, I think it's much better to debug them and give them some love, as much as possible (the vast majority of problems have been solved, so it's just a minimum of maintenance, especially on legacy drivers on windows, on linux there the open source Mesa drivers devs are thinking about solving the problems, and now that blender 2.80 has started working properly and that people are familiarizing themselves with it, everything is becoming easier to find solutions.)

Why do I insist on this? the answer is very simple and obvious if you think about it, these gpus, especially the old radeons, the old nvidia and the most widely used intel cpu with integrated gpu of the entry level pc are all lowcost, so the schools mostly have this kind of technology (believe me, I've seen things you humans can't imagine, hehehe) computer classrooms with 20-30 pc dated.

Now, someone manages to make good use of these PCs, installing linux and keeping them reasonably in step with the times, but many remain with windows, and at most they update the drivers.
I think that keepinga working blender on these slow GPUs as long as possible is a long-term investment. For every boy who learns to use blender, to overcome the first threshold of difficulty, it will excite and use blender also at home and in a few years will become potentially a supporter.

Greetings Masters

I would like to bring to the attention of **you devs and managers** @Ton an issue that I believe is best made evident. These dated GPUs, I think it's much better to debug them and give them some love, as much as possible (the vast majority of problems have been solved, so it's just a minimum of maintenance, **especially on legacy drivers on windows**, on linux there the open source Mesa drivers devs are thinking about solving the problems, and now that blender 2.80 has started working properly and that people are familiarizing themselves with it, everything is becoming easier to find solutions.) Why do I insist on this? the answer is very simple and obvious if you think about it, these gpus, especially the old radeons, the old nvidia and the most widely used intel cpu with integrated gpu of the entry level pc **are all lowcost, so the schools mostly have this kind of technology** (believe me, I've seen things you humans can't imagine, hehehe) computer classrooms with 20-30 pc dated. Now, someone manages to make good use of these PCs, installing linux and keeping them reasonably in step with the times, but many remain with windows, and at most they update the drivers. I think that keeping**a working blender on these slow GPUs as long as possible is a long-term investment.** For every boy who learns to use blender, to overcome the first threshold of difficulty, it will excite and use blender also at home and in a few years will become potentially a supporter. Greetings Masters

Ray molenkamp commented

2019-10-04 19:22:39 +02:00

Added subscriber: @LazyDodo

Ray molenkamp commented

2019-10-04 19:22:39 +02:00

nobody is advocating dropping support for older gpu's, this ticket is merely here to index the 'bad driver versions' and notify the users on how to rectify the situation, rather than just having blender crash on their system.

noki paike commented

2019-10-04 19:48:26 +02:00

@LazyDodo
I know, I have seen the efforts that devs have been made with the workarounds to maintain maximum compatibility in this long span of development of blenders 2.80 and 2.81 .
Mine was just a reasonable intuition, which I wanted to make explicit now that the opportunity to do so has opened up.

@LazyDodo I know, I have seen the efforts that devs have been made with the workarounds to maintain maximum compatibility in this long span of development of blenders 2.80 and 2.81 . Mine was just a reasonable intuition, which I wanted to make explicit now that the opportunity to do so has opened up.

Brecht Van Lommel commented

2019-10-04 19:57:55 +02:00

The policy regarding supported GPUs was decided a while ago, and we have no plans to change this.
https://code.blender.org/2019/04/supported-gpus-in-blender-2-80/

If you want to discuss that, please use devtalk, development planning tasks are not the place:
https://devtalk.blender.org/

The policy regarding supported GPUs was decided a while ago, and we have no plans to change this. https://code.blender.org/2019/04/supported-gpus-in-blender-2-80/ If you want to discuss that, please use devtalk, development planning tasks are not the place: https://devtalk.blender.org/

noki paike commented

2019-10-04 21:23:29 +02:00

Things have changed quickly, especially on linux the improvements are quickly becoming evident on these GPUs. And they will continue to come from the open source community. In the legacy windows drivers marginal problems remain. (of osx I know little that world)

but I will do as you say, I will open a discussion on devtalk, you are right, is something to discuss.

Things have changed quickly, especially on linux the improvements are quickly becoming evident on these GPUs. And they will continue to come from the open source community. In the legacy windows drivers marginal problems remain. (of osx I know little that world) but I will do as you say, I will open a discussion on devtalk, you are right, is something to discuss.

Andreas Lutsch commented

2019-10-04 23:42:53 +02:00

Added subscriber: @AndreasLutsch

Andreas Lutsch commented

2019-10-04 23:42:53 +02:00

This comment was removed by @AndreasLutsch

*This comment was removed by @AndreasLutsch*

Jeroen Bakker commented

2019-10-05 14:38:17 +02:00

@brecht I would say we can start with limited support for most cases. I would use unsupported only when system can actually crash. That said that means that the current AMD Windows test record needs to be set to limited as I haven't seen any crashes, only incorrect viewport renderings.

Brecht Van Lommel commented

2019-10-05 23:23:29 +02:00

Reverted that initial AMD test in 4707f1982d. Not sure if there is something wrong in that specification or the testing mechanism, we'll have to check next week.

Agee we should use limited support for this case. We may not have any unsupported cases besides the OpenGL 3.3 warning in practice, only limited.

Reverted that initial AMD test in 4707f1982d. Not sure if there is something wrong in that specification or the testing mechanism, we'll have to check next week. Agee we should use limited support for this case. We may not have any unsupported cases besides the OpenGL 3.3 warning in practice, only limited.

blender-admin commented

2019-10-07 18:42:02 +02:00

This issue was referenced by 7790298f61

This issue was referenced by 7790298f61915152f7644561473532340b383745

Brecht Van Lommel commented

2019-10-09 13:56:05 +02:00

I enabled the warnings now for the most common problem, which is old Intel drivers. That's the case I consider most important for 2.81.

In general we should be pretty conservative with this since such warnings are annoying. We should show this mainly for cases where there are known serious problems, or cases where we know newer graphics drivers are actually available.

I enabled the warnings now for the most common problem, which is old Intel drivers. That's the case I consider most important for 2.81. In general we should be pretty conservative with this since such warnings are annoying. We should show this mainly for cases where there are known serious problems, or cases where we know newer graphics drivers are actually available.

Brecht Van Lommel commented

2020-01-15 15:11:29 +01:00

At this moment it's not that important to warn for cards other Intel, and it's rather complicated, so marking as low priority for now.

Mike Erwin commented

2020-02-28 00:36:25 +01:00

Added subscriber: @MikeErwin

Philipp Oeser removed the

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Fill limited and unuspported GPUs list #70520