Order Independent Transparency and memory issues

[jjankowiak]

Recently updated to M090 of Creo 2.0 and discovered that order independent transparency works with NVidia cards. This is awesome - performance is more than 10x what it was. Problem now is memory issues. Seemingly random crashes with the message "An application has requested more GPU memory than is available on the system".

Is this a known issue that is resolved in a later spin or anyone have any fixes? I'm using a GTX 570 with 1280mb of GDDR5.

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[KenFarley]

General question. Why update to M090 when the current release is M180? I don't know if there are any particular enhancements that relate to graphics, but that is a pretty old release. I seem to recall having some odd behavior around the time those versions were out...

[jjankowiak]

Kenneth,

  Yeah....M090 is the last spin we got before maintenance expired

[StephenW]

I turned off order independent transparency shortly after enabling it. Seemed to cause way too many crashes. Haven't tried it since.

[jjankowiak]

Stephen,

  I can't ignore the performance gains I've seen with OIT. Makes working in a large transparent assembly absolutely seemless and smooth. I need to figure this out.

[JonathanHodgson]

Where is the option set - with Creo, or within the Nvidia Control Panel?

[jjankowiak]

In Creo. File->Options->Model Display - right below "Enable Transparency"

EDIT*  -if you haven't tried it, you should. Night and day difference in transparent shaded mode

[dgschaefer]

Is it set by the config option "blended_transparency independent"?

[jjankowiak]

Yes. It appeared only after I made the change and saved the config.pro.

[BillChapman]

OIT needs a graphics card that supports Open GL 4+.  I believe the GTX is a gaming card, and you need a Quadro Series card to get the Open GL.

[jjankowiak]

Bill,

  Yes, it is a gaming card. I've always used gaming cards, as they are 1/4 the price of the comparable Quadro card. Have had several Quadro cards over the last 17 years and ran benchmarks against their gaming equivalents. Have really never seen the performance difference to justify the major cost difference - possibly until now. Honestly, the performance of  this card is still awesome - except in transparent mode. That is until OIT option came along....Now it's awesome all around - until it crashes a few times a day. I'm currently using it, but I've had to increased my "save" frequency. Can't predict what will cause or when it will go out of memory. This is the most frustrating part.

This is why I'm trying to see if it's an amount of memory issue, GTX vs.Quadro driver/architecture issue, or a newer spin of Creo issue.

[Inoram]

This is why I'm trying to see if it's an amount of memory issue, GTX vs.Quadro driver/architecture issue, or a newer spin of Creo issue.

From what I have seen, of those 3 things I am leaning towards amount of memory. I run a GTX card, but running M180 currently, but I have run M90 and I don't remember an OIT issue. I also don't remember which build added OIT either.

[jjankowiak]

I'm thinking amount of memory as well, though I don't know if it's a spin related thing. I installed GPU shark to monitor the RAM usage. Not very predictable when it will max out. Runs almost maxed out, then you open or close a window of Creo - and it may go up or come down. The only way I've consistently gotten it to crash is in a rather large assembly drawing whilst modifying a X-hatching. So really - it's not even when there's a transparent shaded model/window open.

[jjankowiak]

OIT was available earlier for AMD Fire cards. NVidia support was added in M090. This was why I was wondering if it cleared up in a later spin.

[Inoram]

I am now wondering if OIT was buggy in M90 and fixed in M100... I just don't remember now. I think there was forum discussion on it when it came out, you can try searching around the date M90 released. Which was Dec 27th, 2013.

[Inoram]

GTX570 supports OpenGL 4.2

[jjankowiak]

Thanks for this. I looked on NVidia's driver page and it appears to support OpenGL 2015, which I believe is the later version?

[Inoram]

The latest version of OpenGL is 4.5.

What's New in the Latest Version of OpenGL

[Inoram]

But it appears to be hardware dependent, meaning, new drivers don't give you newer OpenGL support.