Installing the recommended Windows drivers for V-Ray GPU

Overview

This article provides a comprehensive guide on how to install the recommended Windows drivers for V-Ray GPU on Windows operating systems. It explains the step-by-step process of identifying the compatible drivers for your GPU, the installation procedure, and troubleshooting tips to ensure a smooth setup.

Check the current recommended driver

We advise using the driver version listed on the V-Ray GPU product page for GeForce and NVIDIA RTX/Quadro GPUs.

Considering that recommendations can change, verify the version on the product page before you install or update.

Best practices for driver updates

• A stable driver is a big part of a reliable GPU rendering experience, therefore do not update your drivers whenever Nvidia releases a new build. Please wait for Chaos to test and verify before updating. 

• Use the NVIDIA Studio Driver branch, not Game Ready Drivers, unless Chaos specifies otherwise. Mostly we recommend Studio Drivers as they do not get updated often, but in corner cases, we could recommend Game Ready Drivers if we need to, as they get released with fixes before their Studio counterparts
• If you use an older or newer driver version you will find a Warning message in V-Ray's log. This Warning should not prevent you from rendering unless there are stability issues with current installed driver. If you must use a different version, you can continue rendering, but monitor for instability and switch to the recommended driver if issues occur.

Note: It is normal that Chaos recommends a certain driver for up to 3 months, this happens if there are issues with newer released drivers. We communicate closely with NVIDIA when we recommend a certain driver, and if we found issues and instability.
 

Download and install the NVIDIA driver on Windows

Follow these steps to install the recommended driver for V-Ray GPU:

1. First, visit V-Ray GPU product page to check the recommended drivers - it is shown in the banner at the top of the page.

2. Identify your NVIDIA GPU model (GeForce or NVIDIA RTX/Quadro) and your Windows version and search for the driver.

   For GeForce GPUs, go to the NVIDIA GeForce drivers page and use manual search. For NVIDIA RTX/Quadro GPUs, use the NVIDIA driver downloads page to find the recommended Quadro drivers.

   Fill the manual search fields:

   

Select your Product Type - GeForce in this case, then choose your Product Series and Product Name (select Notebook only if you have a laptop). Select your Windows version and set the Download Type to Studio Drivers. 

Click on Start Search. 

From the list of available drivers, select the recommended driver, click Get Download, then click Download Now on the next page.

3. Once driver is downloaded, run the installer as Administrator. When prompted for an extraction path, you can keep the default and continue:

   

Note: Before installing driver, make sure to save your work and close all other applications.

4. Select NVIDIA Graphics Driver option. We do not recommend installing NVIDIA App for stability reasons, unless you need its gaming features:

5. In the Installation options select Custom (Advanced) instead of Express. Next enable the Perform a clean installation option.
   Note: Clean installation resets your NVIDIA Control Panel settings. You will need to reapply any custom settings after the driver installation.

6. Click Next, and wait for the installation to finish:

Note: Your display may flicker several times during installation - this is normal.

Restart and troubleshoot display issues

At this point you might be asked to reboot your machine, this doesn't happen every time you install a new driver, please reboot your machine if it asks you to.

If your monitors don't wake up or if your machine gets stuck for more than 5 minutes on black, restart your PC manually (cold reboot) and then repeat the steps again.

Note: when the installation is finished we recommend rebooting machine one more time even if not prompted to do so.

Adjust NVIDIA Control Panel settings

Note: doing a Clean Install of drivers resets all settings to their defaults, so you will need to change these settings every time you install a driver. Additionally, in the NVIDIA Control Panel you can verify the version of drivers you have installed.

The following settings are key in getting the expected performance out of the V-Ray GPU. 

• Open the NVIDIA Control Panel from the Windows Start menu.
• Click Home to view the currently installed driver version:

• Go to Manage 3D Settings, Scroll down to Power Management Mode, and change it to Prefer Maximum Performance (this slightly increases the power draw of the GPUs in an idle state by a slight margin, this is very important to avoid performance issues on GPU rendering with Vantage and V-Ray GPU). Click on Apply:

• If you have multiple GPUs, change OpenGL rendering GPU to the card you have your monitors attached to (this card will be used for viewport performance across all DCC applications) and Click on Apply changes:

Other Windows Settings recommended for GPU rendering

We recommend enabling the Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling option in Windows 10 and 11 (enabled by default in Windows 11). When enabled, this will free up VRAM accessible to V-Ray GPU on your GPU(s). 

This option is available under System > Display > Graphics > Default Graphics Settings: