Why is Blender not using my GPU and insists on using the slow CPU?

Support Animation and Rigging
1

Hi all.

I am very new to Blender and am trying to use it on my laptop Asus K55VM SX086D. Main hardware:

  • i7 3610QM
  • GeForce GT630M
  • 8 GB RAM

In User Preferences I’ve set Compute Device to CUDA and selected my GPU which is clearly visible there (http://i.imgur.com/olqctYJ.jpg).

I searched quite a lot and realized that I had to install CUDA Toolkit also. So I did that,

However, even after installing CUDA, reinstalling Blender, restarting the PC… Blender still does not use GPU. I’m using Afterburner to monitor GPU/CPU usage and I see that whenever I’m working inside Blender (I’m only using Blender for Image Stabilization under the Movie Clip Editor window and then rendering it out using Node Editor window) my CPU usage goes up to 100% and uses all the 8 cores, but my GPU is completely idle. This makes me so sad. :((

Not only is CPU rendering time consuming but I feel I’m also overusing the CPU for work which the GPU can easily do.

I’ve checked that my GPU’s CUDA score is 2.1 (via this page https://developer.nvidia.com/cuda-gpus).

What am i doing wrong? Is there something else that I need to do to make the GPU work? Please help! I’ll provide extra info if you need it, please let me know.

2

However, even after installing CUDA, reinstalling Blender, restarting the PC… Blender still does not use GPU. I’m using Afterburner to monitor GPU/CPU usage and I see that whenever I’m working inside Blender (I’m only using Blender for Image Stabilization under the Movie Clip Editor window and then rendering it out using Node Editor window) my CPU usage goes up to 100% and uses all the 8 cores, but my GPU is completely idle. This makes me so sad. :((
That gpu option is to use the gpu for rendering out the 3d viewport using the cycles renderer, not for motion tracking or compositing

Screen Shot 2016-09-17 at 19.06.09.jpg810×270 40.7 KB

3

Well, I’m not at all doing any 3D work using Blender, I’m just using it for video effects such as object tracking and image stabilization, and then rendering the new video out to a normal video file. Does that mean that while doing those things Blender will make absolutely no use of the GPU?

The rendering part of the process takes a lot of time and I hoped that if the GPU took over the task from the CPU for the same, I could speed up the whole process. Not to mention, the motion tracking part too takes a great toll on the CPU. Is there no way that Blender will use the GPU for those tasks?

4

Well, I’m not at all doing any 3D work using Blender, I’m just using it for video effects such as object tracking and image stabilization, and then rendering the new video out to a normal video file. Does that mean that while doing those things Blender will make absolutely no use of the GPU?

The rendering part of the process takes a lot of time and I hoped that if the GPU took over the task from the CPU for the same, I could speed up the whole process. Not to mention, the motion tracking part too takes a great toll on the CPU. Is there no way that Blender will use the GPU for those tasks?