A couple of months ago I started using Windows 10, but since then rendering with the GPU is a pain.
I have a GeForce GTX 660 Ti and was using Windows 7 for years. When I was rendering on the GPU I could switch to other tasks on my computer without problems.
Now after upgrading to Win10, rendering on the GPU almost blocks anything else on my computer.
When I switch back to CPU rendering, I don’t have these problems.
Rendering with the GPU is still faster as with the CPU but since I cannot use my computer for anything else during render time, it’s not really fun anymore.
I have searched the internet but couldn’t find similar problems.
You’re getting lag from the GPU being tasked a lot, so there is very little left to run the rest of the GUI. The other thing is that task scheduling in Windows sucks. Having ditched Windows and gone with Linux full time recently, I noticed that there is some truth to this. In Linux I am still able to work on things, switch around and so on, but there can still be some laggy performance once in a while, but nowhere near what I had on Windows 10. Now I am not saying that you have to switch operating systems, or advocating Linux over Windows, but I am afraid this is the nature of the beast when using GPU on Windows, until Microsoft figures something out. Linux does perform better with VFX types of applications, and this is coming from a guy who’s used Microsoft products for the last 26 years.
What I don’t understand is that in Win7 everything was fine and it changed radically in Win10 (at least on my computer). I don’t think Win10 is eating up significantly more GPU ressources than Win7.
I maybe will upgrade from my GTX 660 Ti to a GTX 1060, but I am afraid to find out, the problem is not the GPU card but some kind of ressource handling under Win10. If Win10 assigns 100% GPU to Blender as well, I might find myself with the same problem even when having a more potential GPU.
I’m still staying on windows 7 myself, however once the support ends I’ll happily move back to linux which is what I used before windows 7 released. I also skipped Vista after using XP and used windows 8 on a laptop for a while just because it was pre-installed however that didn’t last long either - ended up formatting within a year.
Now that Windows 10 is the final/rolling release windows, windows is essentially dead to me. I’ll make use of my windows 7 license for as long as it lasts but after that, I’m done.
You will see an increase in performance render wise, but I’m not sure what it will do for you interacting with the GUI, Cycles is going to hammer the hell out of whatever you give it, but Window’s handling of switching/scheduling may just be the bottleneck you experience. I’ve been using LuxCore recently, and it uses the GPU and all 16 threads off the CPU together, and sure there is lag from time to time, but nothing compared to when I was on Windows and using GPU alone. On Linux, I just don’t have as big of an issue, or many times none at all. I don’t know how Mac handles.