Ok, so I’m not scared yet, just a little curious. I just made my first blender animation and it was very simple: a 10-second-long animation of the camera passing by some image planes for a panning shot. It was very simple and didn’t take long. It was my first ever render in Blender. Otherwise, I’ve made many still images in Daz Studio that could take a few hours to render. But ever since I made that first animation I’ve seen, off and on, some black squares blip in and out of my view of my internet browser. This happened more extremely as soon as the render was done, so I closed the internet, reopened it, and didn’t see it so extremely again. But it’s happening a little bit today too.
I just built this computer in 2021 and it has an RTX 3070 card, so I don’t see why it should have any problems.
If I’m seeing black squares on my browser (so far I haven’t seen them anywhere else), does that meant my graphics card is damaged?
the process of rendering should never damage a video card. that said, if your system .overheated. during that time, that could cause an issue, but from the heat, not the render itself. this sounds more like an unrelated, if coincidental, issue. corrupted video drivers (again, not caused by a render itself) could cause the issue, or even the browser itself. have you tried viewing the same videos in a different browser? does it happen if you watch a local (stored on your hard drive) video?
note: the fact your animation render finished successfully, and didn’t crash, and your system itself didn’t crash during that process, makes it unlikely you overheated as well.
Well thank you, that sounds hopeful. I have only seen this issue on the internet, I use Edge, and the first time it happened on the search page and then today it happened on the welcome page when you first open a tab. Maybe it’s Edge?
Yes, the video finished rendering successfully, and I even had to make it twice, because the first one made a wrong video file. I wanted an mp4, but I had a setting wrong. The weird thing was, as soon as my first render finished, I went straight to my internet tab (which was left open) and started searching for something, and it glitched so bad I couldn’t use it. Had to close it. But reopening the internet made it work again.
I use the net a lot, and I use other software, esp. Coreldraw, Clip Studio, The Sims 3, and Word, and have not seen the glitch on those screens.
Is there some way to know for sure if I’ve overheated something? Or could this be an Edge issue?
OR could it be my monitor? My main monitor is older than my pc. I also have a big drawing tablet and have not seen any glitching on that one.
if it’s not happening during the Sims, i wouldn’t worry about having damaged your video card or having overheated. not even the monitor. hmm… one thing you could try, is have Edge split between the monitor and graphics tablet, so you’re seeing half the video on each, and see what happens then. my guess is you will see the glitching on both sides happen at the same time. which leads me to believe that Edge’s display is the culprit. not necessarily Edge itself, as it might be using a 3rd party Codec to decompress the video shown that Edge hooks into. having some videos glitch while others run perfectly fine seems to point that direction… which is why Sims or such may never glitch on you.
That sounds good to me. Thank you so much for the peace of mind. Next time it starts glitching I’ll use the tablet like you said and see if it continues. But for now, I feel better about my GPU.
Yes. Especially CUDA works could be tired your card. You VRAM could be broken if you use too much, for long period. VRAM of my previous card broke when I take render.
And, you can disable hardware acceleration option in your browser settings. If you need to take render very often, disable this setting.
It’s not overclocked, but I’m not sure if it got too hot. Maybe I should get that sensor panel software. The render was very simple and only took about 5-8 minutes. In the past I had done much longer still image renders in Daz Studio.
That’s very comforting! I don’t play games nearly as much as other people. I only just got the Sims 3 last month and haven’t noticed any problems with it beyond the Sims’s own glitches lol.
As a general tip, when doing animations, always render to image files and then make a video from them.
That way if its a long render and the system crashes, you still have everything rendered to that point (well unless its the drive that dies). It also lets you split up long renders to bits at time if need be.
For CUDA applications, VRAM I/O operations happens too often and GPU using for mostly calculation operations and GPU overloaded most time. For this reason GPU could be more tired than play games.
Visual glitches usually indicate issue with the memory. That being said, before suspecting any physical damage, I would first check the driver. Perhaps edge browser updated in the background and it does not play nicely with your existing drivers. Do a fresh install of the latest GPU driver.
The stuttering issue, not just sound, but also the entire computer locking up for a mili second, is an issue all of my Nvidia equipped computers had for the past decade. It would occur randomly, without any observable frequency or pattern. I would suggest to explore the “latency” issue.
Long story short, most computers come equipped with a basic sound device/driver baked into the motherboard. You would see this in the device manager window as RealTek Audio. Modern GPUs also double as a sound capable devices. For some reason Nividia and the motherboard “sound chip” are in conflict. When a signal is sent to play a sound, there would be an error to which device the duty should be assigned to. This would cause latency, producing this nasty stuttering in the sound and sometimes hanging up the system for a brief moment. The solution is to disable either one of the sound capable devices, preferably the RealTek. Go to the device manager → sounds → Realtek and disable it. This device may become enabled again after a windows update, causing the issue to come back.
Games are literally what they’re designed for, and rendering in Blender isn’t that much different. My 1070 is still going strong, and doesn’t even get that hot rendering in Cycles, or reach anything close to full load.
Id ignore anyone that says yes, honestly. The only sure fire way to damage your GPU is either by overclocking it to within an inch of its life and not giving it adequate cooling, or to use it for mining, which will damage it, though even that takes time, and I believe is more due to the 24/7 abuse rather than any specific action its asked to perform. (Could be wrong there.)
Technically any time a GPU is on it is dying, and at an even faster rate when the temperatures are high… but the lifespan is often many more years than you will own the card.
Great answers, everyone! Very informative and also comforting, thank you! I have not seen any glitches since the day I wrote this question, so I’ll assume it was merely a problem with Edge. I continue to play the Sims and render images in Daz Studio (I don’t have very much use for Blender besides modeling props, but eventually I’d like to make my 3D art on it. For now Daz is easy enough for me to understand and work with). I will be back with updates if I happen to see the issue again, hopefully not.
