So i fired up cycles to see whether or not its been improved and it apparently took a step backwards.
I am able to run cycles, albeit slowly, but it works.
Now when i use Experimental>GPU Compute cycles says “loading kernels for the first time, this could take a bit” and then it crashes. It doesnt try to even display, it just closes Blender.
I have an AMD Radeon 6950. Everything is up to date for me too. Thats the only thing that doesnt work. Is there any way to use AMD chips with Cycles yet? I know theyve been working on it for a while, but i hoped the dev would be quicker
Cycles support with AMD GPU’s is currently on hold, until driver/OpenCL kernel compiler changes occur that allow it to work. You would either have to get an nVidia card, or use CPU rendering only.
AMD cards will not work without hacking away the material code of Cycles. This has nothing to do with Blender devs, the AMD compiler simply cannot handle the large Cycles kernel. Long story (which you can search the forums for if you’re really interested) made short: don’t hold your breath for your card to be supported any time soon.
