Cycles + Windows 10 + Nvidia GTX 550 Ti = CUDA error: Out of memory in cuMemAlloc

I got this error “CUDA error: Out of memory in cuMemAlloc(&device_pointer, size)” when I try to render a simple cube. My specs:

W10
Nvidia GTX 550 Ti
16 gb RAM
i7 3.5 GHz 64 bits

Any help??

Everything worked perfectly with Windows 8

550 Ti is a 1gb card… windows 10 UI is heavily gpu accelerated… more then likely the windows 10 UI + cycles kernel > 1gb

That being said, if you compile blender yourself, disable some features such as volumetrics / hair in the kernel_types.h file and that should save you a couple hundred meg.

Hi.
I recommend you some Linux distribution with a lightweight desktop (eg Xfce, LXDE) and use Blender from buildbot/master (or the next 2.78), it have a great improvement in vRAM usage.
https://builder.blender.org/download/

Also do what doublebishop has already recommended you.