NVidia GeForce GT 525M

My laptop supposedly supports OpenGL 4.6 and yet the latest blender daily builds (4.2 beta and 4.3 alpha) aren’t launching and the response to my bug report was the my graphics card though supported but is old and might not have proper upgrades.
I also checked and my CPU has SSE4.2.
I’m running dual graphics cards :

  • Intel(R) HD Graphics 3000 [No longer supported]
  • NVidia GeForce GT 525M [Still supported]

Solutions I tried:

  • Updating my drivers
  • Making sure to run blender with the NVidia card

The GT 525m supports OpenGL 4.0. :thinking:
Check out the link below

According to the link it’s like saying the sun shines on the northern hemisphere.
It doesn’t mean the opposite is untrue.
That said,
Other sources confirm it at least supports 4.5.

If you can’t trust the information, check the hardware information yourself using GPU-Z.

I did and also checked with OpenGL Extensions Viewer and they both showed my system supports OpenGL 4.6

I would also like to add that it works with 4.2 Alpha but not 4.2 Beta

Plus when I disable my NVidia gpu from Device Manager just then I get the OpenGL version error message when I try to open either version of blender.
Could the problem be due to something else ?

I’m not sure if anything has changed in Blender 4.2.
What we can try at the moment is… :thinking:

  1. Remove and run existing settings
    C:\Users\XX\AppData\Roaming\Blender Foundation\Blender\4.2\config
    Removing a file from that path will initialize the blender.

  2. Reinstalling graphics drivers.
    (The GT 525M has long terminated support for new graphics drivers.)
    ※ If this is a problem with a graphics driver, there is no solution.

  3. Submit bug report

Add…

One of the differences between blender 4.2 Alpha and blender 4.2 Beta is that traditional EEVE renders have been completely removed and replaced by EEVEE-Next.
There is also a possibility that this issue will not support you.

Does your driver support 4.6?

It does. I looked up the release notes and it definitely supports OpenGL 4.6

Related information here.

However, we have found that there are many graphic cards that support OpenGL 3.3 in hardware, but have critical bugs in the OpenGL drivers.

I suspect these types of issues with 3.3 also would be present with 4.6. Your vid card is over 10 years old, and hasn’t had a driver update since 2018. 4.1 (or an older version) is quite possibly what you’ll need to continue to use.

Version 4.2 alpha works with me up until the June 5th build just before it moved to beta.
So I don’t understand the issue…

None of these unfortunately works.
I have the second to last 4.2 alpha build working fine.
Last 4.2 alpha is giving me the same issue
Legacy EEVEE already removed as well by the way.

I didn’t keep checking, but the previous evee would have been completely removed from blender 4.2 Beta.
You might want to wait for the blender 4.2 stabilization version or use blender 4.1.

※ The support time for your GT 525M graphics card drive is to end Windows in version 7 (2018) and Linux in 2022. If it’s a drive issue, blender 4.2 can be difficult to use.

Is there any particular reason to use blender 4.2?

Add…

I’m not an English speaker, so I don’t understand exactly, so please take a look at the contents below

1 - OpenGL version support is not related to driver but rather if chip contain the certain functions required , if it doesn’t then the chip might glitch even if you managed to activate a higher OpenGL driver .

2 - You can check your OpenGL version support using “OpenGL Extensions Viewer” , its a handy program that will even show you what functions the chip wont support if you pushed it to next GL level .

3 - According to here the OpenGL level of your Nvidia GPU is 4.6 , you may just switch programs that require higher OpenGL capabilities to use your Nvidia via the Nvidia Control Panel accessible by right clicking your desktop background (Top Most Entry) then creating a profile for that program/game to use Nvidia than rather Intel for it .

I’m really thankful for the effort you’ve put into this.
Yes, I’ve come across this link before!
I’m not sure at the moment it’s an OpenGL problem because when I disable the NVidia GPU I get the error message that I need OpenGL 4.3 or higher but I don’t get it when it’s enabled.

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Hey there, I made another bug report and managed to attach crash reports with it and after about 2 days of looking around in further crash reports the devs found a bug in the driver and solved the issue. And now it works.
Thanks @oo_1942 and @thorn for your input and suggestions.

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