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Dual Nvidia graohics cards. Pulling my hair out over constant Black Screens and Freezes


Steven Swaby

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I've looked at every forum post I can find regarding graphics cards. I have two Nvidia Geforce GTX 980M 8BG ram   GPU's in my laptop. Since recently upgrading to 2017 and then 2018 less than a month later I get constant black screens in Vectorworks with 'Not Responding' in the title bar. These last for 20- 60 seconds and occur all the time. Even clicking on a menu button causes a 5 second pause before the menu drops down. Selecting an object line a Dimension, Wall or even a view port often isn't registered/shown as being selected.

Vectorworks doesn't crash it just pauses every time I try to do something.

I use two monitors rather than the laptop screen.

 

I have switched off SLI, forced Phys X to use the same GPU as the monitors. I've tried SLI left on, Phys X on the second GPU. I've tried Phys X on the CPU.

 

I'm completely stuck, this never happened under VW2014!

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You may want to check if you have the very latest drivers installed.
When installing the video drivers do a clean install, wiping all video driver custom preferences and resetting it to default settings.

Also, try adding Vectorworks to the 3D application section of the nVidia driver settings with defaults, it should not matter for a desktop but it does for a laptop. Just in case one of the custom settings (if there are ny) is interfering with VW, then adjusting them in the 3D section might solve it.

 

If that does not help, try if physically removing one of the video cards makes a difference with regard to stability.
Two graphics cards in a system can sometimes cause issues with some software that can be solved by going back to one graphics card.

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee
2 hours ago, Steven Swaby said:

I've looked at every forum post I can find regarding graphics cards. I have two Nvidia Geforce GTX 980M 8BG ram   GPU's in my laptop. Since recently upgrading to 2017 and then 2018 less than a month later I get constant black screens in Vectorworks with 'Not Responding' in the title bar. These last for 20- 60 seconds and occur all the time. Even clicking on a menu button causes a 5 second pause before the menu drops down. Selecting an object line a Dimension, Wall or even a view port often isn't registered/shown as being selected.

Vectorworks doesn't crash it just pauses every time I try to do something.

I use two monitors rather than the laptop screen.

 

I have switched off SLI, forced Phys X to use the same GPU as the monitors. I've tried SLI left on, Phys X on the second GPU. I've tried Phys X on the CPU.

 

I'm completely stuck, this never happened under VW2014!

 

 

First, please do the following and post the resulting dxdiag file:

Then, do the same problems happen when you're only using the laptop's built in monitor and not two external displays? Do you ever do this normally or are the two monitors always hooked up?

(Switching off SLI is wise as we do not support it. But I am fairly certain though that we ignore PhysX settings entirely and that PhysX is unable to affect Vectorworks regardless of how its configured.)

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee
3 minutes ago, leecalisti said:

Here is my dxdiag. I'm not using two cards like Steven, but I'm having similar problems.

 


I only see it blinking black for a sec, was there a crash after this? Apologies, I may have misunderstood the video, I just saw it flash black for a brief moment which is common when switching files especially on Windows.

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2 hours ago, JimW said:


I only see it blinking black for a sec, was there a crash after this? Apologies, I may have misunderstood the video, I just saw it flash black for a brief moment which is common when switching files especially on Windows.

JIm

 

It was just a typical situation of how it is to work with VW on my laptop - not just switching between files, but during heavier graphic redraws. My PC does the same, but has also been crashing multiple times daily. The dxdiag is from my PC.

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On ‎25‎/‎10‎/‎2017 at 2:35 PM, JimW said:

 

 

First, please do the following and post the resulting dxdiag file:

Then, do the same problems happen when you're only using the laptop's built in monitor and not two external displays? Do you ever do this normally or are the two monitors always hooked up?

(Switching off SLI is wise as we do not support it. But I am fairly certain though that we ignore PhysX settings entirely and that PhysX is unable to affect Vectorworks regardless of how its configured.)

DxDiag.txt           Checking thru Direct Show stalls DXDiag but if I tell it to bypass that I get a scan result... attached.  And yes it still happens when I just use the laptop screen. I always use the external monitors when working but have tired it with laptop screen only today. same issue.

DxDiag.txt

Edited by Steven Swaby
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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

The drivers for the GPUs seem to be up to date, but I see a strange "USB Displaylink" video device listed between the two cards that I haven't come across before. However, SLI configurations in laptops are a bit unusual, so it might be an expected part of that. But, your best bet is to get in contact with tech@vectorworks.net and see what they can find.

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On ‎27‎/‎10‎/‎2017 at 1:41 PM, JimW said:

The drivers for the GPUs seem to be up to date, but I see a strange "USB Displaylink" video device listed between the two cards that I haven't come across before. However, SLI configurations in laptops are a bit unusual, so it might be an expected part of that. But, your best bet is to get in contact with tech@vectorworks.net and see what they can find.

 After a lot of trial and error, I finally discovered it was the USB Displaylink, causing the most problems. Its my laptop dock. I now have removed this completely and lug the monitor directly into the rear of the laptop via HDMI ports. The result is no more blank screens!  However I still get pauses whenever I try to perform any sort of task. 

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