Linux – Nvidia
Blender uses of OpenGL for the 3D Viewport and user interface. The graphics card (GPU) and driver have a big impact on Blender’s behavior and performance.
This section lists possible solutions for graphics glitches, problems with Eevee and Cycles, and crashes related to your GPU.
Drivers
Upgrading to the latest graphics drivers often solves problems. Newer drivers have bug fixes that help Blender function correctly.
On Linux, graphics drivers are usually installed as a package by your Linux distribution. Installing the latest drivers is typically done by upgrading packages or the distribution as a whole. Some distributions provide multiple packages for multiple drivers versions, giving you the choice to install newer versions.
For Nvidia there are open source (Nouveau) and closed source (by Nvidia) graphics drivers. Blender functions best with the closed source drivers as they are more optimized and complete. Linux graphics drivers can be downloaded from Nvidia’s website, however in most cases the ones from your Linux distribution are fine and make things easier. Manually downloading drivers is mostly useful to get the very latest version, for example for a GPU that was only recently released.
Laptops
Laptops often have two GPUs for power saving purposes. One slower onboard GPU (typically Intel) and one faster dedicated GPU for a better performance (AMD or Nvidia).
For the best performance the dedicated GPU should be used for Blender. Which GPU to use for which application can be configured in your graphics driver settings.
If there is a graphics glitch or crash specific to the onboard GPU, then using the dedicated GPU can help avoid that. Or vice versa, if the dedicated GPU causes issues, then using the onboard graphics can help.
Common Problems
Unsupported Graphics Driver Error
This means your graphics card and driver do not have the minimum required OpenGL 3.3 version needed by Blender.
Installing the latest driver can help upgrade the OpenGL version, though some graphics cards are simply too old to run the latest Blender. Using Blender 2.79 or earlier is the only option then.
Crash on Startup
Try running Blender from the command line, to see if any helpful error messages are printed.
On Windows, graphics drivers can sometimes get corrupted. In this case it can help to uninstall all graphics drivers (there may be multiple from Intel, AMD and Nvidia) and perform a clean installation with drivers from the manufacturer’s website.
Poor Performance
Update your graphics drivers (see above).
On laptops, make sure you are using a dedicated GPU (see above).
Try lowering quality settings in .
Try undoing settings in your graphics drivers, if you made any changes there.
Render Errors
Wrong Selection in 3D Viewport
Virtual Machines
Running Blender inside a virtual machine is known to have problems when OpenGL drawing calls are forwarded to the host operating system.
To resolve this, configure the system to use PCI passthrough.
Information
To find out which graphics card and driver Blender is using, use inside Blender. The OpenGL section will have information about your graphics card, vendor and driver version.