Windows – Intel#
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 Windows drivers are provided by the graphics card manufacturer (Intel). Windows update automatically installs graphics drivers, or your computer manufacturer may provide its own version of the graphics drivers.
However, these are not always the latest version or may have been corrupted in some way. We recommend to use the official drivers.
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.
Compatibility#
In some cases Blender may crash on startup. Running Blender in compatibility mode can help in fixing this issue. To enable compatibility mode, RMB on the Blender executable and select and enable . Confirm the changes with Apply.
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.
Legacy Intel HD 4000/5000#
When running on Intel 3, 4 or 5th gen iGPU the latest Intel driver will crash on startup. In order to start Blender try to install a previous version of the driver. Drivers that are known to work are:
20.19.15.4835
20.19.15.4963
20.19.15.5063
Drivers that are known to fail are:
20.19.15.5171
20.19.15.5144