Is SystemInfo for Direct3D right?

Serengeti (Rhino WIP)
1

Continuing the discussion from Rhino 9 Feature: Direct3D Display:

@stevebaer

I have two graphic cards in a PC, reported by SystemInfo while running OpenGL as:

  Primary display: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 (NVidia) Memory: 8GB, Driver date: 1-26-2025 (M-D-Y).
    > Accelerated graphics device with 4 adapter port(s)
        - Windows Main Display attached to adapter port #0
        - Secondary monitor attached to adapter port #1
  Primary OpenGL: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 (NVidia) Memory: 24GB, Driver date: 1-26-2025 (M-D-Y). OpenGL Ver: 4.6.0 NVIDIA 572.16
    > Accelerated graphics device with 4 adapter port(s)
        - There are no monitors attached to this device!

OpenGL Settings
  Safe mode: Off
  Use accelerated hardware modes: On
  GPU Tessellation is: On
  Redraw scene when viewports are exposed: On
  Graphics level being used: OpenGL 4.6 (primary GPU's maximum)
  
  Anti-alias mode: 4x
  Mip Map Filtering: Linear
  Anisotropic Filtering Mode: High
  
  Vendor Name: NVIDIA Corporation
  Render version: 4.6
  Shading Language: 4.60 NVIDIA
  Driver Date: 1-26-2025
  Driver Version: 32.0.15.7216
  Maximum Texture size: 32768 x 32768
  Z-Buffer depth: 24 bits
  Maximum Viewport size: 32768 x 32768
  Total Video Memory: 24 GB

But under Direct3D the RTX 3090 just shows up as a “Microsoft Basic Render Driver”, with no ports:

  Primary display: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 (NVidia) Memory: 8GB, Driver date: 1-26-2025 (M-D-Y).
    > Accelerated graphics device with 4 adapter port(s)
        - Windows Main Display attached to adapter port #0
        - Secondary monitor attached to adapter port #1

Secondary graphics devices.
   NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 (NVidia) Memory: 8GB, Driver date: 1-26-2025 (M-D-Y).
    > Accelerated graphics device with 4 adapter port(s)
        - Windows Main Display attached to adapter port #0
        - Secondary monitor attached to adapter port #1
   Microsoft Basic Render Driver (Microsoft) Memory: 32GB, Driver date: 0-0-0 (M-D-Y).
    > Software simulation device with 0 adapter port(s)
        - There are no monitors attached to this device!

DirectX Settings
  Safe mode: Off

So three questions:
Is the 3090 being utilised for its CUDA cores in Cycles under DirectX as it is under OpenGL?
Does the SystemInfo for DirectX need a bit of tweaking to better identify the kit and provide more info?
Is the “Microsoft Basic Render Driver” just what one needs here, or merely some lowest common denominator component that kicks in when all else fails?

Cheers
Jeremy

2

CUDA rendering and the DirectX/openGL “realtime display” are entirely distinct, unrelated things…I mean aside from the fact Raytraced mode shoves a Cycles output into a viewport.

3

Hi Jim,

I was thinking more along the lines that there is a possibility that if the card isn’t recognised then Rhino may not know it has all those nice cuda cores to play with. Hopefully it’s a moot point because Rhino finds the cores through the Nvidia parallel processing API, but I know zilch about that so I thought I’d ask an expert.

Regards
Jeremy

4

I mean this “systeminfo” stuff to track down crashes has never really had anything to do with rendering at all.