Rhino V6 on antique computer with AMD 4650

Rhino Windows Hardware
1

Hi, I have a client with a fairly antique computer that has a Radeon 4650, they tried upgrading to Rhino 6 and of course nothing works. According to SystemInfo, their driver is from 2009. I checked the AMD site and the most recent driver for that card is from 2013… Has anyone had any luck running Rhino 6 with this card? Before I tell them to update their driver it would be good to know if this is a useless effort or not - otherwise I will have to tell them they have to get a newer machine and/or refund their license.

TIA, --Mitch

2

Oh wow it looks like it might only have 256MB of video memory? I’ve run Rhino 6 Beta on an AMD video card of that vintage, but it was “top shelf” for the time, the 4650 was a low-cost, low-power option, it looks like almost ANYTHING would be faster.

3

No, it has a whopping 1GB… Actually pretty good for 2009 I think…

Non-hybrid graphics.
Primary display and OpenGL: ATI Radeon HD 4650 (AMD) Memory: 1GB, Driver date: 10-19-2009 (M-D-Y). OpenGL Ver: 2.1.9115

Faster I don’t care about, it would be good if it worked at all - right now viewports are pretty much blank.

4

Hi Mitch - has the user tried the 2013 driver?

-Pascal

5

Hey Pascal,
Well, I suggested that to the client, but lightly - I’m pretty cautious about recommending software changes to antique computers - always the fear that it can wreck a more or less stable system. That’s why I asked here if anyone had updated the driver first. They came back to me with the answer that seeing as the machine just passed it’s 10th anniversary, they might just look into getting a new one anyway - I will have more info tomorrow.

6

My main computer which is a 2007 dell precision T7400 Quadro 4000 GC, works like a charm.
(and that’s a reason why I’ll stick with Windows OS)

(The second computer is a Dell precision laptop from later 2017 (7520) nothing to say. …for those whose are afraid)

7

Hey there!
I got the same issue, at least part of it. My notebook graphics come from a HD4670 that’s basically the same - just a slightly higher clock afaik.
With the latest driver (v13.9. from 2013 ^^) rhino is working… BUT it randomly “chooses” the viewports to cooperate with by itself - i couldnt figure out any rule behind it. In my case these are the common 4 (left, right, front, pers.), with at least one to highest 3 working properly. So i thought to be clever in reducing my viewports to 2… no success… still only half of them works… If I switch a certain viewport to “whole screen”(?) - dont know the english wording - then I will have it working even if it wasn’t before. So my guess is: everything is basically fine but exactly the representation on screen.

@Helvetosaur: Have you had any progress on this topic?

Hope that helps a bit.
Hope someone can come up with a solution for completness.
Best regards!

8

The client ended up buying a new machine in the end…

9

That was the only real solution.
The old computer outlived it’s usefulness.

I can relate…