Software Graphics Mode enabling itself

[infoW9XPC]

For the past few weeks, every time I open Inventor I get a popup that the software graphics mode has been enabled.

I have gone through the steps in windows and nvidia settings so that my machine is supposed to be using the nvidia graphics card. I have also unchecked the software graphics mode option within Inventor, but it's enabling itself every time I start the program again.

I'm trying to do a deeper dive right now, but the only thing I can figure is that the latest driver for my card is not supported for some reason. I have checked the approved graphics card list and my card is listed, but the driver on the autodesk website for download is not the most current driver.

Is anyone else seeing this behavior? If the latest driver is the issue is there any solution other than using an outdated driver?

Dell Precision running Windows 11 Pro with Nvidia RTX A3000 12GB Laptop GPU (and Intel Xe Graphics integrated which is what Inventor keeps using).

[Frederick_Law]

Go back to last driver.

Skip current driver.

Wait for next.

Unless last driver has problem.

Use the Production Branch/Studio driver.

Don't use New Feature Branch.

[infoW9XPC]

I was afraid this would be the only real solution. 

I'm going to check a few different driver versions and see if there is any difference, but the version Autodesk has listed isn't just the last driver, it's over a year old. Pretty sure it was outdated even before Inventor 2024 was available.

Probably not worth it to use that old of a driver for just one piece of software, especially one that's not that dependent on the graphics card. Just figured that offloading everything I could onto the GPU would improve performance all around since it's never the bottleneck.

[Frederick_Law · Accepted solution]

You can download older drivers:

https://www.nvidia.com/Download/Find.aspx?lang=en-us

[infoW9XPC]

The driver listed by Autodesk though is so old that it's not even listed on that Nvidia page. I could find it on their website, but only through a web search, which is one of the things I'm finding so odd.

I did find another one on that page much more recent and after installing it the issue seems to have gone away, so it seems like there was maybe just an issue in a single version of the driver for some reason, but seems to be working now.

Just glad I didn't have to roll back to an early 2023 driver and have my machine constantly trying to update it against my will!

So if anyone else is coming looking for a similar answer: pick a relatively recent driver other than the one you have installed and see if that works. Rinse and repeat until the problem is gone.

[shastu]

So what is the next step when you have gone to the help -> "Find Recommended Hardware", then from the Certified graphics hardware page, you select Inventor from the "Find tested hardware".  Then I selected the filters of "2024", "Windows 10 64 bit", and "NVIDIA".  There were two listed and so I downloaded and tried both of them but am still seeing the error message.  I then saw this post and clicked on the link that you provided.  I entered in the required information for my specific graphics card and it gave me 20 options.  I went through all 20 of those downloads which took me all morning and none of them fixed the problem.  So now what?

[shastu]

Frederick, Do you have any other suggestions?

[sam]

Use the latest NVIDIA driver. And disable graphics switching in your BIOS. Dell often has that enabled as default. You don't need to use the graphics from your processor when you have a physical card installed.

[johnsonshiue]

Hi! Certainly adhering to the graphics card on the certified list is ideal. But the ones not on the list should work fine too. Autodesk graphics card certification process is vendor self-served. The vendors decide which graphics card to go through the certification tests.

As long as the graphics card is supported by Windows and the graphics driver is up-to-date, it should just work. You do want to have adequate graphics RAM (4GB minimum but 8GB preferred).

Many thanks!

[G00463706]

Hi, im having a similar issue. I have: intel and a Quadro P620 graphics cards, but inventor keeps defauting to software graphics and does not give me even the option to switch to direct3d (my stronger gpu). im almost sure this is the cause of my computer crashing or going to the blue screen, when im doing some complex modeling. 

[johnsonshiue]

Hi! Have you gone to Nvidia Control Panel and made sure Inventor.exe runs on the GPU?

Many thanks!