V-Ray GPU system requirements: will your GPU run it?
V-Ray GPU renders on NVIDIA and AMD cards of recent generations, and on Macs through its Metal engine. Check your card below; the sourced requirements follow.
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V-Ray GPU requirements, with sources
| Requirement | Level | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Windows or macOS | Supported hardware | Chaos Help Center, V-Ray 72026-09-23“As of V-Ray 7, the Metal RT Engine is supported in macOS.” |
| Windows · an NVIDIA or AMD GPU | Minimum | Chaos Help Center, V-Ray 72026-09-23“NVIDIA GPUs of Maxwell generation or later when using CUDA or RTX modes compute capability 5.2 or up.” |
| Windows, NVIDIA · a Maxwell, Pascal, Turing, Ampere, Ada Lovelace or Blackwell GPU | Minimum | Chaos Help Center, V-Ray 72026-09-23“NVIDIA GPUs of Maxwell generation or later when using CUDA or RTX modes compute capability 5.2 or up.” |
| Windows, AMD · a RDNA 2, RDNA 3, RDNA 3.5 or RDNA 4 GPU | Minimum | Chaos Help Center, V-Ray 72026-09-23“Supported Generations: RDNA2, RDNA3, RDNA 3.5 and RDNA4.” |
| macOS · macOS | Minimum | Chaos Help Center, V-Ray 72026-09-23“As of V-Ray 7, the Metal RT Engine is supported in macOS.” |
| macOS · V-Ray 7 or later, for the Metal RT engine. | Also needed | Chaos Help Center, V-Ray 72026-09-23“As of V-Ray 7, the Metal RT Engine is supported in macOS.” |
| Windows, NVIDIA · For RTX mode: a GPU with hardware ray tracing | Feature | Chaos Help Center, V-Ray 72026-09-23“While only RTX-class cards can use RTX mode, these cards can also fully use CUDA mode” |
| Windows · The whole scene must fit in video memory in CUDA and RTX modes. | Also needed | Chaos Help Center, V-Ray 72026-09-23“must fully fit into GPU memory when using either CUDA or RTX mode.” |
Questions
- CUDA or RTX mode: which does my card support?
- Every supported NVIDIA card runs CUDA mode. RTX mode needs an RTX-class card, which can also run CUDA mode.
- What happens if my scene does not fit in video memory?
- In CUDA and RTX modes the whole scene must fit in the graphics card’s memory. Chaos suggests CUDA x86 mode, which uses system memory, for scenes that do not.
- Does V-Ray GPU work on a Mac?
- Chaos supports its Metal engine on macOS from V-Ray 7. The requirements table below quotes the exact wording.