V-Ray 7 GPU (HIP) rendering on AMD Ryzen AI Max 395 (Strix Halo) falls back to CPU

Common Common :: Hardware
1

Hi Chaos Team,

I am trying to use V-Ray 7 (Update 4) GPU rendering on my new laptop powered by the AMD Ryzen AI Max 395 APU (Strix Halo architecture with integrated Radeon graphics).

In the V-Ray GPU Device Select tool, the system does not show separate checkboxes for CPU and GPU. Instead, it detects the whole APU as a single combined device, listed as something like “Ryzen AI Max 395 / Radeon Graphics”.

The Problem: When I check this device and start a V-Ray GPU render, only my CPU is being utilized at 99-100%, while the GPU section (Radeon) stays idle at 1-2% in Task Manager. It seems V-Ray GPU is automatically falling back to CPU rendering or running a hybrid mode where CPU takes over completely, and I cannot find a way to disable the CPU cores within the Render Setup or Device Select because they are bundled into one selectable item.

2

Hi Nikola, and welcome to the forums!

Task Manager is not always the best tool for checking actual GPU usage during rendering. It can sometimes report misleading values, especially with compute workloads and integrated/shared-memory GPU setups.

Could you please try checking the GPU usage with MSI Afterburner or GPU-Z instead? I also wrote a short guide about GPU usage reporting here:

[Link]

Also, could you please let us know which AMD driver version you are using?

We have tested a similar setup internally with HIP, and it worked well on our side, so it would be good to understand whether this is a driver/reporting issue or something specific to your configuration.

If possible, please also share a screenshot of the V-Ray GPU Device Select window.

All the best,
Muhammed