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Out of memory crashes with AE 2026.2 and Nvidia 5070

Forum|Forum|2 months ago
May 18, 2026
14 replies
330 views

Problem: A project from 6 months ago suddenly crashes upon render and during previews from out-of-memory errors. (May 2026)
Suspects: Nvidia driver update, Win11 update, AE2026.02 update

Current conclusion: Dedicated GPU memory is not getting cleared. This results in an immediate crash the next time I try to render again. Screens start to go black, workspace won’t preview.

Current workaround: Open Process Monitor and watch the dedicated GPU memory. I have 12GB on my Nvidia 5070. Then, open your project in Media Encoder (just because it seems faster to me this way) and render a PNG sequence so you can capture the partial render. Start the render, watch the memory peak out at about 80%, and the render fail. GPU memory doesn’t release until I quit AME. Re-open AME, try to find an approximate frame where I crashed (where are the frame numbers?!) and restart the process.

Hardware: i9, Win11 Pro v 10.0.26200 Build 26200
128GB RAM, Nvidia 5070

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Greg@Antifreeze AnimationAuthor

Known Participant

I’m now getting just the slightest release of GPU memory, as you can see on the right side of this image. This was as a typical 2D logo animation with multiple layers and light effects, no 3D objects. Using the Advanced renderer. As I write this, the render has been finished for a few minutes, but no additional memory has been released. (Currently at 7.1 of 12GB)

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Greg@Antifreeze AnimationAuthor

Known Participant

Let’s try that image attachment again...

Nishu Kushwaha

Community Manager

Thanks for creating the detailed post. Does it happen only with the old project? Have you tested it with a brand new project? Did you use any third-party plug-ins in your old projects? What version of the Nvidia Studio driver are you using? Is it updated? Can you share a screen recording of Process Monitor showing the memory usage?

Looking forward.

Thanks,

Nishu

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Greg@Antifreeze AnimationAuthor

Known Participant

I haven’t yet tested it on a clean project. This project makes heavy use of a (non-textured) GLB asset and the Advanced 3D lighting features (HDRI). I was using the most recent Nvidia driver, but have rolled back to the Dec 2025 Studio driver for now, trying to recreate the normal conditions. I’ll get you a capture of the dedicated GPU memory usage, which (prior to an hour ago when the rollback of the Win update seemed to help), was rising to about 9.5GB (of 12) with no decreases of releasing any. Then it would flatten for 10-15 sec at about 9.5, before AE would throw the out of memory error.

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Greg@Antifreeze AnimationAuthor

Known Participant

Update: I’m trying to isolate who owns this problem (Windows, Nvidia, AE) and rolled back (undo) the Win11 update that happened on Thurs, May 14th. When rendering in AE, I still crash, but the interface previewing (HD ram preview) is improved, and I’ve seen very minor decreases in dedicated RAM, which means someone is releasing a bit of it now. It hovered around 6GB while working. I’m going to try to stress test it today with other apps to see if I can reproduce the problem outside of After Effects.

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Greg@Antifreeze AnimationAuthor

Known Participant

Problem persists in AE, but GPU is releasing memory in other apps.

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Greg@Antifreeze AnimationAuthor

Known Participant

Postscript: Using Media Encoder is miserable because I can’t control the frame numbering. It’s working best for me to just restart AE each time it runs out of memory, which is currently the only method I have for forcing it to dump the Dedicated GPU Memory. Then I just pick up where I left off in the PNG sequence.

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