Blender 2.8 final (really final) is out. I gave it one last chance. But I got the same instant display-driver crash on loading as I had with the late beta(s), and then just hanging for 30 minutes, while loading no interface at. It won’t even show the splash screen.
Update: three months later I found it was actually a driver issue. A long and laborious driver uninstall and update of the drivers took me from OpenGL 4.2 to 4.5… and Blender now launches at least.
The Blender 2.80 hardware requirements are stated here in technical detail to check if your system is support (may need some googling or check with GPU-z):
https://www.blender.org/download/requirements/
Simplified:
Nvidia card: Newer than 10 years
AMD card: Newer than 7 years
Intel GPU: newer than 6 years
There are good entry level cards like nvidia gtx 1650 4GB and AMD RX 580 8GB for 150$. With nvidia you also get some acceleration in Daz Studio, with AMD more memory for Blender Eevee. They do not need a new PSU for most PCs.
New PC, only a few years old, with a AMD Radeon. Shouldn’t be a problem. I’m just annoyed that it won’t even load the UI – and thus won’t even allow me to tell it to just use the old render engine, or let me use grease-pencil, or wireframe for extracting .OBJ files.
Thanks for the advice on the card types. A Nvidia GTX 1650 = £150 here in the UK, which is still not affordable for me at present.
Hmm, which exact Radeon model is it? Just to make sure that it is not a driver issue.
Slightly cheaper GTX 1050 Ti 4GB for 125£ at amazon uk.
Thanks. It would have to be an RTX for future-proofing, I think now.
However, the Blender launching problem was cured by a long and laborious driver update which took me from OpenGL 4.2 to 4.5.