Warning that the GPU accelerated ray-traced 3D renderer does not have enough free memory to operate

Question

[UPDATE: Memory handling for the ray-traced 3D renderer is greatly improved by installing the After Effects CC (12.2) or After Effects CS6 (11.0.4) update.]
You may see a warning message when using After Effects CC (12.1) that the GPU accelerated ray-traced 3D renderer does not have enough free memory to operate.
When the GPU acceleration of the ray-traced 3D renderer is disabled, the CPU version of the ray-traced 3D renderer will operate.
The message about the GPU-accelerated ray-traced 3D renderer not having enough free memory to operate is because of a change in After Effects CC (12.1) to actually warn you when your computer was in a dangerously low VRAM state. In After Effects CC (12.0) and After Effects CS6 (11.0), a computer with very little VRAM could still try to use the GPU accelerated ray-traced 3D renderer, but it would very, very, very often crash. So, now, After Effects CC (12.1) is just detecting the condition that would lead to a crash, telling you about it, and disabling the GPU acceleration until you have dealt with the problem.
So, how do you deal with this low-memory condition? You free up VRAM. This means closing all applicaitons that use GPU memory, which includes web browsers (yes, web browsers these days use the GPU). It also means disconnecting additional monitors, each of which uses a lot of VRAM. In some cases, restarting the computer is necessary.
This is primarily a problem on Mac OS with cards with 1GB of VRAM, such as the GT 650M in the MacBook Pro. These cards on this OS have just barely enough GPU memory (VRAM) to make use of the GPU-accelerated ray-traced 3D renderer under even the best of circumstances. If you want to use the GPU-accelerated ray-traced 3D renderer, you should really be using a more powerful GPU, one with more VRAM.
Note that this has nothing to do with the OpenGL GPU features in After Effects. Details of the GPU features are here: http://blogs.adobe.com/aftereffects/2012/05/gpu-cuda-opengl-features-in-after-effects-cs6. html

Answer 1

hey Todd
i have the exact same problem but with my new macpro with renderay no matter what i do even a simple 3d extraction the renderay crashes! My cuda is full up to date and everything not sure why! if you have any way to resolve this issue would be awesome and help us out since i am on a deadline! at the moment!
I have attached a few screen shots and my computer specs! as you can see the GPU Should not be running low on memory xD since its pretty much nearly full speced!
The error!
This is what was there! and all i added was a extractor after this and the error above appears!
and this is my computer specs as you can see there is no lack of Power, Ram or VRAM here! so not sure why this error is occurring even after updating CUDA
if you have anything else i could try please let me know! Thanks!