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GPU accelaration problems with GTX 560 Ti
Hi
My configuration is
Win 7 x64
AMD Phenom(tm) II X2 550 Processor, 3100 Mhz, 2 Core(s)
RAM: 4,00 GB DDR3
Asus ENGTX560 Ti DCII/2DI/1GD5, PCI-E latest driver GeForce 285.62
Sony vegas pro 11 64b (also 32b)3D Video file MTS from Sony HDR-TD10
Video: MPEG4 Video (H264) 1920×1080 25.00fps [Video]
Audio: Dolby AC3 48000Hz 6ch 448kbps [Audio]When I try to preview video in SVP11 it shows 2,5FPS which is not possible to work with. GPU is used for 1% and CPU load is 100%.
If i try to preview normal not 3D video file with the same parameters it is just fine showing 25FPS using about 40% of CPU and about 9% GPU
I have done couple of tests
Situation 1 : 1x active 2D full HD take; preview 29,97FPS; CPU 20%, GPU 5% preview is OK
Situation 2 : 1x active 3D full HD take; preview 2,498FPS; CPU 93%, GPU 2% preview is skipping
Situation 3 : 2x active 2D full HD takes (upper video track opacity set to 50% so it must process both video streams); preview 6,307FPS; CPU 100%, GPU 2% preview is skipping
Situation 4 : 3x active 2D full HD takes; preview 2,459FPS; CPU 81%, GPU 1% preview is skipping
Situation 5 : 4x active 2D full HD takes; preview 0,164FPS; CPU 98%, GPU 2% preview is skippingIt seems like that more than two full HD streams is too much for CPU and it stops to sending data to GPU, but should not GPU help to CPU wit that automatically so GPU should be 100% and CPU as it needs?
Does anyone has any idea what should I try?
Thank you very much for help
Jan -
6 Replies
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Simple preview from AVCHD is not where Vegas 11 is using the GPU. Not sure why… GPU acceleration for video playback is pretty mature, and can really do wonders (I get something like 5-6 1080p60 streams playing at full speed these days on my AMDx6 plus AMD HD6970.
What I’ve seen really accelerate on preview are projects with a mix of effects, animated stills, and video… exactly what you find in Sony’s benchmark project (you can find this linked from the “GPU” page on the Vegas product info web site).
CPU and GPU aren’t fully interchangeable… I’m not sure how Vegas decides where the GPU will be applied. And sometimes, I’m seeing the CPU percentage drop, the GPU get used but certainly not overloaded, and yet, the whole effect is a faster preview or render. This suggests there’s some optimizations yet to be worked out. And these may be even more glaring on a lower powered system like yours.
I did a benchmark a bit like one of yours. I had four video streams in one project… half the benchmark was resizing and animating the four streams, the other half was rendering all four with transparency.. this was 720p60 video, 50Mb/s MXF/MPEG-2 (a bit easier on the CPU than AVC). I saw 2.4fps across the project with Vegas 10, Vegas 11 no GPU, or Vegas 11 with the nVidia GTX570, and 5fps with the HD6970.
On the Sony benchmark, I saw 8fps with Vegas 11, no GPU, and 96% CPU use (all six cores). For preview on the HD6970, I got 28.5fps (this is a 29.97fps project), 58% CPU and 30% GPU, average use. For preview on the GTX570, I saw 27.5fps, 75% CPU and 50% GPU. In either case, that’s a pretty sweet boost in preview speed. And rendering to AVC, I got just over 2x speedup with either GPU; rendering to XDCAM EX 1080i60, I saw a 3x speedup with the HD6970.
So the GPU performance is real, it’s just not a big factor in video decoding, which is the major overhead element in a simple project.
-Dave
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If I understand it right, that means, that for my configuration it is better to buy more CPU cores than invest to better GPU card? Is it right?
Other thing that I don’t understand is that you are writing:
I get something like 5-6 1080p60 streams playing at full speed these days on my AMDx6 plus AMD HD6970That means that with 6 footages in timelines simultaneously you get 29.75FPS?
And at your benchmark you write that with 4x 720p footages you get 2.4FPS or 5FPS with HD6970?
I am sorry but I don’t understand it. If 6 times fullHD is ok, how can 4 times HD be just 2.4 FPS?
Another thing is that I don’t really care about Sony’s benchmark testing videos because I have my own one 😉
Could you please recommend me something what you think could solve my problem?
Is it more CPU’s or better GPU, or RAM to buy??
Thank you
Jan -
[Jan Vozobule] “If I understand it right, that means, that for my configuration it is better to buy more CPU cores than invest to better GPU card? Is it right?”
That is correct. This is pretty much always the case. GPU is not yet a general purpose enough computing resource to replace a decent CPU. Once you have enough CPU (not necessarily fastest on the market, but at least fast enough to let the GPU be useful), the GPU can help out in specific circumstances.
[Jan Vozobule] “Other thing that I don’t understand is that you are writing:
I get something like 5-6 1080p60 streams playing at full speed these days on my AMDx6 plus AMD HD6970That means that with 6 footages in timelines simultaneously you get 29.75FPS?”
No. I have video at 1080p60 (59.94fps). Using a player application, I can play five to six of these at full frame rate. Dramatically faster than what I see in Vegas. This is somewhat of a cheat — there is a separate video decoding API, called DXVA 2.0, which is part of Windows. This gains some performance by graphics cards that can translate color spaces in hardware (eg, directly display YUV rather than translate in software to RGB), but it’s still very impressive, compared to what you can see in Vegas, even with the fast GPU.
[Jan Vozobule] “And at your benchmark you write that with 4x 720p footages you get 2.4FPS or 5FPS with HD6970?”
Right. For a single stream at 720/60p, I have no trouble playing at full speed, full quality. But I tried compositing four streams in two different ways, and both plain Vegas and Vegas with the GTX570 did 2.4fps. Vegas with the HD6970 did 5fps. I was really just looking for something that didn’t run full speed, after I first got Vegas 11, so that I could judge any speed-ups in compositing and video playback.
[Jan Vozobule] “Another thing is that I don’t really care about Sony’s benchmark testing videos because I have my own one 😉
“Thing is, no one else has your benchmark. So there’s no easy way to translate your result to anyone else’s. The main point of any standard benchmark (and simply by posting it, Sony’s made their demo a standard benchmark) is comparison of system to system doing the same work. Since you have my numbers on the benchmark, if you run it on your system, you’ll have some idea of how much faster my system performs, at least on that specific benchmark. There are plenty of others, like RenderTest. There are a bunch of CPU and GPU benchmarks out there.
What do you do for an upgrade? What’s you budget? If your motherboard and power supply support a higher spec Phenom II processor, that’s probably the lowest cost upgrade. I see my processor, the AMD Phenom II T1090 (six cores, 3.2GHz) on NewEgg for $170… so that’s much less than buying a whole new MB + CPU, much less a whole computer. That’s a 125W peak CPU, though, so you must be certain your system can take it (your is speced at 80W).
Once you have six cores, though, you may start to find that 4GB of memory is limiting you. I have never found any Vegas activity to really need more than 8GB, and I ran with that for the last few years (I upgraded to 16GB last summer, I needed it for photo editing of all things… stitching 30-40 18MPixel, 48-bit photos together can take up a bit of RAM).
Your GPU is a pretty good one. First CPU, then RAM, I’d say. Now, it’s quite possible to get a high-end Intel i7 system that’ll about double the performance of my machine, if you have the cash. Of course, next year, that’ll cost half the price…
-Dave
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Hi now I see your point in testing Sony’s Sample project.
Thank you for all your help.
I have realised (after couple of consultations), that it is not only in CPU, and that buying new X6 CPU will not help in my case, because my board ASUS M4A785TD-V EVO has chipset 785G/SB710 which is not able to fully work with X6 CPU ewen with GPU, so I decided to change platform to intel and buy something with i5 or i7?? Don’t know yet.
I have also uploaded my 3D testing video to URL:
https://www.ulozto.cz/11569674/00011-mts
Do you think, that you can try it on your HW configuration if your computer can handle it, and let me know how many FPS is your HW showing in live preview?
Thank you very much.
Jan -
Hi Dave,
I have received some advice from Sony support
When you are playing back your footage, what is the preview quality you are using? Please try right clicking on the preview window and make sure that “Adjust Size and Quality for Optimal Playback” is NOT selected. Then try changing your preview quality to Good(Full), and then try playing back your footage.So I tried set off:
-Simulate device aspect ratio
-Scale video to fit preview window
-Adjust size and quality for optimal playback
-also set Quality to draft(quarter)
-turned of stereoscopic 3D mode
-turned of safe area grid
and after all those setting my FPS rate raise from 2,5FPS to about 5-9FPS still not usablethen I realize that when I decrease Preview rate (bottom left corner bar) that must also decrease bit rate of processed video, and it helps.
So if I set Rate to about 0,68 I get smooth real time preview in Preview(auto) quality in 25FPS with turned on red/magenta stereoscopic 3D mode.
It is slow motion movie all the time, it makes funny slow motion sounds, but it is possible to work with that.It is not solution, it is kind of workaround but hope it can help to someone else.
Jan
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[Jan Vozobule] “I have received some advice from Sony support
When you are playing back your footage, what is the preview quality you are using? Please try right clicking on the preview window and make sure that “Adjust Size and Quality for Optimal Playback” is NOT selected. Then try changing your preview quality to Good(Full), and then try playing back your footage. “They’re doing what you’d normally recommend a person do to optimize their system. That’s good, and it’s the right answer from a support person.
What I’m doing when I benchmark is looking for the limits. So I have the display mode set to best possible, and the resolution 1:1 on-screen vs. the resolution (eg, probably 1280×720 or 1920×1080). Things will definitely go faster when you lower the quality, run at 1/2 or 1/4 resolution, etc.
And that can be a legit benchmark, too. But on a fast PC, you’re likely to get to full speed pretty soon, as you downrez and downgrade the quality. That makes it difficult to a reasonable system-to-system comparison… I can only know if someone’s faster than me if there’s some headroom. That’s why my own benchmarks were projects my system could barely preview (at full quality).
-Dave
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