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GPU ‘upgrade’ not an upgrade?
I recently decided to upgrade my graphics card since a lot of my work involves multi-cam edits, and I’ve recently added a 4k track to the timeline. Playback suffered and made cutting quite difficult and inaccurate.
I moved the project from my HDD to my SSD to check if this was a factor, and it wasn’t.
I’m running on a Intel® Xeon® E3-1246 v3 3.50 GHz with 32GB RAM.
My previous GPU was a GTX 570, and I just upgraded to a RT 390. I’m not super knowledgeable on these things, and so rely on whatever info I can garner on the web. I was confident I was making a decent decision.
The results – playback is as choppy as it was before, and where the GTX 570 made use of OpenCL to speed up renders, the RT 390 shows no difference using OpenCL or CUDA compared with just the CPU only.
So, am I doing something wrong? Or was I wrong to expect any improvement?
What exactly is the bees knees in terms of GPUs that make Vegas glide along these days? -
27 Replies
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Have you disabled resampling for the video clip properties?
Xavier (Scott) Francis
Mind\’s Eye Audio/Video Productions -
That wouldn’t favour either the old GPU nor the new. It just improves general render times. What I’m wanting to know is why what seems like an upgrade (as in newer and more expensive) is in fact yielding sometimes poorer results when dealing with Vegas.
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Actually that is a VERY important aspect when dealing with preview!!!! I had the same question as to why I had no better preview on a GPU upgrade and John R. here on the forums instructed me to make sure that was disabled and my previews have been way better. I edit 4k and below with smoothness I never had before.
The question to why you are not getting better results is likely the older code Vegas is using for preview. I have great luck with previewing 4K on a Radeon 290X, likely the GPU architecture is newer than Vegas can utilize.Here is a clip from that thread I mentioned…
[Scott Francis] “I have just started to disable resample on the 60p clips. That does seem to help a bit with preview. ”
It helped me more than a bit. I went from 6 fps back up to 29.97 fps during transitions. If you don’t disable resample, Vegas Pro will try and blend frames on the fly to conform to the projects frame rate. Other NLE’s would force you to conform your video first. This isn’t a bad idea. Just because Vegas Pro lets you throw mixed frame rate clips on the timeline doesn’t mean that you should. 😉
[Scott Francis] “So my main question is WHY is preview still so CPU heavy when we are utilizing GPU preview? This doesn’t seem to be logical (at least in my mind) as I have been chasing this end of the rainbow since SVP11!!!”
It’s about striking a balance. The GPU doesn’t work on it’s own. It is a co-processor which means that main processor (CPU) needs to feed it work. Perhaps an 8-core can feed the same GPU better than a 4-core can and keep it busy. There is a lot of setup and breakdown of data before and after the GPU does it’s work and the CPU needs to do all of that. Think of it this way… have you ever been so busy and someone says to you, “why don’t you delegate that to someone else” and you say, “it would take me longer to explain to them what to do than to do it myself”? That’s the relationship between the CPU and GPU. The CPU needs to do work to use the GPU. It’s not free from overhead and sometimes it can even be slower because the overhead is greater than the computation.
[Scott Francis] “Also, how useful is multicam editing in SVP vs the way I am handling it?”
Multicam in Vegas Pro assumes that everything is synced up correctly before you start. We have tools at VASST like infinitiCAM and Ultimate S Pro that take a different approach using markers for camera switches. Here is a video of infinitiCAM that you can download and view (sorry it’s in WMV format). This will show you the workflow.Hope that helps
Xavier (Scott) Francis
Mind\’s Eye Audio/Video Productions -
Thanks Scott,
I’ve always disabled resample – but more just to reduce the motion blur type look i get sometimes. On this occassion I hadn’t and so I gave it a try. Unfortunately I saw no improvement in preview. Going from 2 up to 15 occasionally and back to 2/3/4. -
Gotcha, I was just wondering if you did….since that had been an issue for me prior.
I don’t know what (other than the aforementioned new GPU thing) that could be going on.
Is the one you are using able to do openCL and Cuda?
I thought only nVidia cards did Cuda, and AMD openCL…. I am not familiar with the one you mentioned.Xavier (Scott) Francis
Mind\’s Eye Audio/Video Productions -
Surely somebody knows the correct information?
I was going to upgrade my GTX to a newer model, but has read that some newer GTX’s are unable to use OpenCL with Vegas.
With my GTX 570 on a test render I got 22seconds on CPU and on CUDA, but 14 seconds on OpenCL.
With my new RT 390 , I get 22 seconds on all. Therefore, no GPU acceleration is being applied in the render process.
This is annoying, but I could live with it.
My main issue is the preview in multicam mode with a 4k track.
What kind of spec would be required for smooth playback? Is my CPU the weak point?
I almost bought the GTX 970, would it have been better?
If somebody tells me exactly what will make my Vegas run without hiccup, I will go out and buy it!! -
I would recommend searching the forums for info on video cards….
Xavier (Scott) Francis
Mind\’s Eye Audio/Video Productions -
Do you have GPU accelerated process applied to the events which contain the footage you are playing back for testing? The GPU only takes on some processes that are supported by GPU Acceleration, such as many effects in Vegas. The GPU in your system will only take on processes that are meant to be accelerated by it. Otherwise, your CPU will take on the rest of the work.
MAGIX see.feel.hear.create
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Couple questions:
What version and build of Vegas are you using?
Are both cards installed in the system now, or did you forklift upgrade?
If the older NV card is removed, did you uninstall the NV drivers, and get back to the default windows driver before swapping cards?
Did you verify that correct OpenCL/GPU is selected under Preferences?
What is your workflow from source > intermediate > to render profile?
You may need to try using auto under your render preference settings.
Edit codec / intermediate codec / containter format (.MXF vs .mov) can help a lot in Vegas as far as preview goes.Does “Luxmark” CPU+GPU function properly on your machine, and how many compute units does it see?
Does GPUZ show the interface speed at x16?
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So, aside from transitions and effects, general playback is dictated solely by the processor?
I’ve built a few PC’s over the years and generally have no problems upgrading components on my own, but CPU upgrade seems like a trickier more complex task? Is it?
I know with motherboards, a clean install of OS is generally required – does the same apply for CPU upgrade??
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