AE CS6 11.0.1 CUDA BENCHMARK PROJECT – test your graphics cards!

[Ian Mapleson]

Best reply I’ve read in any forum this year… 😀 I mean, it’s in your sig…

Anyway, changing the subject entirely… 🙂

Todd, do you by any chance know why, when certain features or effects are used in a scene on
a multi-GPU system, rendering via RayTrace3D, the loading on any GPU is only approx. 1/N where
N is the no. of GPUs? (hence the overall throughput is barely any better than using just one
GPU). I’m assuming the use of identical GPUs here. When this happens, monitoring GPU usage
shows a distinctive sawtooth effect, as all the GPUs rapidly oscillate from low to high usage.

Scenes like the one used on this thread scale well and don’t exhibit this behaviour (ditto the
much more complex scene I’m using for my own AE/CUDA benchmark), but I’ve seen other scenes
where it occurs quite strongly. Is there a particular type of plugin or effect one should be
wary of using to avoid this? Or does its cause lie elsewhere do you think?

Ian.

——–
SGI Guru

[Curtis Ling]

just thought it might be against the tos of both adobe and nvidia or something
besides i don’t think nvidia would want the implementation of a dev only dll maybe only when its public can it be updated

i just tested using 3.6.3 optix.1.dll and replaced the one that came with cs6 and
GUESS what i got raytracing working on MAXWELL GPUs in CS6
still dont know why the adobe one was bigger. EDIT: It seems the new optix.1.dll doesn’t work with CPU ray tracing (maybe adobe implemented additional code so thats why it was bigger)
[simple fix you see]
now we wait for adobe to test things and nvidia to work on licensing or something and maybe next major release will support MAXWELL
same cant be said for design garage tho which also uses a optix version that doesn’t support maxwell. difference is it has other dependencies which needs to be updated (scenix? and cuda?) and that would be too much work.

[Yonni Aroussi]

I don’t get it…

I’m building a new workstation and already ordered GTX 970 but after reading about “maxwell” Cuda not supported in AE and Premiere, I really consider canceling my order.

Any official response from Adobe or Nvidia on that matter?
Does AE and Premiere support GTX 970/980 or any Maxwell Cuda?
Obviously it’s a simple question…

[Ian Mapleson]

Assuming Adobe is working on adding support for Maxwell V2 CUDA (I don’t know for sure,
just guessing), I expect their plan would be to wait for the 980 Ti and Titan II to
come out before rolling out the update.

You’ll get a display ok with a 9xx card and AE will run up, but there won’t be any CUDA
boost available. Thus, until support is added, the best card is a 780 Ti or Titan, though
multiple GTX 580 3GB cards offer considerable value (my quad-580 beats two Titan Blacks).

But we’re just guessing though, I don’t know if V2 support is coming, or if so then when.

Ian.

——–
SGI Guru

[Yonni Aroussi]

Thats’ sucks…really
I was really convinced on my build until this morning..
I really wanted those 4 gigs of ram, they do help me a lot in Mudbox.
780ti is a bit out of my budget, how bout gtx 780?

also another question you might can help me:
I have a Dell workstation at work with 6-core xeon and Quadro K4000. I just realize that I just cannot get real time Playback even without any effects on the footage (1080P MOV png).
-When I set the project to use Cuda acceleration I do get the Yellow stripe on the timeline but after 2 seconds the playback get’s very choppy and many frames drops.
-When I set the project to use Software only things looks exactly the same (just without the yellow stripe, it’s red now..) playback is choppy and the weird thing is that the CPU usage stays on 10% max…
something is just not working right there..
any idea how to solve this issue?

[Ian Mapleson]

yonni writes:
> I really wanted those 4 gigs of ram, they do help me a lot in Mudbox.

One option is to hunt for a used K5000, I managed to get a couple, also some used
6000s for an excellent price.

> 780ti is a bit out of my budget, how bout gtx 780?

Also ok, though not as quick as two 580s. Not sure where 780 pricing is these days,
I guess it depends on whether you want max speed or efficiency.

Having said that, did one vendor make a 6GB 780? Can’t recall offhand…

> get real time Playback even without any effects on the footage (1080P MOV png).

Is png really the best image format? Try using other formats, that might help.

> -When I set the project to use Cuda acceleration I do get the Yellow stripe on
> the timeline but after 2 seconds the playback get’s very choppy and many frames drops.

What type of storage medium are you using? Best to use an SSD, or at the very least a good
RAID0 or RAID10 of quick drives.

> something is just not working right there..

Sounds like the bottleneck is elsewhere, perhaps the I/O setup.

Ian.

——–
SGI Guru

[Yonni Aroussi]

>One option is to hunt for a used K5000, I managed to get a couple, also some used
6000s for an excellent price.

Not really an option. this is for a home rig and I want the card to be suitable for games.
also I live in Israel and used K6000\K5000 even if used will be tto expensive.

> Is png really the best image format? Try using other formats, that might help.

Could you suggest a good format for test purpose?

> What type of storage medium are you using? Best to use an SSD, or at the very least a good
RAID0 or RAID10 of quick drives.

I have an ssd for the OS and a standard 7200RPM HD for storage. the footage is on that disk.
do you think it’s not fast enough for 1080p real time Playback?

> Sounds like the bottleneck is elsewhere, perhaps the I/O setup.

sorry for being noob but exactly you mean by i\o setup?

Anymore suggestions and help will be really appreciated.
I thank you a lot!

[Ian Mapleson]

yonni writes:
> Not really an option. this is for a home rig and I want the card to be suitable for
> games. also I live in Israel and used K6000\K5000 even if used will be tto expensive.

In that case go for a 780, 780 Ti, or multiple 580s. Or of course multiple 780/Ti cards
if the budget permits.

> Could you suggest a good format for test purpose?

To be honest I can’t comment on which would be the best, but usually I thought video was
either uncompressed or something like JPEG, but the best thing to do is simply experiment
with the various available formats, see how it affects performance.

> I have an ssd for the OS and a standard 7200RPM HD for storage. the footage is on that
> disk. do you think it’s not fast enough for 1080p real time Playback?

Certainly not if it’s uncompressed data, and I’ve a feeling png isn’t a compressed format.
I would never use a single drive for any kind of HD stream. For mechanical drives, 2 or 4
disks in RAID0 or RAID10 is best, though a single SSD is definitely fast enough. More
costly of course, but the performance is leaps & bounds beyond a rust spinner. Mind you,
512GB capacity SSDs are lot more affordable now, eg. the MX100.

Also, for working with AE, you should absolutely have a separate SSD acting as a cache
drive for AE.

> sorry for being noob but exactly you mean by i\o setup?

I mean the storage system.

Ian.

——–
SGI Guru

[Curtis Ling]

h264 is best for mercury playback engine
uncompressed/lossless pngs and such rarely play realtime
and yes maxwell works for raytracing if you are willing to make one iffy hack
dont throw away the 970 just yet

and for the record it not a cuda issue its the Compute Capability (SM) of the gpu and since maxwell is 5.0/5.2 it wont work
NOR WILL A K80 with SM 3.7
only gpus with SM of 3.5 or before will work (until they update)
this is the optix shipped

this is the email for optix 3.7 beta

“XXXX XXXX
OptiX Manager | NVIDIA Corporation

Enhancements in OptiX 3.7 beta 1

…

· Tesla K80 support with SM 3.7. This is the highest performing GPU for ray tracing.”

[Ian Mapleson]

Except I think most people would prefer proper support rather than an ‘iffy hack’,
so until then, if someone asks, I’ll still answer in the negative.

Ian.

——–
SGI Guru