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ATI or Nvidia video card?
I’ve heard a lot of discussion about CUDA for Nvidia in this site and most people replies that Nvidia is good for Sony Vegas rendering. But I heard some people said that a Stream Processors are important to make rendering a lot faster that’s why I bought ATI Radeon 5850 because it has a lot of Stream Processors.
Here’s the specs:
Radeon HD 5850
Core Clock – 725MHz
Stream Processors – 1440 Stream Processing UnitsEffective Memory Clock – 1000MHz (4.0Gbps)
Memory Size – 1GB
Memory Interface – 256-bit
Memory Type – GDDR5The thing I noticed that the ATI video card doesn’t do anything while Sony Vegas is rendering (the core clock with 150MHz and memory clock at 325MHz, although max core clock is 725MHz and memory clock at 1000MHz). Even with Sony Vegas 10, that has support to enable video card with CPU. I have 8GB memory and a AMD Phenom II 1090t
However, now that I saw some topics saying that ATI and Sony Vegas doesn’t really cooperate. I was wondering if I should change my video card to Nvidia because of CUDA.
What do you think? should I sell my ATI and buy a new Nvidia card instead? or should I stay?
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8 Replies
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GPU only helps with rendering AVCHD on a slow machine. Or when using open GL third party pluggins like BCC, they can help with previewing these effects. If you have a fast computer like an I7, you won’t see any difference with GPU usage.
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As Danny said, if you want to test if Vegas is making use of your video card you need to render to Sony AVC. That is the only encoder in Vegas that will use your GPU. There is an option to use the GPU or just use the CPU. Let us know if you see any difference.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
Thanks for the reply, that helps. I think this is the fastest I can get then.
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Hey John thanks for the reply. I use Sony AVC as my main profile for editing. I tested the other profile and only Sony AVC is the fastest, it seems to use the GPU as you said.
But why the GPU’s clock and memory doesn’t do anything? they just stay at their low clock.
And will it make a difference if I switch my ATI Radeon for an Nvidia card?
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[Eric John Recustodio] “But why the GPU’s clock and memory doesn’t do anything? they just stay at their low clock.”
What I’ve noticed on my NVIDIA Quadro 4000 is that GPU will keep the clock low until it’s usage exceeds a certain threshold and then it will boost the clock to handle the increased work load. I assume ATI does something similar. It may just be that your card didn’t require a higher clock to handle the usage.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
But more CUDA Processors will speed up the work right?
What I heard from Nvidia people is that 1 CUDA = 8 Stream Processors.
I have 1440 Stream Processors so 1440/8 = 180 CUDA is that right? so that I can change my video card into Nvidia. Thanks again John.
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[Eric John Recustodio] “But more CUDA Processors will speed up the work right?”
Not if there isn’t enough simultaneous work to do.
Here is an analogy that might help: Say you have 12 workers to dig a hole but you only have 4 shovels. You can hire more workers if you want, but only 4 of them will be digging at any one time. The rest will be standing around doing nothing.
That’s what parallel processing is like. You need to have multiple tasks that can be performed simultaneously in parallel in order to keep all of the cores busy. If you don’t they simply don’t get used and do nothing.
I don’t know if buying an NVIDIA card will make better use of the GPU but CUDA is the standard that a lot of video companies are rallying around so I would personally rather have an NVIDIA card. Your mileage may vary. 😉
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
Alright I’ll get an Nvidia. I think the GTX 580 will work for me.
I really appreciate your help, thanks a lot John!
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