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Best GPUs for Sony Vegas Pro 12.
Hi All,
I have seen tons of conflicting info online among video gurus (even after filtering out the gamer’s opinions) about the best GPUs for Sony Vegas. I am hoping someone can shed some light on it for me as I have found that GPU rendering is unstable (Vegas crashes or render fails) or even slower than rendering with the processor alone that I no longer even try it. From what I understand, there are 2 uses for GPUs in Vegas. I list them below and some of my observations and questions.
– Rendering. A good GPU should improve rendering speeds but after running multiple tests with various settings and outputs It seems this is not always the case. Often, the rendering time increases with GPU rendering enabled which makes me think that the CPU and GPU do not work in tandem to render a file but that the CPU simply offloads the entire job to the GPU. Someone told me that if your processor is better than your GPU, GPU rendering will be slower. However, I was under the impression that both the CPU and GPU work in concert. Anyone know?
– Real time work flow. I have seen marked increases in performance when using a GPU when working and watching pre-render previews. To me, this is the more important than improving rendering times.
My questions are:
1) When rendering with the GPU, does it work in tandem with the CPU or does the CPU simply pass on the load?
2) Which NVIDIA card should I use? My options are a GTX460, a GTX660ti Superclocked, a Quadro 2000 and a Quadro 4000. I used to use a GTX460 but I currently use a Quadro 4000. after benchmarking some renders with GPU I found that the OLD GTX460 often performed better than the far more expensive and specialized Quadro 4000!Some people say that the algorithms in the Quadro cards, despite the lower CUDA core count, are better for professional applications. However, it seems these cards are geared more for Autocad & 3d modelling than NLEs. Others have stated that the GTX4XX and GTX5XX series are better than both the Quadro cards and newer(higher) GTX cards when it comes to NLEs or Sony Vegas specifically. Ultimately, streamlined workflow is more important to me than render times so what actually is the best option?
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16 Replies
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I use the GTX 570 and it works most of the time, but occasionally I have a problem with rendering and then I turn it off and just use the CPU (at least for the Sony rendering. I also use New Blue and BCC and those utilize the GPU also.
My recommendation is go with the Quadro 4000 if you can get it and avoid the gaming card driver of the week scenario. The Quadro series is a workstation class card and that really means that you get a better tested driver. The game cards have impressive specs, but no one really cares if a few frames are corrupted in a game. A more stable driver is much more important to preserve your time investment in video editing. As far as choosing between the 460 and the 660, I would go with the 460 as that was the architecture that Sony originally released with (400 and 500 series). I heard the 600 series uses a different architecture and even though they had more cores, each core does not perform at the same level as the previous architecture. Hence performance is not linear to the number of cores between the two architectures.
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Wish i could offer you some good advice here, but ive long given up
on the confusing and unstable world of GPU Cards, lol.Steve Rhoden (Cow Leader)
Film Maker & VFX Artist.
Owner of Filmex Creative Media.
Samples of my Work and Company can be seen here:
https://www.facebook.com/FilmexCreativeMedia -
Several users on the Sony Vegas forum use and like the AMD 290 card.
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Thanks for the info. I actually have the Quadro 4000 and my GTX460 seems to out perform it but it looks like much of it depends onthe codec I use according to the reading I have done here. I don’t use Main Concept too much so I might try to see if my GTX660ti will work out.
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Thanks Steve. I am beginning to feel the same way after reading everything. There are a number of great posts and benchmarks but it seems to me that they is no distinct card that performs “best” in Vegas.
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The Sapphire R9 280x on my new computer seems to work well. I haven’t done definitive tests with and without, but my impression is that render speeds (both Sony and Main Concept) are about a third of what they are with CPU only.
Steve K
Full time writer/director
Pt. Time Video Editor -
Thanks for the replies. It looks like there is no solid answer yet. Maybe Sony and Nvidia or AMD will get together and make a card suited for Vegas someday.
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There will not be a solid answer anytime soon Kell!
Steve Rhoden (Cow Leader)
Film Maker & VFX Artist.
Owner of Filmex Creative Media.
Samples of my Work and Company can be seen here:
https://www.facebook.com/FilmexCreativeMedia -
I have two Quadro 4000 cards, I get almost no benefit from VP13, but a big bump with Davinci Resolve 10. To put off building a completely new NLE system I am upgrading my CPU from a Quad core to a Hex core next week, perhaps that will give me more of a boost in VP13 as I can overclock the CPU as well.
Next build will be a x99 chipset with an 8 core CPU, but I would like to wait a while for prices to drop a bit. GTX7xx series cards with 4GB of Vram seem to be the recommendation for the price for Davinci at the moment, with the new build I’ll get two.
M
Malcolm
http://www.malcolmproductions.com -
MainConcept CUDA encoders (used by Sony Vegas) are optimized for nVidia older Fermi generation video chips.
Same happens for ATI (with OpenCL), because MainConcept development stopped in Dec 2010.Malcom, are you using the right settings?
For the Quadro 4000, “Max Rendering Threads” should be 8 (Fermi has 32 cores per each group), the rest should be like in my pictures.
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