GPU advice on 2 cards for Vegas pro 13

[John Rofrano]

[tom ross] “On advice of you and others I will be swapping the GTX 560ti into the new PC and putting it’s Radeon 7850 in the old machine where it will still be fine for games and non video editing stuff.”

It’s important to note that while the Radeon 7850 will not be used by the MainConcept encoder and that is the one you specifically asked about, it will be used by other encoders and you may get a significant improvement in timeline playback which may improve render times even though for MainConcept the encoding will be handled by the CPU.

Just to be clear… if your timeline playback is 10 fps, I don’t care how much GPU encoding is done by MainConcept, your render is always going to take at least 3x longer because your playback is 3x slower! Using a GPU that brings timeline playback up to 30fps and encoding by CPU may actually be faster.

Personally, I would try both cards and do some tests and see what you find out. I can’t do that kind of testing because my Radeon is in my Mac and my Quadro is in my PC, but you can. (wink, wink) 😉

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Tom Ross]

Hi John

I get the wink wink 🙂

Yes the PC has arrived and am now doing all the install of my stuff on it.

I will try all tests with your render test with each different card and post the results here.

It may take me a week or so coz the new PC is running windows 8 and I have got to get my head around that as well 🙂

Tom

[John Rofrano]

[tom ross] “I will try all tests with your render test with each different card and post the results here.”

That would be AWESOME Tom because we’re all comparing results of GPU’s in different computers but the real test is how they perform in the same computer. Take your time… we really appreciate the effort.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Tom Ross]

I recently got a new PC and was eager to how it performed rendering in Vegas Pro 13 with 2 different GPU’s ..the one that it came with and another one I had in my old machine so here are the results.

The 2 graphics cards compared are a XFX Radeon HD 7850 2GB and an MSI Geforce 560ti 1GB TwinFrozr

1st of all the spec of the base machine.. nothing other than the Graphics cards was changed during the tests.

Intel Media Series DH77EB mATX Motherboard
Intel i7-3770K 3.5GHz Quad Core Processor (unclocked)
Kingston 32GB (4 x 8GB) 1600MHz DDR3 Memory
Intel 520 Series 180GB 2.5″ SSD – OS Drive (Vegas Pro 13 installed on this as well)
Seagate 3TB SATA Hard Drive – Data Drive
Microsoft Windows 8.1 Pro 64-bit OEM

I used JR’s render test and used the latest drivers for the cards …uninstalling each cards driver before I installed the other ones driver.

Sorry in advance if I haven’t laid out the results in the best way but all the info is there and I don’t understand how to do spreadsheets etc 🙂

All settings as recommended by John ie preview window set to 900×506 and ‘Best Full’

As I will be mainly burning my projects (my holiday videos) to blu ray I thought I would try a blu ray setting as well so have included those.

—————————————————————————————————————-
FIRST THE RADEON HD 7850 2GB:
———————————————–

All the following are with ‘GPU Acceleration’ set to OFF … I was getting 0.5 FPS on the preview playback.

Render as Sony AVC Internet 1920×1080 30p : 01:06
Render as Sony AVC Blu ray 1920×1080 24p 16mbts 00:53
Render as Main Concept AVC/AAC Internet HD 1080p : 01:28
Render as Main Concept AVC/AAC Blu ray 1920×1080 24p: 01:24

Obvoiusly with GPU Acceleration set to OFF the figures were the same for ‘CPU Only’ Auto’ and ‘Use Open CL If Available’…I did try them all.

———————————————

All the folowing are with ‘GPU Acceleration set to ON…I was getting 29 FPS on the preview playback.

Render as Sony AVC Internet 1920×1080 30p ‘CPU ONLY’ : 00:16
Render as Sony AVC Internet 1920×1080 30p ‘AUTO’ : 00:19
Render as Sony AVC Internet 1920×1080 30p ‘ USE GPU IF AVAILABLE’ : 00:19
Render as Sony AVC Blu ray 1920×1080 24p 16mbts ‘CPU ONLY’ 00:13

Render as Main Concept AVC/AAC Internet HD 1080p ‘CPU ONLY’: 00:35
Render as Main Concept AVC/AAC Internet HD 1080p ‘USE OPEN CL’: 00:36
Render as Main Concept AVC/AAC Blu ray 1920×1080 24p: 00:42

and one extra :
Render as Main Concept Mpeg2 Blu ray 1920×1080 24p 25mbs : 00:07
—————————————————————————————————————-

NOW WITH THE GTX 560Ti
————————————–

All the ‘GPU acceleration’ set to OFF figures where of course the same as above
—————————————————————————————————

All the following are with ‘GPU Acceleration set to ON…I was getting only14 FPS on the preview playback

Render as Sony AVC Internet 1920×1080 30p ‘CPU ONLY’ : 00:22
Render as Sony AVC Internet 1920×1080 30p ‘AUTO’ : 00:25
Render as Sony AVC Internet 1920×1080 30p ‘ USE GPU IF AVAILABLE’ : 00:24
Render as Sony AVC Blu ray 1920×1080 24p 16mbs ‘CPU ONLY’ 00:17

Render as Main Concept AVC/AAC Internet HD 1080p ‘CPU ONLY’: 00:42
Render as Main Concept AVC/AAC Internet HD 1080p ‘USE CUDA’: 00:21
Render as Main Concept AVC/AAC Blu ray 1920×1080 24p ‘CPU ONLY’: 00:45
Render as Main Concept AVC/AAC Blu ray 1920×1080 24p ‘USE CUDA’: 00:45

and one extra :
Render as Main Concept Mpeg2 Blu ray 1920×1080 24p 25mbs : 00:13
————————————————————————————————-

Conclusions:

1) Using ‘USE OPEN CL’ made no difference in any test so is not being utilised for this particular Radeon card

2) The Radeon card was still faster than the GTX at all tests though exept Render as Main Concept AVC/AAC Internet HD 1080p ‘USE CUDA’ where the GTX beat it by about 80%

3) The Radeon card also gave double the FPS in playback of the GTX on Full Best at the 900×506 setting….btw if I reduced the size of the preview screen or set it at anything less than ‘Full Best’ for the GTX 560 Ti I was able to get the full 29 FPS.

4) Curiously in the Main Concept Bluray settings the 560 Ti was the same with or without CUDA being used yet on the ‘Internet HD 1080p’ CUDA halved the time…I also tried it on the Main Concept AVC/AAc ‘Sony Tablet 1080p’ and the ‘Apple TV 720p 24’ and CUDA did cut these times by the same 80% or so. So not sure why it doesn’t cut times on the Bluray settings…..it wasn’t a glitch as I tried it multiple times.

5) Since the Radeon (even without specific support for Open CL) is faster all but one than the GeForce card I will be using the Radeon so it’s now back in the PC again (you were right John :))

Hope this hasn’t seemed too drawn out but I know that too many details are better than too little.

One final question for you guys ..Since as mentioned I will mainly be doing blu rays is there any disadvantage in using (A) ‘Main Concept MPEG2 Blu Ray 1920 x1080 25mps’ over (B) ‘ Sony AVC Blu ray 1920×1080 24p 16mbs’?

A is twice as fast as B for me and is the fastest of all the tests and it seems it will be even better quality at 25mps as opposed to 16mbs….or am I missing something?

The material I will be using will be mainly GoPro footage at superwide 1080p 50 fps.

Tom

[John Rofrano]

Excellent! 😉

I know how much time it takes to do all of that testing so THANK YOU Tom for contributing this to the community. Here are my observations:

[tom ross] “1) Using ‘USE OPEN CL’ made no difference in any test so is not being utilised for this particular Radeon card”

This confirms what we have established: The Radeon 7000 series cards are not supported by MainConcept. You need to use the 5000 or 6000 series cards to get OpenCL to work.

[tom ross] “2) The Radeon card was still faster than the GTX at all tests though exept Render as Main Concept AVC/AAC Internet HD 1080p ‘USE CUDA’ where the GTX beat it by about 80%”

Well… it’s not fair to say it was 80% faster since OpenCL was not working for the Radeon card. What is really means is the GTX was 80% faster with GPU rendering than the Radeon was using CPU Only, which is not surprising.

[tom ross] “3) The Radeon card also gave double the FPS in playback of the GTX on Full Best at the 900×506 setting….btw if I reduced the size of the preview screen or set it at anything less than ‘Full Best’ for the GTX 560 Ti I was able to get the full 29 FPS.”

Yes, the purpose of my setup instructions was to stress the cards. I was not implying that the GTX could not produce full frame rate at lower quality settings. The Radeon is just capable of using higher quality settings and still producing full frame rates.

[tom ross] “4) Curiously in the Main Concept Bluray settings the 560 Ti was the same with or without CUDA being used yet on the ‘Internet HD 1080p’ CUDA halved the time…I also tried it on the Main Concept AVC/AAc ‘Sony Tablet 1080p’ and the ‘Apple TV 720p 24’ and CUDA did cut these times by the same 80% or so. So not sure why it doesn’t cut times on the Bluray settings…..it wasn’t a glitch as I tried it multiple times.”

Not sure why one preset would be different than any of the others since all Sony AVC presets can use the GPU. I found very little different in my measurements with or without GPU rendering for Sony AVC. This is why I primarily use the Main Concept encoder with my Radeon HD 5870.

[tom ross] “5) Since the Radeon (even without specific support for Open CL) is faster all but one than the GeForce card I will be using the Radeon so it’s now back in the PC again (you were right John :))”

I came to the same conclusion. The Radeon just seems to be a better performer and since you spend far more hours playing back the timeline while editing than you do rendering I would rather have a Radeon card.

[tom ross] “One final question for you guys ..Since as mentioned I will mainly be doing blu rays is there any disadvantage in using (A) ‘Main Concept MPEG2 Blu Ray 1920 x1080 25mps’ over (B) ‘ Sony AVC Blu ray 1920×1080 24p 16mbs’?”

You can get more AVC @ 16Mbps on a Blu-ray Disc than MPEG2 @ 25Mbps. Other than that, there is no real visual difference in quality between the two; they are about the same.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Tom Ross]

Thanks for that John glad it confirmed what was already known.

I am curious though…is there not any sort of text file in Vegas that can be edited to include other open CL cards or is it something more complicated about the way the 7 series cards work etc ?

I know in Premiere Pro it is a simple matter of just editing a text file list with notepad to include extra cards …it works well as I added my GTX560Ti and it was recognised in the ‘Mercury Playback Engine’ no problem.

Can’t seem to find anything about doing it in Vegas though.

Tom

[John Rofrano]

[tom ross] “I am curious though…is there not any sort of text file in Vegas that can be edited to include other open CL cards or is it something more complicated about the way the 7 series cards work etc ?”

No. This is something that the MainConcept encoder has programmed into it and it hasn’t been updated in a long time, probably because the company keeps getting bought and sold and are now owned by DivX who has their own agenda.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Chris Trent]

I can confirm with Sony Vegas Pro 13, you are still stuck using an out of date video card if you want accelerated processing with a main concept encoder. I just ran a quick video, swapped cards and ran it again.

Main concept encoder, 1 minute rendering of 4 camera hd video, with a title & graphic with spin in/out

Vegas pro 12 w/ Radeon 5770 1:20
Vegas pro 12 w/ Radeon 7790 3:37

Vegas Pro 13 w/ Radeon 5770 1:09
Vegas Pro 13 w/ Radeon 7790 3:19

Also, on their web site it says this.

Not all current graphics cards nor all codecs are supported by MainConcept products. For information on what codecs and graphics cards are currently supported please go to http://www.mainconcept.com/products/sdks/gpu-acceleration.html. Under each type of GPU acceleration you will find a listing of the currently supported cards.

At this time we do not plan to update our support for CUDA or OpenCL powered graphics cards.

[John Rofrano]

Thanks for testing Chris. It looks like the Radeon 4000, 5000, & 6000 series are OK but the 7000 series on up don’t support MainConcept GPU acceleration. Thanks for confirming.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Tom Ross]

Yes as John says thanks for confirming that Chris

Daft isn’t it?….you get a PC with a more modern ‘better’ graphics card in it and it is worse (in Vegas) than having an older one!

Oh well….will just stick with my 7 series anyway as this ‘new to me’ PC still does Vegas stuff much faster than my old one so it will do for me.

Tom