“New” graphics card

[Paul Mcdermott]

Hi John
It’s been suggested to me to go with nvidia quadro card.

What do you think?

[John Rofrano]

[Paul McDermott] “It’s been suggested to me to go with nvidia quadro card. What do you think?”

IMHO, it’s a complete waste of money! I have a Quadro card and I would NEVER buy one again. When my Quadro card died I was faced with the decision to buy another one and I decided not to because the price didn’t come close to the performance. Yes, I know people will tell you it’s more stable. Well, if stability is your goal, then by all means buy a Quadro card. But if you’re looking for fast renders, the Quadro is overpriced and underpowered. Don’t get me wrong… they are probably great for 3D modeling but they are a huge overkill for video editing. Buy a GTX card and it will be cheaper and faster.

~jr

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

[Paul Mcdermott]

Thanks John.

[John Rofrano]

You’re welcome. Like I said, nothing wrong with a Quadro card… except the steep price. 😉

~jr

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

[Sonic 67]

We need to mention here that Sony Vegas uses MediaConcept software to accelerate encoding.
That part didn’t get updated from Dec 2010, so it does not work with nVidia cards newer than Fermi generation. Those Quadro’s are not that bad priced now (on eBay). But true, some of GeForces from that generation will work too.

[Malcolm Matusky]

I have 2 Quadro 4000 cards, and am getting a GTX980, to replace one of them, I am primarily interested in Davinci Resolve playback acceleration, and time line playback in Vegas Pro 13, but I make my H264 in Handbrake from 10bit DNxHD output. Handbrake pins all my system resources, so I presume its working more efficiently than MainConcept.

M

Malcolm
http://www.malcolmproductions.com

[Dave Haynie]

[Paul McDermott] “I edit with sony vegas 11 and I’m looking to start using CS6 Premier next year. I also want to future proof as I may start editing in 4k in the next year.

Which graphics card would you recommend?”

For Premiere Pro CS6, if you have the latest, you can use either nVidia or AMD cards… prior to the CS6 upgrade, Adobe’s video acceleration only supposed nVidia’s proprietary CUDA system.

Here’s a benchmark done with a variety of nVidia cards:
https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Adobe-Premiere-Pro-CS6-GPU-Acceleration-162/#results

In that test, they’re basically hitting a wall… adding additional GPU performance doesn’t reduce the rendering time. So there’s a non-GPU based bottleneck somewhere. Of course, if you’re committing to Adobe, that’ll mean moving to the “software as a service” CC versions, CS6 is still for sale but no longer being improved. You’ll also notice the expected result, that the “pro” cards are, in general, weaker than “consumer” cards on video applications.

Here’s another one, which does include AMD card, but it’s all “pro” testing, and in Premiere CC rather than CS6:
https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Adobe-Premiere-Pro-CS6-GPU-Acceleration-162/#results

You can see that in Premiere, you still basically hit that rendering wall. The high-end consumer class Titan has the best performance, but it’s basically the same as many of the AMD and nVidia pro cards. They correctly point out that the system architecture can be the brick wall… their Z87 Haswell system doesn’t see any improvement from single to dual GPUs, because the bottleneck becomes communications, not computing. Switching to an X79 main board, they get better performance with some of the cards in dual configurations, for Titan and AMD, but Quadro didn’t seem to benefit from 16 PCIe links per card.

Anyway, that’s all new stuff. And any of those cards will get good results in Vegas itself. The main Vegas engine is able to use OpenCL on either nVidia or AMD, and you’ll see this well on the “red car” benchmark.

However, it’s really common to just drop in a video and try to render. In this case, Vegas isn’t helping speed things up all that much, it’s up to the rendering plug-in. The best H.264 acceleration available in Vegas is via the Main Concept CODEC… and that’s where the GPU selection gets sketchy. Because that one element, the Main Concept AVC CODEC, hasn’t been updated since 2011 or so. And even that wouldn’t be so bad, except that, rather than support CUDA and CUDA and OpenCL as OpenCL, this CODEC has hard-wide in the GPU versions it supports, and just uses CPU rendering for every other GPU. So unless you have a Fermi-based nVidia (GTX-5xx series or non-K Quadros) or a Radeon HD5xxx or HD6xxx series (and some earlier ones), you will not get Main Concept acceleration in Vegas. A newer card WILL run the Vegas compositing and other stuff done internally faster, but it doesn’t necessarily make up for the loss of performance in rendering. Of course, if you don’t use Main Concept AVC, then there’s no issue.. a newer GPU will make Vegas go faster. I found AMD to be faster than nVidia for the money, but that’s probably something that flop-flops from time to time.

Another thing about Vegas: it won’t use dual GPUs… you’ll have to select one or the other. So a dual GPU card is a waste of money if you’re buying it primarily to accelerate Vegas.

-Dave

[Malcolm Matusky]

I was not interested in purchasing an “obsolete” card, as I want to upgrade my Motherboard next year, Intel x99, so I wanted a GPU that would work now, and on the new system. Rendering time is the least of my issues, decent timeline playback is, that is where I spend 99% of my time in Vegas or Resolve. I have a 6 core CPU now, and on the X99 build will spring for the 8 Core CPU. A lot of information on GPU’s here! thank you all as just reading the marketing literature makes everything look fantastic, when only a few products actually make sense for professional NLE use, and it’s not the “professional” Quadro’s anymore.

Cheers,

M

Malcolm
http://www.malcolmproductions.com

[Paul Mcdermott]

Many Thanks Dave!

I’ve gone through your post and thanks for the detail.

I still use the main concept codec a lot. I’m really looking for a stable card, for playback, for stabilisation and also one that will work well with Sony Vegas 11 and Premier if and when I make the move. Speed of rendering is not my main concern.

Based on what you have said I think the Quadro 4000 fits these needs. This seems like a good price for over here.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/PNY-Quadro-Nvidia-Graphics-GDDR5/dp/B003Y3TPKQ

Considering what I want and my system as it is, do you think this is a good choice?

[Malcolm Matusky]

I have 2 Quadro 4000 cards, and a few years ago they were a good choice, but unless you need 10 bit output to a 10 bit monitor (I have 2) there are better cards, new or used. I’m keeping one Q4k, and getting a GTX980, I’ll post an update when I get it installed and running.

Malcolm
http://www.malcolmproductions.com