“New” graphics card

[John Rofrano]

[Rich Kutnick] “John, why you suggest going the Nvidia route as opposed to the ATI HD6970? Is this just a six of one, half dozen of the other, or are you more confident of the Nvidia GTX series?”

I was just using NVIDIA as an example because I know their product line better. The same holds true for the ATI cards but David would have to tell you which ones work and which do not. Sony used the ATI Radeon HD 6870 in their GPU testing. I’m not sure how far up or down the line you can go and still be compatible but if David is having good performance with the Radeon HD 6970 then go for that. One problem is that you can’t compare the specs of the NVIDA and ATI cards because they use different measurements so I don’t know what the equivalent of an NVIDA GeForce GTX590 in the ATI line-up.

~jr

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

[John Rofrano]

[Rich Kutnick] “I can buy a NEW ATI Radeon HD 5870 1GB CYPRESS XT GDDR5 DP HDMI STKD_DVI Video Graphics Card for $149 (shipped) on EBay with a 14-day money back guarantee. What do you think?”

That’s the card that I have but I’m not sure if it’s the best one for Vegas Pro. I would ask David what’s the highest performing card in the ATI line that works well with Vegas Pro. I’m not the guy to ask because I didn’t even know that the newer ATI were having problems like NVIDIA was.

Just to be clear, I’m using a Radeon HD 5870 because it came with a computer that I bought, not because I carefully selected it for a certain purpose. That card might not be any better than the GTX 560 that you have now so I don’t want to mislead you. I just don’t know how ATI and NVIDIA compare.

~jr

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

[Rich Kutnick]

Wow, this post has really taken off!! So Dave, John referred me to you as the ATI/AMD expert. If you follow today’s thread I am at an impass. I can’t find a 6970 in stock for a decent price, but I can get a NEW ATI Radeon HD 5870 (per the thread). John is not sure if that will do me any more justice than my current GTX 560…so what do YOU think? Should I just hold tight for a few years when I upgrade my PC, or go for the 5870…or is this just another GTX 560 equivalent? Is there perhaps another card in mind if this one is not for me? Your input will be most valuable, Dave–thanks in advance.

Rich Kutnick
VIDEO IMPRESSIONS

[Dave Haynie]

Yeah, you can’t directly compare card to card, particularly between the nVidia and AMD, simply because they’re different enough in architecture that the answer is usually “it depends”.

There’s some comparability in naming. nVidia’s GTX5xx, GTX6xx, GTX7xx etc. indicates the main chip generation. The xx digits pretty much indicate the relative performance within that family. And if you get to “90”, you have a two-chip card, so it’s likely close to the double the performance of the next one down… if you can use that. That tends to be a problem for GPGPU… each processor looks like a separate device.

For AMD, the older cards worked similarly, the HD5xxx, HD6xxx, and HD7xxx represent successive generations of product. So it’s more or less the same chip architecture, but even then, not always. For example, the first members of the HD6xxx family were based on the same GPU architecture as the HD5xxx, but it changed in the HD69xx models. But basically, the 1000’s digit represents the generation, the 100’s digit the specific chip used, then it’s relative performance: things like clock and memory speed, how many stream processors are enabled. For example, the HD6790 has 800 stream processors at 840MHz. The HD6850 has 960 stream processors at 775MHz. The HD6870 has 1120 stream processors at 900MHz… not quite as fast as the older 5870, though. The HD6970 has the all-new (at the time) Cayman processor, and 1536 stream processors at 850MHz.

You have to look at what you’re doing. I’ve seen it stated pretty often that the HD6970 is comparable in gaming performance to the GTX570. That makes sense, given that when I bought mine, it was about the same price as the GTX570, and these are priced based on gaming. However, in OpenCL benchmarks, it’s usually pretty close to the GTX690. BUT… and isn’t there always a BUT… is that because the GTX690 is dual-chip (two Kepler GPUs), like the AMD HD6990 or HD7990? Many if not most GPGPU programs — Vegas included — can only use one GPU per program instance. Or is it because the GTX6xx series is using nVidia’s Kepler architecture, and Kepler is reported “not so good” at OpenCL? Here’s some source of OpenCL benchmarks:

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-r9-290-review-benchmark,3659-14.html
https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-hd-7970-benchmark-tahiti-gcn,3104-14.html

Anyway, to answer your question… there’s a pretty good parallel. Given that the single-chip GTX570 and HD6970 are comparable, at least for games, it stands to reason that the dual-chip GTX590 and HD6990 would be similarly comparable. In fact, that’s a little easier than sorting out the differences in AMD’s line… particularly because the HD6xxx line was as much a project to get costs and power consumption under control as it was to advance performance. So as mentioned, most of those cards were lower power, die-shrunk versions of essentially the HD5xxx series.. and sometimes further downclocked.

-Dave

[Dave Haynie]

[Rich Kutnick] “I can buy a NEW ATI Radeon HD 5870 1GB CYPRESS XT GDDR5 DP HDMI STKD_DVI Video Graphics Card for $149 (shipped) on EBay with a 14-day money back guarantee. What do you think?”

Get it. The HD5870 benchmarks out just a little slower than the HD6970 on most of the things I’ve looked up, and occasionally comes out faster. It’s main disadvantage is that it’s more power hungry. Much of the point of the HD6xxx series was lower power, so they did die shrinks on chips that were basically the same as the HD5xxx series, except for the HD69xx, which used a new architecture. But the nomenclature changed a bit too. Prior to the HD69xx series, all of the HD59xx were dual-processor boards… you still pay $600+ these days for an HD5970.

What that means is that the HD6970 was the fastest single chip AMD from the 2009 generation, while the HD5870 was the fastest single chip AMD from the 2008 generation. It actually has a few more stream processing units (1600 at 850MHz) than the HD6970 (1536 at 880MHz).

I can’t promise you it’ll give you what you’re looking for. But I can pretty much bet that on the right kind of projects, the playback performance will be day and night, GPU vs. no GPU. I ran this same GPU on my older AMD 1090T PC, and it had at least as much improvement there as it did on my current i7-3930K system. That means the “red car demo” playing in realtime, rather than dropping to a couple of fps in sections. Obviously, it won’t help for things not OpenCL-accelerated.

-Dave

[Rich Kutnick]

Ahhh, the frustration factor increases, Dave! By the time you got back to me these boards had been snatched up, one individual alone purchasing five of them!! So now all that I can find are used or factory refurbs for the same price, but no return privileges. I can buy a used Sapphire Radeon HD 5870 1 GB DDR5 Dual DVI-I/HDMI/DP PCI-Express Graphics Card on Amazon for $150 plus $6.99 S&H. So is it worth a crap shoot for 150 bucks that if it does not improve SPV 12 performance to at the least have a spare graphics board in case mine fails?

Rich Kutnick
VIDEO IMPRESSIONS

[Rich Kutnick]

Three ATI Radeon HD 5870 PCI-E 1GB GDDR5 Dual DVI, HDMI, Display Port boards are available for $149 out the door–no returns–factory refurbs. Looks like the best deal going–should I spring for one??!! I need to know ASAP, so I’m depending upon Dave and the rest of you AMD/ATI gurus for advice. Thanks, everyone!!

Rich Kutnick
VIDEO IMPRESSIONS

[Mike Kujbida]

This has been a very interesting thread as I’m in the early stages of specing out a new machine and finding a good graphics card for Vegas is, to say the least, somewhat difficult.
A few folks on the Sony Vegas forum are really liking the new AMD R9 290 card. It’s not the cheapest (nor the most expensive) but the reviews so far have been very positive.
https://www.hyperactivemusic.com/vegaspro/vegaspro.html is a chart comparing the performance of this card to others from AMD and Nvidia. CPU specs are included making this a good chart.

[Jean-pierre Taran]

May I through in a naive question?

Render time strongly depends on the computation done on each frame. For instance, it’s not the same if you just tune brightness and contrast, or if you apply Neat video to enhance definition. Without GPU assistance, the latter will take 10 to 20 times longer for the same job.
Not all contributors to this forum describe what they asking of SVP12, namely source frame format, output frame formats, image processing, etc.

I suggest defining a test case agreed by all, that every one adopts for benchmarking, e.g. HD 1080-50i (1920×1080; 25,000 ips) like the one I use. A 30 sec film could then be proposed by Steve Rhoden or John Rofrano and made available for download and testing to all interested members of the forum. Each then renders it on his machine with and without Neat Video and reports:
1 – his processor type and video board make and serial number
2 – the time spent on render with and without Neat Video sharpening (alternatively Neat Video does compare all CPU/GPU configs and propose an optimal one in “tools/preferences”; just those features are invaluable).

Of course, any other set of parameters can be selected, provided it procures strong discrimination between “with” and “without” GPU

Comparisons and debates are then conducted on firmer foundations, and a robust hardware data base can be built from numerous contributions

jpt

[Thayalan Paramasawam]

(Mike Kujbida) https://www.hyperactivemusic.com/vegaspro/vegaspro.html is a chart comparing the performance of this card to others from AMD and Nvidia. CPU specs are included making this a good chart.

Thanks for the link……

System Details:
Custom Built
Motherboard – Asus M5A99X-EVO,HardDrive1 boot C:SSD Kingston,Processor – Amd FX 8350 4.0/4.2 GHZ,Ram – 16 GB,Graphic Card – Asus Gtx 650 1GB DDR 5,Blu Ray Writer – Plextor PX-B950SA,Operating System – Window 7 Pro 64 Bit and Editing Programe – Sony Vegas Pro 12