Nvidia vs AMD GPU’s in a Vegas laptop… what do we know…?

[Edward Troxel]

Please note that the “M” in the video card name means it is a “Mobile” video card. It can drop to a lower powered less compatible GPU if you do not go into the video driver settings and specify that it stay in full powered mode when Vegas is running. Other apps may also need to be added to the “full powered” mode list (such as Titler Pro).

Edward Troxel

[Nick Mcmahon]

[Edward Troxel] “Please note that the “M” in the video card name means it is a “Mobile” video card. It can drop to a lower powered less compatible GPU if you do not go into the video driver settings and specify that it stay in full powered mode when Vegas is running. Other apps may also need to be added to the “full powered” mode list (such as Titler Pro).”

Many thanks Edward…. that is news to me and by the sounds of it important news as of course without being at full power it makes sense that one wouldn’t be getting the full range of performance.. I would have assumed that the makers of the Mobile GPU’s woulda already considered this and built in the necessary defaults to ensure this was not a manual selection process but rather happens automatically….? I mean who would ever want their GPU to be working at less than maximum…? We choose to purchase based on the numbers that can be attained by a given graphics card and I can’t think of any time I’d want to use it at half speed… I’d always want everything it can give me in terms of performance!!

Am I missing something…? Oh hang on… are you referring to the ‘Switchable graphics’ list I saw with the AMD Catalyst software…? You can choose which programs can be selected to use the ‘High Performance’ mode…?

Nick… BASE1268

3…2…1…C ya

[Edward Troxel]

High Performance uses more power and, therefore, lower battery life. So it switches to “low power” mode which does not have all the GPU capabilities. This should only happen when unplugged but could cause slower speeds or some plugins to fail.

I have helped many people getting the “Low GPU” error in Titler Pro resolve this by changing that setting.

Edward Troxel

[Nick Mcmahon]

[Edward Troxel] “I have helped many people getting the “Low GPU” error in Titler Pro resolve this by changing that setting.”

Yes.. it suddenly crossed my mind that you may have been referring to what is the Switchable graphics menu having seen it when I loaded the AMD driver for Windows 7 x64. I always check through everything and every setting that the tree menus take one to when new software is installed. It’s in the right click menu on the desktop screen and fairly instinctive for me that it is set up to save power when using battery…. but thanks for pointing it out… understandable how some people may miss how those settings are important to ensure one gets the best from a mobile GPU.

Nick… BASE1268

3…2…1…C ya

[Nick Mcmahon]

I’ve been having several conversations with a few custom builders of Hardware and I’ve seemingly opened a can of worms when it comes to support for modern GPU’s by SVP.

But in fact, the takeaway advice is that if I want the best performance in a portable workstation (and you can get some seriously powerful kit inside a custom build nowadays) then I’d be better off to drop SVP and move to the Adobe suite because it has more money and people updating it to make use of ALL the latest graphics cards.

So my question now changes and is aimed at all of the guys here who use Vegas to make a living as part of their job as Pro Video Editors.

https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/24/986951

Nick… BASE1268

3…2…1…C ya

[Aaron Star]

I think that some view the world from one point of view, and others completely different. Vegas tried to leverage at the time what was suppose to be standard. They went down that road, and now Nvidia pulls a Microsoft and creates a J++ out of OpenCL. If you look at OpenCL benchmarking sites like Luxmark, you will see that AMD and even older AMD cards reign over Nvidia’s latest. Luxmark Stats

I believe Vegas’s programming is more elegant than most realize. On my system I have seen playback that the CPU handles with only a blip from the GPU. Switch to 32FP math and the GPU comes to life, apply a GBlur and the CPU comes to life. Is that not what the math co-processor is suppose to do? Optimize your system for number crunching and not how fast some site says it can turn an .mp4. For me I spend more time editing, than rendering and prefer playback optimization.

Laptops are not a good thing when it comes to GPU editing. I used to edit just fine on an I5 Lenovo T410 with SSD and 8GB ram. I just knew the the system was not going to be a super performer, and might have to preview at quarter or half. But the screen was so small that preview window was fine. The 970M in the laptop shown has about the same compute power as desktop gaming card from 2012. The 970 designation is not worthy of that hardware. Laptops also have gimped motherboards generally. You may want to make sure that motherboard has actual dual memory channels, full DMI 2.0, GPU is interfacing at full PCIe spec, and the display is quality enough to fully display the codec you are working with.

[Nick Mcmahon]

[Aaron Star] “I think that some view the world from one point of view, and others completely different”

Absolutely…. When it comes to the complexities of how specific computer hardware components actually operate within the many variables that exist when combined in different systems, it’s more than just opinion that matters because opinion is not often quantified with the necessary knowledge base for it to contain the truisms in which conclusions can be ideally drawn.

Thanks for coming on and giving me the benefit of your knowledge on the subject.

I’m sure I read in one of your other posts that you use dual GPU’s…? If I did can you expand on the way you set them to benefit the performance of SVP.

Nick… BASE1268

3…2…1…C ya

[Aaron Star]

No Dual GPU. Vegas OpenCL is coded in a way that it only uses one OpenCL device. A application like Luxmark displays how OpenCL can use multiple OpenCL devices at one, similar to the way Windows uses multiple cores. In Vegas there should be check box selection of devices you wish to use including you CPU (which has opencl capabilities,) but Sony chose to keep that free for other tasks.

The only Dual GPU you can really do with Vegas is dedicate one card for Display, and the other for Compute (OpenCL/rendering.) Maybe Vegas 14 will support OpenCL 2.0 and offer multi-GPU selection, or settings to use things like the Video Encoder (VCE) integrated into most modern AMD cards.