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Windows 7 Workstation Configuration for PP CS6
Hi Folks,
As our friends start to pay more and more attention to Premiere Pro CS6 and the Windows 7 platform, I’ve taken the plunge and built up what I consider to be a reasonable Windows workstation configuration. I’ve read as many “tuning” and hardware posts as I could find, and I’m really stumped about the performance I’m getting.
I’m a Creative Cloud member with all the latest updates running on a 64bit Windows 7 Pro system with a 3.6GHz i7 CPU, 32GB DDR3 1600 RAM, an Nvidia GTX650 w/2MB DDR5 RAM, a 512GB OCZ Vertex 4 SSD for the system drive, a separate 512GB Vertex 4 SSD for Cache, a 4 disk, 7200RPM disk storage array striped in Windows disk manager (8TB total).
PP and AE both see and use the GPU acceleration offered. I’ve set the rendering to use 4 cores with 4GB per core (16GB left for other processes).
Seems like this should be flying – but it’s not.
AE renders 3D scenes at around 4fps, I can’t even playback a 1080p, 24fps clip in PP without glitching.
I then flip back to my 16GB Mac Book Pro Retina and the same scenes (while still not realtime) render at 17fps and playback without glitching.
Form what I mention, can anyone spot a glaring omission or configuration oops on my part?
Thanks,
TimTim
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Tim Jones
CTO – TOLIS Group, Inc.
https://www.productionbackup.com
BRU … because it’s the RESTORE that matters! -
8 Replies
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[Tim Jones] “Nvidia GTX650 w/2MB DDR5 RAM”
Of course, I meant 2GB of DDR5 RAM..
Tim
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Tim Jones
CTO – TOLIS Group, Inc.
https://www.productionbackup.com
BRU … because it’s the RESTORE that matters! -
It’s looking good and should be running circles around rMBP.
What is the WinSAT index of the system? WinSAT disk (or AJA System Test or BMD Disk Test) numbers on your non-system volumes?
Fresh Windows install? Fully patched?
Alex Gerulaitis
Systems Engineer
DV411 – Los Angeles, CA -
The GTX650 is not officially supported for Premiere/AE yet. You might want to check out the “CUDA hack”:
https://www.studio1productions.com/Articles/PremiereCS5.htm
https://www.studio1productions.com/Articles/AfterEffects.htm -
AJA System test reports 1664MB/sec write, 1821MB/sec read on my array drive, 452MB/sec write, 496MB/sec read on my SSD render drive.
As for the 650 and Cuda support, I’d already edited the files and (as I said), both AE and PP see and use the GPU/Cuda:
Fast Draft: Available
Texture Memory: 797.00 MB
Ray-tracing: GPUOpenGL
Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Device: GeForce GTX 650/PCIe/SSE2
Version: 3.0.0
Total Memory: 1.95 GB
Shader Model: 4.0 or later
CUDA
Driver Version: 5.0
Devices: 1 (GeForce GTX 650)
Current Usable Memory: 1.78 GB (at application launch)
Maximum Usable Memory: 2.00 GBTim
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Tim Jones
CTO – TOLIS Group, Inc.
https://www.productionbackup.com
BRU … because it’s the RESTORE that matters! -
[Tim Jones] “AJA System test reports 1664MB/sec write, 1821MB/sec read on my array drive”
Strange numbers for a 4-drive array with Windows striping – I’d expect them to be in the 500-600MB/s range.
You didn’t say: fresh Windows install? Fully patched? CS6 updated? Tried running AE from a different user account? Playback and rendering in Premiere Pro?
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Sorry, the AJA test won’t let me test on a mount point vs. drive letter volume; neither will winstat. In trying to test this further, I had grabbed one of our 6-drive SSD modules and striped that as my F: drive. That’s what that original test was of. I reset my spinning array to a drive letter and got 432MB/sec write and 488MB/sec read as you expected, but that volume is just for storage, not for rendering or cache.
The system is brand new, so it’s a fresh Windows 7 install with SP 1 and all current updates. As I mentioned, I’m a Creative Cloud member and the Adobe suite is fully up to date. The drives are brand new and not fragmented. I’ve also made sure that I’ve updated the installed Quicktime version to Apple’s latest
Playback in PP stutters when playing back a 1080P Photo-JPEG movie (2K original media) – even at 1/2 resolution in the playback display. I can play the same sequence back with no glitching on the rMBP at Full resolution in the playback display.
Very strange.
Tim
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Tim Jones
CTO – TOLIS Group, Inc.
https://www.productionbackup.com
BRU … because it’s the RESTORE that matters! -
I’ve finally made some headway here with preview and render performance under AE CS6. It’s all about the preferences 🙂 .
On the Viewer, select the “Fast Previews” dropdown button and then select Fast Draft.
In Preferences, Display, enable Hardware Accelerate Composition, Layer, and Footage Panels.
Double check render and cache locations, insure they point to the multi-spindle array.
Bingo, previews in realtime. Customer is impressed, job is locked!
Tim
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Tim Jones
CTO – TOLIS Group, Inc.
https://www.productionbackup.com
BRU … because it’s the RESTORE that matters! -
Hi Tero,
Sorry that I missed your port – I was already aware of the edits for AE and PP.
Thanks for the reminder, though.
Tim
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Tim Jones
CTO – TOLIS Group, Inc.
https://www.productionbackup.com
BRU … because it’s the RESTORE that matters!
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