Bruce N. goren
Forum Replies Created
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So here is an update for anyone following this thread.
This is clearly a heat induced component failure.
Turning off the GPU based Mercury Engine in favor of software only in the project settings allows me to render, albeit a bit more slowly.
Encoding in AME directly also is successful since it does not task the GPU.
In leafing through the release notes for recent nVidia drivers I noted that in dual monitor usage Quadro cards are forced into enhanced performance mode full time. Sure enough, using CPUID HWMonitor I observed my fans were roaring at 100% and the card was cooking near its operational limits, 95 to 100 C. I’ve gone back to single monitor mode now but perhaps the damage is done, since even at “idle” the card fans blow at 35-50% and the heat runs 75 – 85 C. Using GPU intensive apps pushes things back up to the red line.
You’ve got to wonder if this design limitation is one of the reasons for Adobe/nVidia coming up with the Maximus configuration solution; moving GPU operations over to a headless, expensive, dedicated GPU cores card and relegating the Quadro to handling display only.
I’ve vacuumed and blown out the fans and heat sinks and ensured all connections are secure.
Perhaps I need to consider liquid cooling the Quadro 4000, have to cost that out . . .
Thanks to those of you who have contacted me directly via email with helpful info and suggestions!
After consulting with Xi, they confirmed my GPU temps were abnormal based on the rigs they were running, since I am beyond the one year build warranty I next called PNY.
Excellent phone support from PNY, but odd exchange policy. I’m used to advanced replacement at the Pro level, meaning that you issue a P.O. or allow a credit card hold to be placed and they send you a new unit to swap out — no down time, just send back the defective unit within a few days. PNY gave me two choices, send them my defective Quadro4000, they would then send me a replacement, that would mean several days down time, not acceptable. I chose plan “B” which was they charge my credit card for the replacement board, ship it to me by next day air, then I return the defective card and they issue a refund — but the caveat is that it takes 4 to 6 weeks for the refund to post. That sucks, but what the heck, I needed to get this done.
Installed the replacement card, did not seem 100% fresh and new, I could tell by the connectors and hold-downs it had been in and out of motherboards many times, but the firmware was more recent than mine, so it goes. Problem solved, this card idles between 45 and 60 C and the highest I was able to push it was 92 C under the GPU torture of Boinc/Seti . Premiere Pro also no longer trips the panic switch, with GPU rendering hovering between 75 and 85 C.
I’ll let you know how long it takes PNY to credit me for the return.
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Have a look at Voices.com too.
My profile is here:
https://www.voices.com/people/brucegoren
Bruce N. Goren
“If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?”
John Wooden, Basketball Coach -
Avoid using cotton on video heads, no such thing really as cotton lint-less.
We used to have lint-less linen squares to keep Quads clean, I think the Textwipe folks supplied it. First line of defense was alcohol, and as mentioned here already, freon was the second line of defense. But freon could crack the heads if used too liberally. We kept a squeeze bottle of each on top of each machine. I remember some cowboys would drip a few drops from a bottle of freon right on the headwheel to wash away a persistent on-air clog! I would wrap my thumb with a layer of linen cloth square, drench my wrapped thumb with freon, and apply directly to the spinning head, can still hear that ziiizzzzzzzzz, managed never to slice my finger or break a head! Some guys used their bare thumbs, ouch!
Third and most potent cleaner was xylene, a powerful and dangerous solvent, smelled like magic markers, I seem to recall if you got the tiniest amount on your hands you could feel it penetrate deeply and almost “taste” it a few seconds later. Use gloves, don’t breathe the fumes!
One inch head gaps are smaller and the assembly more fragile than quad so never try the crazy powered up spinning tricks we did in the old days with Quad.
Bruce N. Goren
“If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?”
John Wooden, Basketball Coach -
I had been using Premiere exclusively for a few years, but after moving to San Francisco it became clear to me that in this market most of the work requires Final Cut Studio. Both are great applications which will continue to improve over time. I’ll keep using both going forward.
Bruce N. Goren
“If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?”
John Wooden, Basketball Coach -
Try running the file through FFMPEG. Just mp4 to mp4, that once worked for me when Premier Pro output was not recognized by YouTube as mp4.
Bruce N. Goren
“If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?”
John Wooden, Basketball Coach -
The HDMI output option of the 3800 would certainly be convenient, and who doesn’t want to save $700 bucks?
3800 has 192 GPU cores, so it ought to have the same raw power of the 4800, but I’m worried about throughput bottlenecks with multiple layers. The 4800 has more on-board memory and the specs show a higher graphics memory bandwidth than the 3800.
You might recall that last year Adobe was promoting the CX as the card of choice for CS4, that board has gone away.
This year most of the folks I spoke to both at NVidia and Adobe were saying the 4800 was the best choice, so while I might gripe out loud about not getting the cheapest deal on hardware I had been scheming to accomplish, I prefer to follow the advice of those guys and gals in the know whom I grilled at NAB.
Other than cost, why would you choose the 3800, am I missing something important here?
Bruce N. Goren
“If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?”
John Wooden, Basketball Coach -
Richard,
OH MY GOD !!!
I am SO happy you asked this question.
I just got back from NAB in Las Vegas and I’ve been jumping up and down hoping this topic would come up soon.
Has Adobe gone EVIL??? Is Premiere Pro CS5 crippleware???
The Geforce 285 has WAY more CPU cores than the Quadro 3800(240 vs 192). But guess what? Adobe has coded up CS5 such that if the Geforce card is detected you are limited to only 3 layers of video rather than the 7, 10 and more layers you see playing in the Mercury Engine demos.
The new Geforce 470 will be even more amazing with 448 GPU Cores, but no performance improvement for you thanks to the crippleware code of CS5. No 7 layers of video for you! Next!
Why??? Adobe will spin it several ways, memory, I/O, they may even claim that these “non-pro” cards heat up and get unstable with more than 3 layers of video, but we all know that OEMs like Pony and eVGA engineer these cards to stay cool specifically for gamers who overclock.
My conspiracy theory is that this is all about preserving price point for the software. There is resistance to paying up for software when the hardware to run it on is cheap, so Adobe creates gravitas for the price point by padding your hardware build tab. Maybe they even get a taste of the action from NVidia, eh?
Bottom line, buy a Quadro, I had been planning on the new Geforce 470 ($500), but I want to be able to take full advantage of CS5, so I’ll spend the extra bucks, probably on the FX4800 (only 192 cores yet around $1500 – OUCH!) since they were promoting that model at NAB – but I’m shouting from the rooftops this cautionary tale as there is currently no asterisk next to the GeForce285 on the hardware list.
A thousand bucks here, a thousand bucks there, eventually you are talking real money.
Bruce N. Goren
“If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?”
John Wooden, Basketball Coach -
Wow, my working set maximum was defaulting to only 24, and upping it to 640 was tripling what the web posting I read recommended.
What I did to arrive at 640 was trial and error, I suggest you increase the number, try to edit, if fail, re-boot, increase the number, repeat. Remember to multiply by 1024. In example: 640 is 655360, 768 is 786432 .
Can your system accommodate more RAM? Buy a ton more memory and I’ll bet all will work smoothly.
I only have 3 GB of RAM, and am running Windows XP on an aging dual Xeon with a 500GB G-Raid. I also turned off indexing on my system drive as another posting on the web noted it was a resource hog.
Recent point updates seem to have made CS4 a bit fragile, I’ve also seen suggestions that you roll back to a previous version if possible, never tried that myself. Good luck!
I’m guessing Adobe will tell us it will all be better when we switch to 64bit Win7 and CS5 running only on their officially blessed hardware configurations.
Bruce N. Goren
“If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?”
John Wooden, Basketball Coach -
Since you are not using effects transitions, delete all your render files, you have enough horsepower to preview on the fly.
I had this problem too, it started after the most recent point update.
As my project grew very large I was getting windows delayed write failed errors. Deleting my render files worked for a while, then I had to take more drastic action.
So if deleting the render files does not bring you relief, try a web search for and download cacheset.exe . In working set maximum, I use a value of 655360 before starting up CS4.
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897561.aspx
I don’t remember where on the web I first found this temp fix but it seems to work for me.
Good luck . . .
Bruce N. Goren
“If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?”
John Wooden, Basketball Coach -
https://newsletters.creativecow.net/newsletters/2010/01-05/index.html
Congrats on the milestone.
Bruce N. Goren
“If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?”
John Wooden, Basketball Coach