[Sonic 67]

Sony Vegas supports GPU encoding only for Fermi generation cards. Your ‘new’ card therefore is unsupported, good for gaming but crippled in Vegas.
Also, you have to select CUDA (or OpenCL for ATI) manually, otherwise it will default to CPU encoding (rendering). Even if OpenCL is available for nVidia rendering, use CUDA…

OpenCL is very useful for timeline view (supported there by both nVidia and AMD), but your tests measured basically only the encoding (rendering) process.

[Sonic 67]

‘Would a Mac Mini with dual monitors hooked into it work with Vegas Pro 13 and some studio software for music work on the mac mini with no problems? ‘

That’s a toy. Most that you can get with that is a dual-core i7@2.8GHz with integrated graphics (Intel HD Graphics 5000), 8GB of RAM – and that will set you back $999!!!

Sure it will ‘work’. Don’t expect any miracles, just because it says ‘Apple’ on it.
And indeed, maybe a better choice of NLE is Apple’s software. Still, don’t expect miracles, there is no substitute for CPU power (and memory size).

[Sonic 67]

Thanks. Very interesting, but I don’t know if I have time to learn more 🙂
I install it anyway, maybe some day…

[Sonic 67]

I didn’t have any issues with my video cards under Windows. True is that I am not using gaming cards/drivers for editing purposes. No ‘cutting edge gaming’ for me, still using Fermi generation for now. In my experience, the stability of nVidia drivers for Quadro line is essential for a good experience in any NLE tool.

Also, I used to like ATI (even before they got bought by AMD). But their drivers where hit an miss, so I switched to nVidia (and I needed CUDA). Apple has a better handle on that issue.

[Sonic 67]

Now that is weird. What drivers did you install in the system, since one card would require Quadro drivers and the other GeForce ones.
IME, Quadro cards would work with GeForce drivers (but at lower performance).

Both my ‘Fermi based’ cards share the encoding process, even if unequal (because they are not even close: Quadro 6000 and Quadro 600).

[Sonic 67]

‘These enhanced graphic cards for editing can be a headache more than a help sometimes. Glad i stay far from them!‘
Come on, sometimes you need to live dangerously 🙂

[Sonic 67]

Dell Precision Workstations are also a good buy, we have T3610 at work and they never have issues. I would configure one with a video card Quadro K600 (to save money), but upgraded power supply, and buy a Quadro 4000-5000 from eBay to work with the MainConcept encoders.

Personally I did something else – went to ‘refurbished’ avenue.
My older Core2Quad system was getting too slow for my taste, so I did go on eBay, at Dell Outlet and bid on a computer – I won a Dell T3500 with:
– a six core (12 threads with HT) Xenon X5650 (equal to first gen i7 Extreme)
– 15GB of DDR3 RAM (upgradable to 24)
– nVidia Quadro FX3800 (older but usable in MainConcept)
All for $330 shipped/taxed.

[Sonic 67]

Sorry, I meant to refer strictly at the MainConcept statement, I read it wrong (didn’t see the ‘except’part). I know that the rest uses a mix OpenCL and CUDA (for some effects).
NVidia’s nvenc already supports up to 4K encoding. Higher quality is available for Maxwell second generation cards.
And nvenc will support in near future h265 encoding.

Cyberlink already released a patch that makes use of nvenc, I wonder why Sony doesn’t go that route.

[Sonic 67]

[Dave Haynie] “Now, other than the Main Concept CODEC, Vegas proper will work with any supported OpenCL device.”

Not true for MainConcept encoders. OpenCL will work only with specific ATI video cards (same generation like Fermi-nVidia case, 2010 – HD59xx, HD69xx).
The cards that are allowed to work with MainConcept are hard-coded in their software, it cannot be ‘edited’ like you can in Adobe case.

See here the requirements for MC OpenCL: https://www.mainconcept.com/products/sdks/gpu-acceleration-sdk/opencltm-h264avc.html#product_page-5
And here for MC CUDA: https://www.mainconcept.com/products/sdks/gpu-acceleration-sdk/cuda-h264avc.html#product_page-5

[Sonic 67]

I am curious about that. I predict that you will not have any hardware acceleration on encoding with MainConcept, because they state that Maxwell and newer are not supported.
https://www.mainconcept.com/products/sdks/gpu-acceleration-sdk/cuda-h264avc.html#product_page-5
NVIDIA graphics card with CUDA support (Professional - Tesla, Quadro 4000-series, FX, CX, NVS, QuadroPlex; Consumer - GeForce 8, 9, 100, 200, 400-series GPUs - with a minimum of 256 MB of local graphics memory card or 512 MB for 1920x1080p encoding). CUDA compute capability support only up to 1.3 (excludes certain GeForce 8800 models - GTS, Ultra. Compute capability 1.0 works in general for encoding, but has known issues. Boards with Kepler architecture are not supported.
In Vegas case maybe a Quadro 6000 or a GTX480/GTX580 was a better option. No matter what gaming tests show…