AMD Threadripper 1950x Slow Adobe Boot and Render

Now, one more thing, in defense of building a Premiere workstation on the Threadripper 1950x. First of all, the fact that Premiere doesn't fully utilize all cores in the best possible way doesn't mean the TR is a bad CPU for Premiere. It might mean it's overkill, but it doesn't mean it's bad. It should be a great CPU still for Premiere. 

There are a few things to remember: 

1. TR is a very new platform and future Premiere versions may take even better advantage of it. Premiere 2019 might scream on TR compared to Intel processors mentioned in this thread. Don't build a TR system counting on this to happen, but it is possible. 
2. Even without #1 ever happening, TR still gives you a benefit in that you can do OTHER WORK while you are rendering. You can have Photoshop/Illustrator/After Effects/Resolve/Crysis open and still be able to work while Premiere chugs away in the background. THAT is the real world benefit of Threadripper and something you WON'T SEE in any of the benchmarks that compare straight up Premiere performance.

Hey all - I just wanted to weigh in with my experience related to these issues. I believe there are a few different issues being discussed in this thread and mine mirrors some of them. I am running a 1950x system, 32GB of ram, and a gtx 1080 card. I have been experiencing poor Premiere performance, stuttering playback, dropped frames like crazy even on just Premiere's generated color bars. It's not a codec issue. It's not a bottleneck issue. It's not an insufficient speed issue. It's not an issue with HPET, bios settings, Premiere settings, or ANYTHING ELSE. I have documented much of my troubleshooting here, including a sample video of the problem: https://www.reddit.com/r/premiere/comments/7wi3ap/help_im_3500_into_building_the_perfect_video/

What it finally comes down to, I believe, is that it is an issue with the NVIDIA drivers for the 1080 (and maybe the 10 series in general according to what I'm reading) in conjunction with the Threadripper 1950x platform.  

To test this on your system: Open up Device Manager / Display Adapters. Right click your NVIDIA card and click Update Driver. Select "Browse my computer..." then "Let me pick..." Select the Microsoft Basic Display Adapter. Once the driver is loaded, open Premiere (your resolution will be borked but this is just a test) and play around. For me, all my problems went away. 

I put an AMD Radeon RX 550 in my system and tried Premiere again. Same problem. It wasn't until I actually deactivated my gtx1080 in device manager that the problem completely disappeared.  Having the device active, even with no displays attached, appears to have caused the problems I was having. 

I believe if you are running a Threadripper 1950x with and gtx 10 series card you may have these issues as well and I recommend the above test. I'd love to hear any other experiences to the contrary or that confirm my theory. 

If you find after doing the driver test I mentioned above that your problems go away, then please report the issue to NVIDIA here: NVIDIA Driver Feedback|NVIDIA . I also reported it to Adobe, but I believe NVIDIA will be the ones who have to fix it. Thanks.

Hello!

So far a small feedback of my experience with the i9 7940x delid @ stock 3.1 and some content creation software.

So compare to my old 6 core 5820k, i'm as well facing some slightly slow down in some action in Photoshop, like zooming or mooving, that take some lag befor been operating, well that still complicate to judge after time, cause it was also appening with the 6 core, but im still a bit feeling thoos lags.

Some other actions like merging, launching some files are better. So in the main base usage that not change a lot on Photoshop, even if i can feel like some slyghlty lags beor some action.

No change at all with Illustrator, all the 3D softs, as expected ,turn like a charm, super high perf evrything is super smouth on rendering in C4D and Keyshot, 708% on Zbrush multi-theadring, nice!

I didnt use stress test, only doing my rendering, and the proco dosnt been under 75°C @ full load over 10 min of rendering, witch i'm preaty fine with.

With the delid solution and an upgrad to the dark pro 3 version of the air cooler, i won 20°c compare to my last rig with a not delid same i9. Delid completly woth it as the t-junction is over 100°c.

But when i see the temps on the 1950x aven more OC, i feel i bit jalouse as i like quiet system   Fortunatly my sytem is super quiet generaly.

After effect well is another storry i start to try to use it to make a first timelapse, and im fronting a lot of trouble, long time to launch, stock on the loading meidacore, modification of some script that alow only 0.4 memeoris on the system etc.. Hard first experience, i went to Premiere witch is performing as well like a charm, to do a basic edition, i would like to play with more effect but that not my main work so let see latter.

And to finsh the sotrage and the speed boot are generaly same for softwars, i didnt notice any difference, but to boot the system is another story, but i'm not sure is the proco as i did the last upgrade on the microcode and windows for spectre and meltdown protection. i know this is more inpact the perf on the M.2 drive, nothing realy bad, just a bit longer when doing a restart.

Cheers

Hi Bill. Sorry for the late reply. Well I started up the PC and checked on the open processes as you asked. Their was 190 or so running. I use the ASUS Dual Intelligent Processor 5  Suite that comes with the motherboard, it controls my fan speeds/Turbo boost apps and power monitoring etc. I also use the Spyer 4 elite for colour calibration of my two monitors. I also use Windows 10 mail which is on all the time by default. I also have following connected. A wireless Logitech keyboard and MX Master mouse plus my Wacom tablet and a Epson photo scanner.

How would you suggest I should cull these programs to give better performance.

Regards.

Mike

Hey all,

I've learned some things in the last month since building a Threadripper 1950x system. Here is a list of things I have done to increasingly improve the performance of the Threadripper in AE and Premiere. Its not perfect yet but its getting faster the more I tweak certain things

1) USE AN M2 drive for your cache!!!!!! I tried using a fast Intel SSD for my cache in After Effects and noticed that the computer I use at work using an i7- 7700K was MUCH faster than my TR 1950X. Part of the reason is because it uses a Samsung NVMe drive for its cache. I changed my cache to run off my of seperate NVMe drive and the performance on a vector heavy project increased by almost 20% or so. **THE M2 DRIVE NEEDS TO BE SEPERATE FROM THE OS AND STORAGE DRIVE

2) UNINSTALL RYZEN MASTER!!! It messes with your CPU processes. Once it was removed Premiere and After Effects performance improved.

3) CLOSE OR UNINSTALL ASUS SONIC STUDIO. It messes with your CPU processes. Once it was removed Premiere and After Effects performance improved.

4) DONT USE THE RYZEN POWER SETTINGS!!!!! Use PERFORMANCE POWER SETTINGS. Trust me

5) If you are working on a complex After Effects comp with vector elements TURN OFF 'SHOW LAYER CONTROLS'. This speeds things up significatly

6) USE AN M2 FOR YOUR OS AND APPLICATIONS!!!! The faster the M2 the better.

7) UNINSTALL ASUS AI SUITE or any overclocking utility. This processor is a different animal from INTEL, it doesn't work the same way

8) SET PROCESSOR AFFINITY TO 12 CORES FOR AFTER EFFECTS.....this should increase performance for now

Follow these steps and your Threadripper will start to perform like a dream. KEEP IN MIND, this processor is AHEAD OF ITS TIME and Adobe needs to catch up to these new massive multi-core processors. In time After Effects and Premiere will scale with hyperthreading and your system will CRUSH. AMD has started something interesting..dont throw in the towel. The best is yet to come

SPECS

AMD Threadripper 1950X

ASUS  ROG ZENITH EXTREME X399

CORSAIR VENGEANCE 3000 MHZ 64GB  - **make sure to set your RAM timings manually in BIOS
GTX 1080ti turbo 11GB

Samsung Pro M2 for OS and APPS

Samsung Pro M2 for CACHE
...the rest of the peripherals dont matter

I hope this helps. I'm still tweaking and I'll post any discoveries I find. Bless!

Yes that is the point I point was trying to make. By setting the voltage to I think it was 1.225v Please check the screenshot I posted above. I set the speed to 3.650GHz and the CPU will wort at that speed as a minimum speed when needed it will boost up to 4.2 as it was designed to do. I have found with my CPU that it likes 3.650GHz and I have checked the voltage and it is indeed set to 1.225v I cant believe how much smoother thing are running now. If you click on the screenshot I posted you will see the settings I am using. Please try it out yourself and see how you get on. Now they say that eich CPU will behave a little different but at least with the way i have it setup it isn't stressing the CPU as 1.225v is mild compared the creasy voltages what some people are running them at? I do believe that running the CPU at these high voltages dill DAMAGE THE CPU OR AT LEAST SHORTEN IT'S LIFE.

Cheers.

Mike

PS. Sorry for the rant I posted above but that is how I feel and I am just been honest about it. It's nice that the post is still there and I ament barred?

Mike

For those contemplating the move to the I9 7900X (or similar), let me offer a bit of performance advice that will cost you some extra money:  water cool it.  Trust me.  You really want to do that.  And you really want to water cool the VRMs on the motherboard, too.

As I explained in another post, I recently replaced my motherboard, processor, and RAM.  I've got the new Asus Rampage VI Extreme, a de-lidded 7900X, and a 64GB kit from Corsair that's on Asus' QVL.  My system was already water cooled, so I purchased EK's new block that covers the CPU and the VRMs.

There's a company called Silicon Lottery https://siliconlottery.com/collections/skylake-x   that will de-lid the CPU for you, clean out the crappy TIM that Intel uses at the factory, replace it with Liquid Metal, and then OC the chip as fast and far as it'll go.  When you get the chip back from them, you'll also get a piece of paper telling you which BIOS settings to use to achieve the OC.  As you can see from that list on the webpage, they'll sell boxed OC'd chips that they've cleaned out and binned.  But they're almost always out of stock on the popular ones.  So if you already have the 7900X chip, don't install it yet.  Send it to them directly and let them do their magic.

I was able to get a 4.7GHz 7900X from them (before they went out of stock).  Sure enough, when I follow their guidelines, I get a stable, consistent 4.7GHz OC.  My RAM was supposed to be able to hit 4.2GHz, but something on the Asus board just wouldn't let it boot properly (couldn't even get to the BIOS to fix it) with the memory set that fast.  When I dropped it down to 4GHz, no problems.  Boots fine, runs fine.

The issue with the X299 systems is that the whole thing runs a little warmer than folks are used to with the X99 systems that preceded them.  This is specially evident in the VRMs; they can get nice and toasty.  That's why I strongly encourage water cooling.  And not just the CPU, but the VRM as well.

Just to show how important it is that the NLE is optimized for multicore usage, I also use edius 9 and I can get up to 100% core utilization on my 1950x giving me very fast rendertimes. Overall my system lags a bit, more then my older i7 4790k, but during editing it's something I hardly notice, just openings programs takes longer.

Im experiencing the same as you. I custom built a machine for the purpose of 3d rendering. A Threadripper 1950x powerhouse with 128gb ram and 3 tb of SSD and GTX 1080Ti.
Last year I built a PC for general purpose work in 3d and Adobe programs. So its basically the same machine, but with a 6 core Intel CPU overclocked to 4.4 GHz - because I wanted a balanced amount of cores vs clockspeed.
I have compared a lot of different projects in After Effects and Premiere now with these machine, to see how responsive they are in adobe programs. I can confirm your findings and sadly tell you this is how it is. Adobe programs doesn't utilize cores well at all. Rendering speed and responsiveness on the 4.4 ghz 6 core is MUCH better (!!!) than any result I can squeeze out of the threadripper (despite the threadripper even being overclocked to 3.9GHz as well).

Also, just to add another layer of disappointing info. Before my 6 Core Intel machine (which also has GTX 1080, 3 tb of SSD (960 Samsumg Pro M.2 SSD) and 128 gb of 2666 Mhz Ram.) I owned a Retina iMac with 4 Cores and 4.4 Ghz i7 CPU and it rendered just as fast as my 6 core, no difference!! Not only rendering, but when working with a ton of layers in after effects, particularly vector shapes and such, you will notice such a TREMENDOUS slowdown with the threadripper vs. a high clockspeed CPU that it's unfathomable. I worked on a scene with about 100 circles/shapes in After Effects on my 6 cores and was going to finish the project on the Threadripper. I was completely shocked how much slower it was, it used about 3x the amount of time to preview every single frame and scrubbing the timeline was like scrubbing through thick mud. I had to go back and finish it on my "old" machine.

I remember Adobe, many years ago, when they stated that they were going to start optimizing After Effects...The community manager then, Todd Kopriva (or something) said if you are investing for the future of Adobe, buy a multi core machine, but currently its pretty useless (and this was the time when you could even render on multiple cores in AE...now you cant). But as we all know from Adobe, future plans, means a few decaded...And After Effects currently renders slower today than it did many years ago, only preview is better than before. So, are you going to buy anything to be used in Adobe programs, stay faaar away from multi threaded expensive machines, its completely pointless! A retina iMac with high clockspeed will perform a LOT better than a Mac Pro. The new iMac Pro that is about to be launched will be a complete WASTE of money for anyone doing heavy video work in Adobe programs primarily. If you are making/buying a windows PC's for sake of doing After effects or Premiere work, buy/make a consumer grade gamer rig! Few cores, silly high clockspeed and a good gpu. and just add as much ram as possible. Because with how currently Adobe programs works, your never gonna get any better performance on any machine than that, no matter how much money you throw at it.

This is the information that neither Adobe, Apple, Intel or AMD is sharing, but it is a fact! Apple don't mind showing off the iMac Pro or Mac Pro working in Adobe programs as a recommended rig, which is a complete hoax! Because, if you are getting the 18 core iMac Pro or a threadripper 1950x to be working in After Effects or Premiere or photoshop, you are seriously being screwed over both financially and with User Experience.

Update for Nicolas, I just found a comment on a overclockingsforum where a user was experiencing lag problems, they found out the following:

Open CMD as an administrator

run: bcdedit /enum

if you see 'useplatformclock' set to true then run thats your problem

I ran: bcdedit /set useplatformclock false

bcdedit /deletevalue useplatformclock

you might get away with just running bcdedit /deletevalue useplatformclock

I just tried this and it has allready solved my slow start up times, the system still doesn't feel as responsive as my older one but at least I don't have to wait so long before I can start editing. It seems this is caused by asus own ai suite .