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Question

GTX 560. How much will it help?

Forum|Forum|8 years ago
December 10, 2017
3 replies
6364 views

What kind of performance boost can I reasonably expect from a GTX 560?

Using Premiere Pro CC 2017, I am editing 4K video from my Sony a 6300, using 1080p (have not tried 720P yet, but am considering it) proxies and playing my clips back at 1/4 or 1/8 resolution. I'm also creating simple, static titles. Performance is pretty awful. Editing and playback are possible until I start adding effects such as Lumetri Color and cropping. At that point, the machine can handle 1/8 resolution at best. However, the straw that broke the camel's back was when I began creating the simple titles. Lag was so bad that I couldn't finish them. At this pace, it will take me forever to complete my small project, which will consist of about 7 clips, three to five minutes each.

I have a workstation with an i7-3770 processor. I will be increasing the RAM from 4GB to 16GB next week. My OS and software are stored on a 7200 RPM internal platter drive. My project drive is a second, separate 7200 RPM internal platter. My GPU is just an nVidia Quadro 600.

I'd like to install some SSDs, but that's a subject for a seperate post.

Right now, I'd like to tackle the PSU and the GPU. I have an nVidia GTX 560 graphics card, but I can't install it because it requires around 100 watts of power and my 280 watt PSU is nearly maxed out already. This is a Lenovo workstation and the motherboard has a 14 pin power connector rather than a 20 pin. The compatible PSUs are not common and cost more than your typical units. (There are adapters that, in theory, would allow me to use an ordinary, 20 pin PSU but some people think it would create a risk of frying the motherboard.)

I know the GTX 560 is on the low end for video cards used for Premiere Pro. (In fact, at one time, I think I read that the only way to get GPU acceleration out of this card was to was to use a minor hack on the software.) What kind of performance boost can I expect from it? I have read that GPU acceleration only helps with rendering. I have tried rendering my timeline and then editing. It helps a little, but not much. If the best I can hope for is an increase in a rendering speed, I don't think it's going to be worth it.

Buying a new, more expensive graphics card is not an option at the moment.

I am fine with continuing to use proxies and playing back my footage at less than full resolution. I am even alright with color correcting and color grading using only the proxies. However, when I play back my color corrected footage, I need it to play smoothly at 1/4 or even 1/2 resolution. Also, when I pause playback, I do need to see the full resolution proxy at 1080p or 720p. And finally, when I create titles, I need to be able to do it without significant lag and I need to be able to see the titles on top of my footage.

Is the GTX 560 going to help?

This topic has been closed for replies.

R

RjL190365

Legend

My opinion of the GTX 560 is:

Don't buy it. (Unless you have one already laying around in your spare parts bin.)

You see, although you currently have a really lousy GPU in your workstation (the Quadro 600 really is a glorified GeForce GT 430 DDR3), the GTX 560 is actually slower all around than newer, more-budget-oriented GPUs such as the GTX 1050. This is despite the GTX 560's memory throughput of 128 GB/second versus the 112 GB/second memory throughput of the GTX 1050 series. The reason is that the Fermi architecture that the GTX 560 uses is far less efficient than the newer Pascal architecture of the GTX 1050 series. So, although the GTX 560 is more powerful all around than your current Quadro 600, why buy it when there are newer and better GPUs out there?

And that's not to mention that the GTX 560 is so power-hungry that it requires a 450W or higher PSU just to even handle it at all. So, if you must spend more than $80 just to upgrade the PSU and other components to accommodate that GTX 560, then it's not worth the trouble at all. (Sure, you can buy so-called "600W" power supply units for $20. But those units, if anything, would actually be worse than your system's current 280W unit in terms of maximum continuous power handling capability.)

Peru Bob

Community Expert

Clay201b wrote
Is the GTX 560 going to help?

No. Your hard drive setup and the processor will need to be upgraded as well as the power supply.

It would be best to start saving for a new computer.

C

Clay201bAuthor

Participating Frequently

"Your hard drive setup and the processor will need to be upgraded as well as the power supply.

It would be best to start saving for a new computer."

Is it really that grim? I've seen a number of blog posts and YouTube videos swearing that, as long as you use proxies and don't require full resolution playback, you can handle 4K footage with the average Windows computer. Are they full of it?

R

RjL190365

Legend

In your situation, then yes, it is pretty grim: You cannot use standard PC components (in terms of the case and the PSU) with that PC's motherboard. Plus, no single hard drive can sustain more than about 225 MB/second on the outermost tracks of the physical disks. In face, your average hard drive throughput will plummet to less than 150 MB/second as the disks fill up!

And then, most NLEs, Premiere included, will decompress compressed video content on-the-fly for viewing, necessitating extremely high disk throughputs, in excess of 500 MB/second, just to edit such decompressed-on-the-fly 4K content smoothly. Even decompressed-on-the-fly 1080p material requires a disk throughput in excess of 300 MB/second just to edit smoothly.

As such, you're stuck between a rock and a hard place.

By the way, you will not be working directly with 4K material when you use proxies: Instead, you will be working with a much-lower-rez copy of this content (typically only 1920x540) when you do your editing work, and then the NLE will apply the changes to the 4K original when it comes time to render. However, this would be of no help at all whatsoever if your GPU cannot handle 4K at all. In fact, Fermi-generation GPUs have a maximum display resolution of only 2560x1600 whereas 4K video content has a typical resolution of 3840x2160. Thus, if your GPU cannot handle 4K at all, and Premiere comes across 4K content for rendering, what the program does is to lock the MPE render to the software-only mode, thus completely defeating the GPU acceleration feature. This explains why the GTX 560 Ti 448 does so poorly in the H.264 Blu-ray export test in PPBM despite doing relatively well in the MPEG-2 DVD timeline export test, because part of the content in that H.264 Blu-ray timeline consists of 4K material.

Bill Gehrke

Inspiring

I seriously doubt you would see much if qny improvement going from about 100 CUDA cores to about 300 plus you conld seriously have a problem with the drivers for that old card and present day Adobe CC. Today we have low end GTX 1050;s with 640 cores. Also you need two six pin power connectores and you are going from a single width card to cdual width.

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