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kongc
Participating Frequently
February 28, 2019
Answered

Strange Rendering Performance Titan X, GTX 1070, GTX 680

  • February 28, 2019
  • 2 replies
  • 1452 views

I need some help understanding this. Puzzling to me.

I got pretty simple system i7-4770  16gb ram, SSD and trying out various GeForce cards. Currently got the titan X 12GB

Rendering a small 360 4k clip with Lumetric adjustments - about 2min30s

Premierer Pro CC and Adobe Media Encoder CC both set to encoder Mercury Cuda

First I didn't disable the onboard intel graphics as I tried gtx 680, gtx 1070 and titan X  and all got about the same rendering time of 6mins

I thought that was odd, surely should see some difference in those cards

Titan X - was using about 50% load and intel 460 was about 80% and CPU about 30%

Then I read and found as recommended its better to disable the onboard intel 460 gpu, so I did. Results were puzzling

With the titan X ..  load was 3% .. CPU 100% and rendering time 20mins (yes I disabled in bios and restarted .. etc)

I checked rendering settings again .. defn set on Cuda

Could someone help me understand and explain my results pls? Much appreciated.

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer RjL190365

Thanks .... yes I am only export as H.264

ok, for your #1 ... why is it when I disable the onboard 4600 and only using the titan x to render it takes 3x longer? The CPU does max out so your #2 makes sense but the titan untilisation is 3~5% ???

your #2 ... just a question.. if my i7-4770 (none K) is too weak for the titan x-m ... why isn’t it maxed out to 100% ????? Thanks


Here's the explanation for my #1:

Without the Intel GPU enabled, the H.264 encoder automatically switches from "hardware encoding" to "software encoding" with absolutely no provision at all whatsoever to change that. There are third-party plugins that can tap into the discrete NVIDIA GPU for H.264 accelerated encoding via NVENC; however, they are not endorsed by Adobe nor officially supported.

And the reason for the low CPU usage in QuickSync mode is simple: You have only a fourth-generation Intel i-series CPU, which is below the minimum recommended spec of a sixth-generation or newer Intel CPU. While the HD 4600 can handle 1080p (both source and export) in QuickSync mode, it absolutely chokes on encoding with 4k source material. In addition, with only 16 GB of RAM you do not have enough RAM per logical CPU core (only 2 GB of RAM per processing thread) for 4k work. You need at least 4 GB of RAM per thread (or 8 GB per hyperthreadable core) to work with 4k effectively - in other words, you need the full 32 GB maximum supported amount of RAM for your CPU platform.

As for my #2, it's simple. With a well balanced CPU/GPU combo the GPU utilization, with whatever effects that you applied, should have been at least 20% on average. Any lower than that, or if the GPU gets pegged near 100% but the CPU measures very low or erratic, then your CPU and GPU are mismatched to one another - and this is with the Intel GPU disabled.

And I did forget your disk setup as well: You appear to have only a single disk. That could have skewed everything since SATA cannot transfer data in both directions simultaneously, which is absolutely REQUIRED by the Adobe software. In addition, that same disk appears to handle the OS, programs, projects, media and exports all on the same disk! That's WAY, WAY too much for a single SATA connection to handle.

If this were my system, I would have gone with only the GTX 1070, and concentrated on adding more RAM and more disks.

2 replies

K
kongcAuthor
Participating Frequently
March 1, 2019

Not sure why the onboard 4600 is taking all the workload ?? I think its bottle necking on that?

But if I disable it .. the Titan X (maxwell) usage goes to 5% and CPU goes 100% and render time is 3x to 4x slower

R
RjL190365
Legend
March 1, 2019

Here are two reasons:

1) If you are exporting to H.264 then you are using Intel's QuickSync encoder by default. Currently, the only way to defeat that would be switching to "Software encoding" in the export settings.

2) Judging by the extremely low GPU utilization of that Titan X, I believe that you have a severely overqualified GPU for that quad-core CPU. And you probably have wasted money on the other two GPUs as well. You see, Premiere Pro prefers that both the CPU and the GPU closely match one another in terms of relative performance. By that measure, you should have paired that i7-4770 (non-K, I assume that you have) with a GTX 1060 6 GB or even a GTX 1050 Ti 4 GB card instead of wasting your money on super-high-performance GPUs that will NEVER become anywhere close to fully utilized in GPGPU apps because your CPU simply wouldn't allow it to be. As it stands, it would be like putting racing tires and a racing transmission on a pedestrian Honda Accord with its 4-cylinder engine and its standard suspension. That Titan X really needs a 10-core, 20-thread or higher-core-count CPU with a constant, sustainable clock speed of 5.0 GHz or greater in order to become anywhere near fully utilized. Your i7-4770, unfortunately, has a maximum sustainable all-core Turbo boosted clock speed of only 3.7 GHz in addition to having only four cores and eight threads.

K
kongcAuthor
Participating Frequently
March 1, 2019

Thanks .... yes I am only export as H.264

ok, for your #1 ... why is it when I disable the onboard 4600 and only using the titan x to render it takes 3x longer? The CPU does max out so your #2 makes sense but the titan untilisation is 3~5% ???

your #2 ... just a question.. if my i7-4770 (none K) is too weak for the titan x-m ... why isn’t it maxed out to 100% ????? Thanks

Ann Bens
Community Expert
Ann BensCommunity Expert
Community Expert
February 28, 2019

moved to Hardware Forum​

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