How should I configure a 2nd video card for rendering video?

[SK321]

I recently purchased a GTX 690 because of its large number of CUDA cores, to add to my current system.

Win 10 64-bit

Asus Sabertooth X79

i7-4930K

GTX 1080

32GB Ram

2TB SSD OS

8TB Raid 10 Storage

I'm unsure of how I need to configure the system to take advantage of the GTX 690 for video rendering. Do I set it up with SLI? Do I leave the SLI bridge off and just have it sitting in there, separate from the 1080? How do I configure it in the control panel, as a PhysX dedicated card?

Thanks.

[Bill Gehrke]

Download GPU-Z and on the Sensors page see if you ever use 100% of the GPU loading.  I seriously doubt that your i7-4930K CPU could ever take advantage of a second GPU.  Here is my laptop at 99% in this case a second GPU or a better GPU might help, but with your GTX 1080 I doubt it would need any assistance.

Never use SLI with Premiere it can cause problems

Why would you want it as a PhysX card?  I never load the PhysX drivers on my editing systems

[SK321]

Really? Because the Adobe employee in this video Multiple GPU Support in Adobe Premiere Pro | Creative Cloud User makes it sound like the more GPUs you add, the more Premiere will take advantage. I just don't know if I need to use the SLI bridge and enable SLI or if I just drop the second card in and do nothing else. I'm also not sure if I need to change some settings in Premiere to utilize the 690.

Okay, I see the part of your answer about SLI. So, basically I would just drop the card in and if Premier/Encoder was going to take advantage of it, that will happen automatically?

[Kevin-Monahan · Accepted solution]

Hello S Kendall,

I'm unsure of how I need to configure the system to take advantage of the GTX 690 for video rendering.

By "rendering" are you speaking about the exporting process or the effects processing process? Either way, I think you may be expecting more than you bargained for. GPUs are not used for "video rendering," as exporting is a CPU intensive process. A better GPU can assist with real time playback and effects performance, however, only a single GPU is used in that case. A second or third GPU usually sits idle during the editing process.

GPUs can only assist the exporting times for effects processing only if you have certain GPU accelerated effects added to clips. A few other items can be accelerated by faster/more GPUs, such as, scaling or changing frame rates on export. Multiple GPUs can be used in this regard, but a good number of customers are still confused when they see no added benefit by adding another GPU. For example, if you add no GPU accelerated effects or are not scaling from 4K down to HD on export, the GPU could largely sit idle.

So, in many cases, a faster GPU or multiple GPUs do not reduce exporting times except when certain effects are added. Some even say that dual GPUs are a waste of money. On the same thread, you see our hardware experts saying that configuring these GPUs using SLI may actually cause more problems for you then not doing so.

More on that topic here: https://www.provideocoalition.com/adobe-premiere-pro-and-multiple-gpus/

Please return with any questions.

Thanks!
Kevin

[SK321]

Hello Kevin. Thanks for the reply. If you're saying there's little to no benefit of additional GPUs, I'm a little confused as to why Adobe employee, Al Mooney, made it sound like you would benefit from adding more GPUs in the video on this page: Multiple GPU Support in Adobe Premiere Pro | Creative Cloud User .

I do use several effects that take advantage of GPU, including Neat Video's Reduce Noise and Twixtor, as well as a few others. So, what I'm asking is how do I need to set up the card to best utilize it for effects processing and/or exporting?

Thanks.

[Bill Gehrke]

Your referenced article by Al Mooney was appropriate in 2013 when they were just introducing multiple GPU support and the GPU's were terrible weaklings aside ot today's GTX 10 series.

[SK321]

Darn. I was really hoping to get some better performance and speedier exporting by adding the 690, which as a dual GPU has 3,072 cores. That's not bad, considering the 1080 only has 2,560. Would I be a little better off just swapping out the 1080 with the 690?

From what I'm seeing in this YouTube video (again, I know it's from 2013 but I would think it still applies), it looks like Premiere does take advantage of the dual GPUs with the 690: GTX 690 ADOBE PREMIERE CC 2017 PERFORMANCE. - YouTube . But I'm guessing other factors probably still make the 1080 better, such as memory and clock speed.

[Bill Gehrke]

Well if you want to measure the Premiere PRo performance of both cards use my Premiere Pro BenchMark (PPBM).  It has two tests of GPU Acceleration.  The MPEG2-DVD timeline with GPU acceleration with a single card usually will push 99% GPU Loading on the Sensors tab of GPU-Z. 

Since your GTX 690 is a dual card it could possible act like two separate cards.  Since Premiere Pro can support more than two cards it would be an interesting experiment.  You could run into problems with a GTX 1080 and a GTX 690 with the drivers as they are years apart.  If you run multiple instances of GPU-Z you could possibly see all three GPU's in action.

[SK321]

Thanks Bill. I'll try it out when I've got some time.

[Ann Bens]

Video should be take down especially now you cannot download (old) previous versions anymore.

[SK321]

I did get the chance to try out the 690 vs the 1080. You would think that since the 690 has dual GPUs you'd get to take advantage of the full 3,072 CUDA Cores, but alas, that's not the case. When you install the 690, you can only take advantage of both GPUs by configuring it as SLI. Premiere Pro doesn't seem to like SLI, and at the very least will not even recognize the 2nd GPU to use during playback or rendering. So, you're really only getting 1,536 CUDA Cores with the 690 since Premiere only uses one of the GPUs. Hopefully at some point Adobe will add the ability for Premiere to take advantage of multiple GPUs. I'm guessing that would be quite an overhaul, so I'm not holding my breath.

I am still a little confused as to why they appeared to have been adding multiple GPU support to Premiere in 2013 and now it seems to have either been stripped out or the support was never added for any GPUs manufactured since then. Maybe there's not enough of a benefit over a single, modern GPU, so they've shifted efforts elsewhere? I'd be nice to hear a Premiere developer weigh in.

[Bill Gehrke]

I am running two GTX 1060's and getting improved results over one.  See this data

Also notice the extreme with two Titan X's

[SK321]

Really? How do you have them configured? Are they in SLI?

[Bill Gehrke]

Definitely not SLI, nothing special.  I can drop the second one in or remove it at any time and not change anything.  And on my GPU page you can see what driver I used ,  Just now for you I dropped in the second GPU and they are running great on 385.69.

[SK321]

Great, thanks!