Unsupported GPU for CS5

Report · May 05, 2010

With all the interest of the "unsupported" GPUs, I thought it was time to start a specific thread.

Please post your questions and experiences.

Hacking is not advised and the unsupported cards are not ready for production use.

You've been warned!

Report · Jun 16, 2010

I have started a thread about this issue myself because I just don't get. If you folks are using the MPE hack and it seems stable on your systems I don't see why Adobe would not release a patch/driver for the Mercury Playback Engine to work will all Nvidia cards that support the CUDA technology. As some folks have said if it causes problems the user could always switch back to the software only mode. I admit my GT 240 might only play 3 layers of native AVCHD as opposed to 10 layers but some performance boost is better than none at all.

Can't Adobe offer a beta patch/driver for the MBE with a dissclaimer to use at your own risk?

Report · Jun 16, 2010

It's because that it's not perfect, and does have its glitches...non-gpu transitions glitch on my system, and some gpu transitions are slightly broke (such as dip to black/white, can't alter them to go from 50 to 100 or 100 to 50, it's zero to full, no exceptions).

Put it in there, and people expect it to be supported. Then again, leave it unsupported, have it relatively easy to unlock, etc. and it benefits more users without the pain and suffering of having to support it.

Win-win in my book.

Report · Jun 16, 2010

Just so I understand your gripe...

You are pissed that there is no "official" "unofficial" support?

The hack is unofficial support. Adobe didn't even try to hide the feature.

Also, any serious professional would get a Quadro or at least a GTX 285. No Pro user would use the hack when their livelyhood depends on it.

Bottom line: The hack works (sort of) ...be happy.

Report · Jun 16, 2010

function(){return A.apply(null,[this].concat($A(arguments)))}
cts51911 wrote:
Just so I understand your gripe...
You are pissed that there is no "official" "unofficial" support?
The hack is unofficial support. Adobe didn't even try to hide the feature.
Also, any serious professional would get a Quadro or at least a GTX 285. No Pro user would use the hack when their livelyhood depends on it.
Bottom line: The hack works (sort of) ...be happy.

I know the hack is not supported hence forth the term hack. Rather than hack it Adobe could release a beta patch so all Nvidia enabled CUDA cards would work to some extent. If it is unstable the user could opt for CPU only. Obviously you folks are using unsupported cards to some extent but why hack it? A beta patch with a dissclaimer to use at your own risk would be an easier solution than hacking it. The professioanls could still use a Quadro series card. The beta patch/driver would not require Quadro Card users to use the patch with a 9800 GT or GTX 265. That would be retarted. The patch would allow more users to experiment with the GPU acceleration but some may opt to use CPU acceleration instead depending on their system specs. The beta patch/driver would just allow everyone to do what they are doing now without the need to hack it. Perhaps after 3-4 months a stable patch approved by Adobe for all Nvidia CUDA enabled cards would be released. Keep in mind you folks are hacking where as Adobe could write specif code/drivers making them perform much better.

Report · Jun 16, 2010

Back on topic, anyone tried this on a multi-gpu setup?

Just curious, if it works, I can't wait for Galaxy to come out with their 4xx series single-board solution.

Saw it from computex, looks awesome.

Report · Jun 17, 2010

medeamajic wrote:
function(){return A.apply(null,[this].concat($A(arguments)))}

function(){return A.apply(null,[this].concat($A(arguments)))}
cts51911 wrote:
Just so I understand your gripe...
You are pissed that there is no "official" "unofficial" support?
The hack is unofficial support. Adobe didn't even try to hide the feature.
Also, any serious professional would get a Quadro or at least a GTX 285. No Pro user would use the hack when their livelyhood depends on it.
Bottom line: The hack works (sort of) ...be happy.
I know the hack is not supported hence forth the term hack. Rather than hack it Adobe could release a beta patch so all Nvidia enabled CUDA cards would work to some extent. If it is unstable the user could opt for CPU only. Obviously you folks are using unsupported cards to some extent but why hack it? A beta patch with a dissclaimer to use at your own risk would be an easier solution than hacking it. The professioanls could still use a Quadro series card. The beta patch/driver would not require Quadro Card users to use the patch with a 9800 GT or GTX 265. That would be retarted. The patch would allow more users to experiment with the GPU acceleration but some may opt to use CPU acceleration instead depending on their system specs. The beta patch/driver would just allow everyone to do what they are doing now without the need to hack it. Perhaps after 3-4 months a stable patch approved by Adobe for all Nvidia CUDA enabled cards would be released. Keep in mind you folks are hacking where as Adobe could write specif code/drivers making them perform much better.

how much easier does it get than typing the name of your card into a text file?

and the 'hack' doesn't even hack the program at all, if they were to patch anything it would gpusniffer and all that does is write some flag to tell the main program whether the card supports cuda, has enough memory and has a name listed in the text file.

Report · Jun 25, 2010

I read through the unofficial official unsupport discussion on the last page here, and I think it answered my question. However, for clarificaiton, is this a door Adobe is ever going to close? I'm about to order a 470, and I'm cheating my budget as it is at that point. I am not a professional, just an enthusiast, and I'd hate to have a patch slam the door on my $350 card somewhere down the road.

Thanks!

Report · Jun 25, 2010

This is the card: EVGA 012-P3-1472-AR

Report · Jun 25, 2010

bmarty wrote:
I read through the unofficial official unsupport discussion on the last page here, and I think it answered my question. However, for clarificaiton, is this a door Adobe is ever going to close? I'm about to order a 470, and I'm cheating my budget as it is at that point. I am not a professional, just an enthusiast, and I'd hate to have a patch slam the door on my $350 card somewhere down the road.
Thanks!

No, you're safe. We have no intention of disabling the hack.

Cheers

Report · Jun 27, 2010

I bought CS5 and a GTX 470 (w/ 1280MB RAM) and installed them a few days ago. These, plus a new 750W PS went into a Q6600 CPU/8GB DDR2 RAM PC I built about three years ago. After the software install, I was able to get the GPU hack up and running in just a few minutes.

As I'm working on projects, I've spent a few days making some observations and running some tests. Currently, I shoot Canon 7D footage, and up until now, have been transcoding them into Cineform files. I also have some legacy footage from my old Canon XH-A1 HDV cam that I still edit from time to time.

Via GPU-Z, I can get a sense of GPU load and have made the following observations:

playback with GPU acceleration is noticeably smoother than software-only and loads the GPU up to about 12% max
CPU load is still quite high on any GPU playback, often pegging all four CPUs to near 100%
GPU acceleration isn't always flawless on my system, and often drops frames
playback in full-rez GPU seems accelerated and anything less (1/2 rez, etc.) does not (no GPU load)
sequences with AE Dynamic Link comps (I use for animated lower-thirds and motion graphics) will bog down GPU acceleration in PPro
the Gausian Blur GPU effect garbles the screen on playback (haven't rendered to see if its on output files)
though I haven't timed any renders, GPU ones seem to be noticeably faster than non-ones.

All in all, I don't believe I'm seeing some of the fantastic results others here have, so I need to keep changing variables and run more tests. Admittedly, my CPU and RAM are pretty dated but will have to suffice for awhile. My new GPU is barely breaking a sweat in the equation, and is likely way over-kill for what I'm asking it to do. But at least I can hopefully stair-step my way to a nice editing system, once I have $ for a better CPU/mobo/RAM combo.

Report · Jun 28, 2010

Welcome to the forum.

As you've guessed, your CPU is the bottleneck. The 7D footage is taxing it. In theory, the HDV legacy footage should work much better and you should see "Wow!" performance using that footage. Is that the case?

If not, then some system fine tuning, including checking out your hard disks, will be required.

-Jeff

Report · Jun 28, 2010

During testing for PPBM CS5, Bill and I have seen that the most telling performance gain from MPE occurs when the CPU is maxed out. If the CPU is running rather slowly, MPE can't deliver its full potential.

For instance, with an i7-980X running at 2.4 GHz, render times are around 14 seconds, increasing clock speed to 3.4 or beyond, render times decrease to 6 seconds.

The message:

If the CPU is too slow to deliver data to CUDA/MPE, you don't profit from the potential CUDA offers.
Only when the CPU is maxed, do you get the full CUDA benefit, and clock speed is no longer relevant.

Report · Jun 28, 2010

Very good, Jeff and Harm. Thanks for the info. And thanks for your awesome contributions to this forum (and others).

My HDD situation if far from ideal, too:

C: is a 150GB, 10k rpm WD Raptor, OS and programs

D: is a 1GB WD Black 7200rpm SATA for everything else

I have a spare 1GB drive for setting up a RAID0 project drive, I just need to do it. All of these deadlines keep my editing system tied up, though.

I also have CS3 and CS4 on my system, and should likely remove those. I was in a situation with CS4 that if I removed CS3 I could brick Media Encoder (or something like that). Once I get through my legacy CS4 projects, I think I'll be comfortable removing the old versions and running CS5 exclusively. Or maybe re-format and reload the OS (Vista-SP1 64-bit) and software.

Thanks again,
Brian Brown

BrownCow Productions

Longmont, CO USA

Report · Jun 28, 2010

I also have the Q6600 w/ 8GB DDR2. My plan is to upgrade as you did, buying the GTX470 and PremCS5, and see how it goes, and then in November upgrade CPU and motherboard.

How do you make out with the timeline and scrubbing. Do you have the yellow line after you add effects and transitions?

Would like to know.

Report · Jun 28, 2010

Bartemeus, my timeline stays yellow for all supported effects. Just as Jeff predicted, HDV footage is just "like buttah". Very smooth with acceleration turned on. And the GPU load gets up there close to 60%. Cineform 1080p files and Canon DSLR footage does not do nearly as well... stutters oftentimes and cannot leverage as much of the GPU, due to their decode demands on my aging CPUs.

Encodes of DV and HDV just fly through, too. I encoded a 16 minute multicam HDV sequence to DVD spec in less than 7 minutes.

The 64-bit software in the Suite makes everything just snappier. I use a ton of After Effects Dynamic Links in my productions, and they're a lot less "boggy", too. However, the biggest carrot for me is grabbing CF cards from my 7D, moving them to the HDD and cutting on them immediately. Same-day production helps me pay the bills (and not waste a lot of time in the edit suite), and CS5 just makes it a reality.

Ultimately, I'm amazed that some software and a decent new GPU breathed new life into a 3 year-old workstation. Amazing, Adobe.

HTH,
Brian Brown

BrownCow Productions

Longmont, CO USA

Report · Jun 28, 2010

Well, that cinches it. I'm ordering the GTX470 now.

Thanks for the fast reply.

I also use cineform....do you get a yellow timeline with cineform intermediate files, say 1920x1080 60i settimg?

Report · Jun 28, 2010

Yes, it's all yellow line with Cineform and supported effects. They (like Canon DSLR files) seem to tax my CPU and drop frames a lot more than HDV. They're 1920x1080x24fps "high" encoded.

I haven't yet created a CS5 project from scratch, so this may be also impacting performance when opening CS4-created files.

Report · Jun 29, 2010

I'm wondering what the 465 would do compared to the 470. The EVGA

superclocked version has a few cores fewer compared to the 470, but it's

around a hundred bucks cheaper.

Report · Jun 29, 2010

From a pure gaming graphics standpoint, the 465 seems like it's a hamstrung card, where Nvidia disabled a bunch of stuff to save some $ for the end user. I have no idea how it may impact future GPU performance related to Adobe's implementation of MPE, though. This might be a matter of "pay me now or pay me later".

Here's a review (more from a gaming standpoint, NOT Adobe's MPE): http://www.anandtech.com/show/3745/nvidias-geforce-gtx-465

HTH...

Report · Jun 29, 2010

The GTX 465 is really a GTX 470 with some hardware disabled. The ASUS-branded 465s come with an unlocker program that re-enables all the GTX 465 features to a 470:

http://downloads.guru3d.com/ASUS-GTX-465-to-470-unlocker-download-2561.html

This is really one of the more bizarre marketing ploys ever.

Report · Jun 28, 2010

Look below for a part of the new PPBM CS5 time line for H.264 testing:

Report · Jun 28, 2010

Wow, Harm. I'm pretty sure that that timeline would bring my Q6600 to its knees.

Looks like an awesome testbed for systems, though. Can't wait to see folks' results...

Report · Jun 16, 2010

medeamajic wrote:
I have started a thread about this issue myself because I just don't get. If you folks are using the MPE hack and it seems stable on your systems I don't see why Adobe would not release a patch/driver for the Mercury Playback Engine to work will all Nvidia cards that support the CUDA technology. As some folks have said if it causes problems the user could always switch back to the software only mode. I admit my GT 240 might only play 3 layers of native AVCHD as opposed to 10 layers but some performance boost is better than none at all.
Can't Adobe offer a beta patch/driver for the MBE with a dissclaimer to use at your own risk?

I think this is exactly that. They couldn't have made it any easier! I mean seriously all you need to do is open a text file a

nd type the name of your graphics card! There is your patch and use without bothering us about it.

Easiest hack ever. Hardly even qualifies as a hack.

Report · Jun 17, 2010

So I'm thinking of pick up a 1GB 9800GT or GTS250, do you think the $28 difference will be justified? or I will not see much of a difference?

This will be in a old school AMD X2 5000+@3.2Ghz, so I believe anything more than a GTS250 is a waste. Any experience?

I really hope they can enable this on the ATi cards, I have a 8800GTX, 8800GTS, 8600GT and a 5870 laying here not supported and now I have to buy a 9800GT/GTS250 for thie feature and there's no way i'm going to live with the 9800GT in my i7 rig.

Report · Jun 17, 2010

This sounds like asking Alberto Contador to race on your granny's 45 year old, rusted and decrepit bicycle.

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Unsupported GPU for CS5