Premiere Pro 2018 doesn't use AMD GPU when rendering

[Recep Baltaş]

Hi there! I think this is a common issue. But I couldn't find any solutions, nor what I tried was helpful. So I'm opening a new topic about it.

I have Intel i5 760 and Radeon R9 Fury on my computer. Before, I used Premiere Pro with NVIDIA GTX 1050 and 1060. It was fine. When I was rendering, I was seeing the GPU has been using by Windows. But with AMD cards, this is not possible I guess. The program and the computer sees my graphics card. There's no problem with that. I set rendering software with "Mercury GPU Acceleration (OpenCL)" There's no problem with that. But, when I render my video, it only uses CPU! My CPU cooling system isn't so great and I have rendered a video when my CPU was 99 degrees!

So, long story short, is there any way to make Premiere Pro use my graphics card? Or do I have to buy an NVIDIA card?

- I have tried adding my GPU's name to the txt file in Adobe folder.

- Program says it uses OpenCL

- I rendered it both with Premiere Pro and Media Encoder. Same result.

- Drivers are up to date.

[R Neil Haugen]

We need a definition of "only uses CPU" ... are you meaning that when you have GPU accelerated effects on a sequence (which is almost all a GPU is used for in exporting) that it isn't using the GPU while you're watching a logging activity monitor, or ... are you seeing the "software only" comment appear in the Export dialog's Summary section?

If the latter, that has NOTHING to do with your GPU being used or not. That line only refers to whether your CPU has the new Intel QuikSync feature in it, and so can do specialized hardware encoding.

That is completely separate from using the GPU for things within PrPro.

Neil

[Recep Baltaş]

The problem is, whether I'm editing or exporting my video, only CPU is used. I watch the usage from Task Manager. When I work with NVIDIA GPUs, I can see in the Task Manager that GPU is being used too. In this case, when I export my work, Task Manager says that CPU is being used %100 percent but GPU is just at %1.

[R Neil Haugen]

Just for clarity ... GPUs in PrPro are used for those things on the GPU accelerated effects list ... such things as color (think Lumetri), Warp Stabilizer, a few other things. Oh, major resizing work in export also, I think. I'll include the list link. If your sequence has such on it, for the sections of the sequence with those effects, the GPU is used in render/exporting.

If you are not exporting something with a specific GPU accelerated effect, the GPU is not used for the export.

So if your sequence has things off the following list, for those sections of the export that those things are involved, it should use your GPU. Otherwise, it won't.

Neil

GPU Accelerated Effects: https://helpx.adobe.com/premiere-pro/using/effects.html

[Jim_Simon]

If you have GPU acceleration turned on, then PP is using it where it can.

[Recep Baltaş]

Yes, that's turned on. But all of the workload is on CPU.    

[Jim_Simon]

all of the workload is on CPU.   

Then you have nothing in that project that requires the GPU.

[Kevin-Monahan]

Recep Baltaş,

Do you have an integrated graphics card in addition to the AMD card? Let us know.

Thanks,

Kevin

[RjL190365 · Accepted solution]

I can see why you've been getting little to no GPU usage and near 100% CPU usage even with GPU acceleration enabled:

1) Adobe's implementation of the OpenCL renderer lacks a couple of the rendering features (I don't know which ones) that its CUDA counterpart supports.

2) Your i5-760 CPU is too old and a bit too weak for even a current-generation mid-range GPU, let alone an AMD R9 Fury. In fact, had you had the GTX 1060 in that system, you would have found that the CPU utilization still gets pegged to nearly 100% while the GPU utilization languishes around the 20% to 30%-ish range even with workflows that involve a lot of heavy GPU-accelerated effects. If that's a little lopsided, your current CPU/GPU combo is even more so.

[Recep Baltaş]

Yes, the first one, the 9 years old-buddy i5 760. I know that's an old CPU but I thought amount of RAM and what GPU I have is more important when it comes to rendering or even gaming. Yes, my CPU bottlenecks my GPU little bit in game, but I can play games fluently. Thank you for your help. It means I don't have any options left but to upgrade my system.

[RjL190365]

By the way, did you mean the i5-760 or the i5-7600? The former is now almost nine years old and doesn't support a lot of the newer technologies that we take for granted today. The latter, on the other hand, is much newer, dating back just over one year.