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milkmade
Known Participant
June 24, 2016
Question

RX 480 Polaris or GTX 1070/1080 Pascal for Premiere Pro CC

  • June 24, 2016
  • 8 replies
  • 32571 views

I was hoping that the powers that be could eventually benchmark the RX 480 vs the GTX 1070/1080 in Premiere CC.

Linus TechTips made a video that basically showed at a certain point it didn't matter if you had an AMD or Nvidia card, contrary to popular belief, as long as you had a mid-range videocard with >2GB VRAM you'd be fine. Performance increases above that were negligible. I'm curious if this changes at all with new GPU architectures, as I'd much rather buy an 8GB Polaris for $229 than a $400 1070 like I was planning.


Hopefully someone can make this happen.

    This topic has been closed for replies.

    8 replies

    D
    dannonnicks
    Participant
    September 28, 2016

    See above

    D
    dannonnicks
    Participant
    September 14, 2016

    A little late to the party but maybe someone in the future will find this helpful or semi interesting. I had the same question as the OP and couldn't find anything definitive elsewhere and was finally able to do some tests myself. These are not really scientific, but are real world for what I do (wedding and corporate video) and they answered my questions while creating some new ones.

    CPU:

    HP Z820 Windows 10 pro

    Dual Xeon E5-2665 8-core @ 2.4Ghz/3.1 boost

    64Gb RAM running @1600 Mhz

    Samsung 850 256Gb for OS measured at 500+ Mbs read/write

    Samsung 850 1Tb for Media Cache measured at 500+ Mbs read/write

    4Tb Raid 0 for project files measured at 550+ M

    The test: Rendering a 10min time line created in the latest Premiere CC (2015.3 I think) and sent to Media Encoder. Time line is about a 50/50 mix of 4k and 1080p form a Sony A7s II, timeline is 1080p with lumetri and Filmconvert on every clip (both GPU accelerated. the first 10 seconds is a dynamic link to an AE project that is very CPU dependent. The render is to a highly compressed 720p H.274 clip for web delivery. GPU is monitored by GPU-Z.

    Card                     Time to Render              Max GPU Load              Max Memory Used

    GTX 970  FE         6:43                                87%                               1505Mb

    GTX 1070  FE       6:32                                82%                               1941Mb

    RX 480 (x1)           6:41                                100%                             6124Mb

    RX 480 (x2)           5:00                                100%/100%                  5207Mb/4621Mb

    Durring all renders, CPU maxed out between 50-60%, RAM used maxed between 55-65%

    To me it looks like there's a bottleneck somewhere or I didn't enough GPU accelerated effects, but if that was the case, wouldn't the dual RX 480's perform the same as the others? I also find it interesting that more memory was used on the AMD's than Nvidia's.

    This didn't solve the problem for me. I like the render times for the dual 480's but was concerned that they would only scrub a 4k timeline at the same speed as the GTX 970 I'm replacing since only one GPU is used for real time playback. The issue is when I edit I stack multiple camera angles on the timeline and was struggling with playing more than one at a time. The one 480 will play the 3 layers I need, I didn't try more. The GTX 1070 will too.  

    Thinking about dropping Adobe and moving over to resolve/fusion so I did the candle test others have linked to in this thread. I didn't get the same results but this is what I got:

    Blur Nodes:           9                18                 30                66              Max @ 24fps

    GTX 970 FE          21               12                 7+                3+              8

    GTX 1070 FE        24               18                 11+              5+              12

    RX 480 (x1)           24               12+               10                5                9

    RX 480 (x2)           24               13+               11                5+              11

    This is on Resolve 12.5 Lite, the the dual RX 480 is using one for the GUI and one to render, in studio with both rendering I think they would out perform the 1070.

    Either setup will be great for me and the cost is about the same. No question the GTX 1070 is a more powerful single card, will run cooler, and use less energy, But I feel my system is using the RX 480's more effectively unless GPU-Z isn't reporting the stats accurately.

    Not sure what I'll do yet so I'll have the cards for a few more days if anyone has a better way to benchmark them I'm open to it, I also welcome any feedback/advice, I often lurk on the forums but never post.

    As a side note, both drivers have options to push 10-bit color.

      RoninEdits
      RoninEdits
      Inspiring
      September 15, 2016

      thanks for sharing your findings. the rx 480 seems to be holding its own with premiere pro. with the rx 480 memory usage it suggests the 8gb version should be used with premiere. the different memory usage probably has to do with cuda vs opencl and premiere's history of not being fully optimized for amd/opencl. the most impressive part of the premiere times to me is the dual rx 480 showing the biggest change, while the gtx 1070 shows only a minor change. dual gpu might be performing faster as each gpu can work on separate frames and allow for quicker turn around for the cpu's to continue working.

      depending on the project and media, premiere can max out cpu cores as early as 6 cores (12 threads). so having 16 cores (32 threads) may be causing the lower cpu usage between 50-60%. you could try disabling hyper-threading to see if performance increases in premiere. davinci resolve should have a better chance of maxing out the all dual xeon cores/threads.

      several benchmarks show anything around the gtx 1060 and rx 480 to be fine for most projects, until working with red 6k. so you could test 6k r3d with lumetri and a few random gpu fx, to see if the playback performance and export times show bigger differences between the video cards. RED Dragon Test Shot (6K Downloadable file) - YouTube 

      T
      thanmartin
      Participating Frequently
      September 17, 2016

      Roninedits,

      you seem to have a lot of experience. It's a bit off the topic but it regards the gtx 1060.

      Before (using Premiere Pro CS6)

      CPU I7 5820K at 4 GHz, RAM 16GB and GTX 760. (SSDs plus 2 raid 0 HDD)

      Mostly doing DV, but also multiple camera Full HD. No problems.

      DV to mpeg2 DVD CPU maxed out.

      DV to H.264 or HD to H.264 CPU between 40 to 70 %

      Just recently 4K that's when things start to slow down, but still 2 4K videos on timeline (each one hour) Second video is masked out with garbage mate 8 or 16 point and fastblur to overlay parts of the second video into the main video. Still can scrub or play at fast speed (2x) CPU after a few minutes or so maxed out. When I encoded it to H.264 I noticed the following:

      CPU maxed out, RAM maxed out and GPU maxed out. (Have All CPU meter and GPU monitor to observe)

      Then I decided to upgrade RAM to 32 GB and GTX 760 replaced with Asus GTX 1060 6 GB turbo.

      Do a similar project, but this time I have to move the 16 point garbage mate overtime. Just to adjust it over time the system gets quite unresponsive. CPU constantly maxed out RAM about 70%. In the beginning of the timeline it was easy to adjust, towards the end after 40 min it was very difficult. Normally you can use the mouse to position the 16 points of the mask, but this time, I had to key in the values, so that I could see the moves.

      I am writing this, for you mentioned in your above post, that the gtx 1060 should be fine for most projects.

      It encodes then fine 1 hour timeline takes approximately 2 and a half hour (Now after the upgrade the CPU lies around 40 to 50 %, GPu around 30% RAM 70 to 80%)

      So the question is, Do you have an idea where there could be the bottleneck? It doesn't seem to me to much of a burden.

      thanks for your time and ideas

      Rafael Perez 3D
      Rafael Perez 3D
      Participant
      August 30, 2016

      Not the same software, but some guys here are comparing the Blackmagic Resolve (candle benchmark test). Their conclusion was that the Polaris it the right choice, at least for Resolve.

      Considering Premiere Mercury engine likely uses the same kind of features of the GPU than Resolve, probably Polaris will be a good choice for Premiere too!

      AMD RX480 speed test: Faster than Titan X!

      Blackmagic Forum • View topic - AMD RX480 speed test: Faster than Titan X!

      Rafael Perez 3D
      Rafael Perez 3D
      Participant
      August 30, 2016

      The Puget benchmark is very informative, but I didn't reached their same conclusions. They usually get impressed by 8 to 13% speed improvements. I don't think these kind of gains are noticeable, even when rendering long movies.

      So don't forget they sell systems, and draw your own conclusions before getting any new GPU or even CPU for your workstation.

      Relly_Rale
      Relly_Rale
      Participant
      July 1, 2016

      Check this article out

      https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/GTX-1070-and-GTX-1080-Premiere-Pro-Performance-810/

      RoninEdits
      RoninEdits
      Inspiring
      July 1, 2016

      anyone looking at the rx 480 might want to google "AMD RX 480 pcie slot power"

      there are some reports from review sites that its drawing too much power from the pcie slot on the motherboard and several reports from users with fried pcie slots and dead motherboards. it seems to early to know how big of a problem this will be for the reference card, but hopefully won't be a problem for partner custom cards with 8 pin power connectors.

      in other news, the gtx 1060 is to be released soon and supposedly targeting the rx 480. looking at the cuda cores i suspect it will perform somewhere close to the middle between the gtx 970 and 980. the rx 480 seems to be matching the gtx 970 and r9 390 in game benchmarks.

      RoninEdits
      RoninEdits
      Inspiring
      June 24, 2016

      hopefully someone will do full benchmarks of the rx480 vs nvidia cards. most of the benchmarks i have seen are limited to just a few scenarios that usually don't give the full picture. some older benchmarks showed amd cards performing about 50% worse than nvidia cards, but some newer benchmarks are only around 20% slower. the rx 480 might be closer to the gtx 980 in games, but it might be somewhat slower than the gtx 970 in adobe apps if that handicap still holds true. its price tag of $200 is pretty good, but nvidia may price the gtx 900 series cards to compete. also, while the list of cuda only software is shrinking, its still something to be aware of for anyone considering amd cards.

      you are also comparing the gtx 1070 against a slower rx 480, when the gtx 1060 comes out it may be closer to the rx 480. you need to figure out how much performance you need or want vs your budget.

      M
      milkmadeAuthor
      Known Participant
      June 25, 2016

      Many articles show, including a Linus TechTips Video, that there is almost no performance difference from a r9 290, 970, 980, 980 ti, fury, r9 380 fury x etc. Anything from mid range up is pretty much the same, but like you said many benchmarks don't really show the whole picture, like Linus's is exports only.

      The performance difference I'm seeing from last gen are within 1% of each other and I don't see it changing that much this generation. I hope to be proven wrong, but right now it seems a $229 RX 480 could be the better buy for video editing.

      AMD vs Nvidia for Video Rendering - Adobe Premiere and Media Encoder - YouTube

      M
      milkmadeAuthor
      Known Participant
      June 25, 2016

      any test showing little to no difference between gpu's is bottle-necking on the cpu or other hardware.

      the chroma keyed cineform export showed some difference in the hardware. it shows the r9 390x performing in the middle between a gtx 970 and 960. the r9 390x in games performs closer to the gtx 980, so that suggests an amd handicap, at least in that scenario. the rx 480 had an early game benchmark released, showing it just slightly below the r9 390x.


      If you watched the video I linked you would know the test bench setup is hardly bottlenecked in any fashion.

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