Which GPU for CS5.5?

[excited_Genie16B8]

Here's some interesting information.

"I asked Adobe to confirm my findings and the following statement: "When using an approved NVIDIA card, CS5.5 performs better using cards with more CUDA cores." A few days later I received a short but to-the-point email confirming that my statement is accurate."

Seems CS5.5 takes better advantage of the CUDA cores in a card, and additional cores now means some significant improvements.

http://www.eventdv.net/Articles/News/Feature/Review-Adobe-CS5.5-Production-Premium-74852.htm

[RjL190365]

Jim,

If you take a look at the official Adobe system requirements for Premiere Pro CS5.5, you will find that the officially supported GPU list has been expanded to now include all of the Fermi-based Quadros (both desktop/workstation and mobile) from the Quadro 2000 to the Quadro 6000, plus two new high-end GeForces (GTX 570 and GTX 580). Surprisingly, two older mobile pre-Fermi Quadros have also been added to the officially supported list. These are the GPUs that now no longer require the "cuda_supported_cards.txt" hack when CS5.5 is installed.

As a result, the default "cuda_supported_cards.txt" file in the Windows version of CS5.5 should now look like this:

GeForce GTX 285

GeForce GTX 470

GeForce GTX 570

GeForce GTX 580

Quadro CX

Quadro FX 3700M

Quadro FX 3800

Quadro FX 3800M

Quadro FX 4800

Quadro FX 5800

Quadro 2000

Quadro 2000D

Quadro 2000M

Quadro 3000M

Quadro 4000

Quadro 4000M

Quadro 5000

Quadro 5000M

Quadro 5010M

Quadro 6000

All other GeForce and Quadro GPUs will require the hack.

The GeForce GTX 570 or 580 would become the best choice for prosumers working with relatively simple AVCHD-based projects with relatively few layers, while the high-end Quadro 5000 or 6000 would be best for semi-professional editors working with many video layers.

[Bill Gehrke]

RjL190365 wrote:

The GeForce GTX 570 or 580 would become the best choice for prosumers working with relatively simple AVCHD-based projects with relatively few layers, while the high-end Quadro 5000 or 6000 would be best for semi-professional editors working with many video layers.

Randall

Is this your theory or do you have any rumors or facts to substantiate it?  For instance my GTX 580 has more cores than any Quadro that I have looked at (yes it does have less video memory and that could be a factor, then there is a 3 GB version).

[RjL190365]

Bill,

It may have something to do with the driver optimization. I was merely providing rough guidelines in my previous post.

And there has not yet been any results from CS5.5 yet because it has not yet been officially released. However, if I remember correctly that when the original CS5 first came out the GeForces were artificially limited to four layers maximum. The available drivers for GeForces are also limited to 8-bit color versus 10-bit color in the Quadros.

[ECBowen]

The Driver optimization is strictly based around plugins for animation/3D programs such as 3DS Max or Maya. They have nothing to do with CUDA acceleration such as the MPE acceleration. Matter of fact most who have CUDA based programs get the Geforce cards for that since they are faster and cheaper than the Quadro cards. Also Nvidia writes the drivers for both Quadro and Geforce cards. So the argument that the drivers for Quadro cards are more stable is really funny.

Eric

ADK

[ECBowen]

BTW the current Geforce drivers are not limited to 8 bit color. HDMI 1.3 and the HDMI 1.4 standard which the 400 or 500 cards support give Deep Color which is 10 bit color or greater support. The problem is Adobe has not updated their player to include the HDMI 1.3 or 1.4 standards. They just updated their player for the Displayport 10 bit color. Has nothing to do with the Geforce or Quadro drivers.

Eric

ADK

[RjL190365]

Thanks for the clarification, Eric.

[C_BRAUN]

So Eric if I got a normal Geforce say 570-580 and went out thru the displayport and had a 10 bit monitor I could monitor in 10 bit?

-Carl

[ECBowen]

Right now Adobe only draws out 10bit color in Open GL and the Geforce cards don't pass the query. You still require a Quadro card for this.

Eric

ADK

[Terry_Green]

Testing the GeForce GTX 550 Ti 1024MB in Adobe Premiere Pro CS5, CS5.0.3, CS5.5:

http://translate.google.ru/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.efxi.ru%2Fmore%2Fpremiere_cuda2.html&sl=ru&tl=en&hl=&ie=UTF-8

[excited_Genie16B8]

And there has not yet been any results from CS5.5 yet because it has not yet been officially released.

Actually, there have been results.

"As far as I can tell, the major differences between the two cards that I tested are that the FX4800 has 192 CUDA cores and draws only 150 watts, while the GTX285 has 240 cores and draws 249 watts. The cost is also a major difference but the performance-to-price ratio is the opposite of what you would expect. The GTX285 was listed at only $399 in 2009, although it was already discontinued when CS5 launched. I bought mine used for $200, while the FX4800 was listed at $1,500 in 2010. I asked Adobe to confirm my findings and the following statement: "When using an approved NVIDIA card, CS5.5 performs better using cards with more CUDA cores." A few days later I received a short but to-the-point email confirming that my statement is accurate."

http://www.eventdv.net/Articles/News/Feature/Review-Adobe-CS5.5-Production-Premium-74852.htm

[Bill Gehrke]

Jim,

I guess it is time to reveal my testing of CUDA cards even though it will probably be obsolete information in May some time when the new CS 5.5 is released.

In my editing system I tested the following graphics cards with Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 version 5.0.3. And yes I do have all those carrds.  Remeber all the timings are +/- 1 second because of the 1 second Windows 7 clock resolution.  All were of course tested with PPBM5.  Of note see the 84 second Rendering Timeline score with the ATI board.  Well all the tests with software MPE were also 84 seconds.

[RjL190365]

Bill,

Thanks for the CS5 5.0.3 results with various GPUs. That 9500 GT is really hobbled by its slow, low-bandwidth DDR3 graphics memory: The MPEG-2 DVD encoding performance with the 9500 GT is nearly three times slower than with even an ATi/AMD GPU. What's more, the H.264 Blu-ray encoding performance is more than two times slower with the 9500 GT than with an ATi GPU.

By extension, the really sluggish performance also applies to the GT 220 and to a lesser extent the GT 430 and the DDR3 versions of the GT 240 and GT 440.

And I was surprised with the results from the GTX 550 Ti: Despite fewer CUDA cores and 192-bit memory bit width (specifically, the GTX 550 Ti has one 512MB chip and two 256MB memory chips, for a total of 1GB on a 192-bit bus), it actually outpaced the older GTX 260 Core 216 despite the latter's 448-bit memory bit width because the GTX 550 Ti uses DDR5 memory versus the lower-bandwidth DDR3 memory on the GTX 260.

So while the GTX 550 Ti is a better BFTB than the GTX 260 and most of the higher-end GeForces, your testing also shows that equipping such a high-end editing system with a really cheap GeForce such as a GT 220 would have thrown that entire system off balance. (Or put it this way, equipping an expensive editing rig with such a cheapo graphics card is like putting more and more mucus inside someone's chest.)

[Bill Gehrke]

Do not forget that the 9500 GT has a PCIe 1.0 bus.  I am not sure exactly when they upgaded to the PCIe 2.0 bus.

[JEShort01]

Bill,

Do you really have a 580 that will clock (GPU) to 1.2GHz?

And if that is not a typo, which one are you using?

Thanks,

Jim

[Bill Gehrke]

Jim

My GTX 580 is an EVGA that is factory Superclocked.  Here are the screen grabs on top the factory settings and bottom the slider bars pushed to the top settings with EVGA Precision overclocking tool.  Remeber that it made no difference to the PPBM5 results.  It would be interesting.if some one could find a difference that could give us a clue for an improved benchmark.  I will rerun the test when I have CS 5.5

[JEShort01]

Bill,

Wow, that's a high clock; I'm surprised and impressed! It seems both EVGA and the new GPU design used in the GTX 580 are really doing well in your system.

My MSI GTX 480 Hydrogen is a reference design (not a special design like MSI's Hawk, Talon, Lightning series etc.), but even with a full water jacket I doubt it could make it over 900! I run it at 850 with stock voltages, and as you say CS5 really doesn't need much GPU, and I'm not a gamer, so I don't have a need to get more out of it.

Regarding CS5.5, it will be interesting to see how the GPU is utilized. The only article I've see where someone commented on CS5.5 with MPE, the results were significant, but also confusing. I'm talking about this article, which you've probably seen already:

http://www.eventdv.net/Articles/News/Feature/Review-Adobe-CS5.5-Production-Premium-74852.htm

Thanks,

Jim

[excited_Genie16B8]

I'm curious.  What did you find confusing?

[JEShort01]

Jim,

When I read NewEgg reviews of GTX 580 cards, the users generally talk about overclocking their cards and it is never over 1GHz.

That's all.

Regards,

Jim Short

(another Jim S!)

[Bill Gehrke]

Jim and Jim

During PPBM5 there never is a long stretch of GPU usage and never have seen anything (yet) approaching 100% loading.  Here is another EVGA Precision screen shot.  The top view is the H'264 encoding run and the bottom shows the last of the H.264 run and the shorter (20-24 seconds) most current segment is the MPEG2-DVD run In this case I manually observed the maximum GPU usage for the H.264 it was 51% and for the MPEG2-DVD it was 67%.

[Baker Park]

So for those of us getting up to speed what does this add to the plus and minus list for for the following choises of Graphic Cards for a Premiere CS5.5 system with some use of AF and PS?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814133360&cm_re=gtx-_-14-133-360-_-Product GTX 580

or

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?item=N82E16814133271  FX 3800

[RjL190365]

Baker,

The GTX 580 in the above link is much newer than the FX 3800. The FX 3800 dates from the time of the old GTX 260; in fact, the FX 3800 is basically a non-Core-216 GTX 260, with its 192 CUDA cores. The GTX 580, on the other hand, is the current top-of-the-line single-GPU GeForce. Thus, all else being equal, the GTX 580 should perform better. Neither card requires the txt "hack" if you got CS5.5.

[excited_Genie16B8]

If we look at the 260 and up, we do see some difference between cards seemingly based primarily on the number of CUDA cores.  But the difference is fairly small.

The reviewer was seeing major differences using CS5.5.  Of course, he wasn't using PPBM5, so it's hard to do a direct comparison between his results and Bill's.  But at the very least, the reviewer's results are tantalizing.

[the_wine_snob]

Bill,

I worry that one day they will find you body, crushed beneath a mountain of video cards, that fell off an overhead shelf.

Thanks for the chart.

Hunt

[Burk Wagner]

Will the current PPBM5 be usable with CS5.5, so that we can use a comparison of run results to answer some of these questions?