GPU Acceleration hinders performance

NicolSD wrote on 1/26/2012, 9:39 PM

I don't know about EXTREMELY powerful GPU but you certainly need something faster than a 210. It sounds to me like your CPU is more powerful than your video card. You'll need something better than a 210 if you want to benefit from GPU acceleration.

Streamworks Audio wrote on 1/26/2012, 11:12 PM

Yeah I agree... I wonder how much power one would need then to make a difference.

ushere wrote on 1/26/2012, 11:55 PM

be nice if there was some sort of sliding scale that compared cpu to gpu.....

Dach wrote on 1/27/2012, 7:27 AM

Perhaps... forum members who have absolute confidence that they are getting better performance with the GPU can post what they are using (GPU and CPU). This would be helpful, I now I am looking to upgrade, but am on a limited budget.

Thanks,
Chad

megabit wrote on 1/27/2012, 8:00 AM

Both my editing machines show definite advantages of using GPU acceleration, in both preview and rendering (see my details).

Even though the Quadro 4000M is definitely slower than the GeForce 580, I guess their computing power remains roughly the same in relation to the CPUs they are working with (the mobile i7 Extreme and the 2600K, respectively)...

Piotr

paul_w wrote on 1/27/2012, 10:35 AM

Agreed, you do need something more powerful than a 210. You will get negative results using a GPU card with less processing power than your CPU. The idea is to go the other way, either match the CPU power or surpass it. As an exmaple, try the Nvidia 560, 570 and 580 range (590?).. Thats the kind of performance level you need to feel the benefit of GPU acceleration.

Paul.

OldSmoke wrote on 1/27/2012, 10:46 AM

I am using an ASUS GTX460 TOP which is factory over clocked and I further over clocked it to 900MHz with MSI Afterburner. I am getting the same rendering times as you can find on SCS GPU acceleration test page compared with the GTX 570. A 210 is certainly too slow to take advantage of V11 GPU acceleration. I downloaded their test project and spent many weeks testing the new build I have, including SLI but that is a whole different story. Would be nice to get some rendering times from other users with the test project provided by Sony.

Streamworks Audio wrote on 1/27/2012, 1:11 PM

Well my card is running at 590Mhz... which I guess is not powerful enough. Looking at the local online store, I see most Cuda cards in the 5xx range have GPU speeds of around 800Mhz... I wonder if that is enough power.

paul_w wrote on 1/27/2012, 1:14 PM

Its not just the clock speed. Look at how many Cores the card has and also its on board memory amount and speed. The 5xx range are fine. Sony SCS used the GTX570 as part of their benchmarking tests.

Paul.

Streamworks Audio wrote on 1/27/2012, 2:22 PM

I am looking at a GeForce GTX 550 Ti Fpb 951MHZ 1024MB - 951 MHz GPU
192 CUDA Cores. Does this sound decent in terms of power. I have never really looked into off loading processing onto the GPU before... so not 100% sure what to look for.

At this card's price point... it would be a inexpensive upgrade for my system. Other option would be to upgrade the entire CPU/Mobo/RAM (as I current have an older 775 CPU socket). And if I do end up upgrading these parts down the road... I am thinking this card will still be beefy enough to help things.

OldSmoke wrote on 1/27/2012, 3:29 PM

My GTX460TOP has 336 CUDA Cores and a Memory Interface of 256bit... you can find one of those on eBay but I doubt that the 550Ti will be any faster then a GTX460TOP. There is a GTX560 with 448 Cores and 320bit Memory Interface at around 300$ but for another 50$ you can get a GTX570 already with 480 Cores and higher clock as well. In any case, you need a good PSU...650W or better.

Red_Razor23 wrote on 1/27/2012, 4:21 PM

OK, I'm going to mess things up. I JUST purchased an EGVA GTX570 HD with 2.5GB of RAM on the card. System has Dual Xeon 5650 processors (yes thats 24 threads in win7 64 bit) and 54GB of DDR3 RAM. I just reimaged my system to accomodate the new graphics card, so I wiped it all and started again from scratch, with the last version of SVP 11.521. Studdered playback, HORRIBLE playback with my external preview monitor via firewire to a JVC VTR Deck. The GTX 570 is suppose to be highly recommended by the GPU chart. Its why I spent the extra $$ and time waiting on a backordered vid card. I swear I didnt have these issues when using 10, and i'm really close to re-wiping the system, and installing with SVP 10... Screw the GPU-Acceleration, I want reliable rendering!! Adobe Premier Pro 5.5 is looking better all the time Sony... :-/

paul_w wrote on 1/27/2012, 4:42 PM

Hi Red, and let me guess and say, if you turn off GPU acceleration in Vegas the playback is better?
If thats correct then its because your dual Xeons 24 threads are more powerful than the GPU card.
Like said earlier, its about getting the GPU card more powerful or equal to your exisiting CPU power, otherwise its a negative step.
Reading threads, you see a lot of "my 450 card made things worse".. well its because the i7 is faster than the card.. same thing, its all relative to the CPU horse power.
I think the main people who benefit from GPU acceleration (like me) have modist CPU power. Mine is an i7 930. So my 570 card is really helping. A similar spec to the benchmark Sony SCS show in their tests.
Hope that helps. You would need a 'serious' GPU card or dual cards SLI to catch up with your CPU power.

Paul.

Streamworks Audio wrote on 1/27/2012, 5:48 PM

Well that makes sense Paul,

I have a Cuda card (as stated above) that is under powered really. And if I turn Acceleration off then everything works better.

So if I can go get a powerful GPU I would be ok... but then if I was to turn around and upgrade my CPU after that - I run the risk of the CPU being more powerful again... and would have to disable acceleration. So I am not sure where the benefit is then. Only for those that have 'modest' PCs?

I think in my case I will upgrade the CPU and leave the GPU as is.

larry-peter wrote on 1/27/2012, 5:56 PM

paul_w,

Should it be possible to test the CPU/GPU theory in powerful CPU systems by just applying plugin FX to reach the limit of CPU power? At this point should the GPU kick in and achieve better playback?

I don't know if it's been addressed in another thread, but I was assuming that GPU acceleration should pick up where the CPU leaves off. That would be my definition of "acceleration." Is that incorrect? If GPU acceleration is checked is the program sending instructions to the GPU first and using the CPU for overflow? Maybe it's my inability to grasp, but I've searched other threads for an answer to this and I'm not sure it has been answered. But then, I miss things sometimes.

paul_w wrote on 1/27/2012, 6:10 PM

Its rather like a switch, if GPU acceleration is selected then all the accelerated processes, like previewing and fx are going through the card. Its not a auto balancing power system its either one way or the other. This is why when you set GPU acceleration to ON or OFF, you have to restart Vegas. Its switching from one type of compiled code (gpu) to the other (cpu).
A load balancing system would be a lot better. Maybe v12 ! :)
So for now it looks like we have to select manually, test and decide on the best mode.
Red's system there is super fast, i doubt any GPU card will keep up. Someone may want to correct me on that point.
Paul.

paul_w wrote on 1/27/2012, 6:24 PM

Streamworks, your Core 2 Quad 2.66ghz will certainly benefit from something like a 560-570-580 range card. As mentioned, your 210 is way under the power of your CPU power and thats the problem. So at present, GPU off is better.
But upgrading your CPU will help too. Its just there is a tipping point. Depending on how far you upgrade your CPU power (and memory to go with it) your overall CPU horse power will start to exceed your 5xx GPU power. At that point (probably something faster than a standard i7) you may not feel too much benefit from GPU acceleration. Bit of a balancing act. However there are faster cards than the 5xx range, but the cost starts to rocket up.
Paul.

larry-peter wrote on 1/27/2012, 10:07 PM

paul_w,
Thanks for clarifying. Because of the way I thought OpenCL worked, I figured it was just routing computational instructions to GPU. I didn't realize there was a totally different code being used.

ddm wrote on 1/27/2012, 11:15 PM

It would be interesting to get a database of some sort going, guess we'd really need a new speedtest.veg to be more definitive. I did a few tests and the results are impressing the hell of out me, anyway. With GPU on, a render that I ran several times clocked in at 57 seconds, pretty much every time. Turned GPU off, rendered again several times, all other settings exactly the same... 142 seconds. My gpu is a bottom rung gtx 550 ti. CPU is an i5/2500 running at normal speed. Vegas 521 rendering from hdv to xdcam ex 35mb with sony color correction.

Interesting sidenote, rendering to mainconcept mpeg2 ntsc was exactly the same with or without gpu. Would be nice to have a database of best codecs for gpu acceleration and effects, too.

Dach wrote on 1/28/2012, 1:58 PM

For me, this has been an informative thread. I am beginning to think about an upgrade with the least amount of headaches (smallest budget).

I'm currently running a Phenom at 3.0 GHz, can some suggest how to answer the following question. How to determine if "x" GPU is more powerful than my CPU?

- Chad

paul_w wrote on 1/28/2012, 2:12 PM

Thats a difficuilt question to answer, because it depends on the software thats calling for the power.
Its even changing from build versions of Vegas not just major releases. We need to formulate tables and data to show general guides for hardware selection. Its a big task and would take someone time to compile.
My best current advice is, check what other people are using with success, see their system information in their profiles, or ask.
Intel i7 range processors seem to work well with the Nvidia 5xx range, but i can't be any more specific than that.

Paul.

ChristoC wrote on 1/30/2012, 6:22 PM

I have a project I started on V10e/Win XP, just a collection of JPEG stills, all from same camera, which are arranged to show for 8-10 seconds then crossfade to the next.... to some I added Pan&Crop simple 'Ken Burns' slow zoom in or out. Just simple keyframe at start & end, no fancy shmancy stuff. All looks fine in V10e.

Just moved project to a newer PC = Win7_64, therefore able to use VegasPro11_64/521 or 32/520.

First thing I noticed was that some, but not all, of my Pan&Crop slow zoom in or out images were very jumpy - not jumpy as in a staggered zoom motion, but the jumpy as in a kangaroo - the stills jumped all over the place quite radically & randomly, even nearly off the preview screen!; utterly unuseable.

Problem exists both for Playback and Render.

Re-checked project on same Win7 PC with VegasPro10e, 32b or 64b = no problem!

I eventually found if I disable GPU Acceleration (which was enabled by default in installation) in V11 the problem goes away.

The Graphics card is a nVidia GeForce GTX-260 with latest drivers.

ritsmer wrote on 1/31/2012, 2:57 AM

@ChristoC: yes, and this issue has been acknowledged by SCS and will be fixed in a coming update: http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=796982

ChristoC wrote on 1/31/2012, 5:23 AM

Thanks ritsmer; I neglected to mention rotation of stills as a symptom .... I now found your original post http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=795123