Is the motherboard needs firmware update?

When I try to install RX470 on my old mainboard Intel DX58SO2, no BIOS appear too, but I can hear the WinOS loading from the start sound.

(RX470 before updating BIOS)

Got a lot of confusion but then, I finally found it's quite possible if my BIOS version needs update. As written on the release note: "Improved compatibility with the latest video cards.". Tried it, and finally working:

(RX470 after updating BIOS)

Thanks set. That looks interesting. I've never updated firmware for a motherboard before so I don't know how to do that. I'll talk to the tech support guys Monday and get them to guide me through it. I could probably muddle my way through it - but I don't want to inadvertently screw up either my MB or graphics card and have an even bigger problem on my hands.

Thanks again.

My experience on doing BIOS upgrade was very quick - only took less than a minute on my Intel mainboard. Just run the downloaded package, and let the computer doing its' job. - The most important is you have working UPS in case there's a power issue. But you can google your motherboard type BIOS upgrade to hear what other users had did it. Good Luck.

Spent some time talking to tech support, and I'm reasonably comfortable (but a little nervous) about updating the bios to see if it will fix the problem with the R9 290X. I'd be grateful for a little more advice if you guys can bear it.

The only reason I wanted to change cards to begin with was that I couldn't make a reliable HDMI connection to my TV with my old card - the Nvidia GTX 560Ti. As I explained in a recent post that problem has somehow resolved itself - though I'm not exactly sure what did the trick. The GTX 560Ti now connects reliably via HDMI to my TV - first time, every time.

So the only reason to install the R9 290X (presuming updating the bios allows the card to work) would be if it gives me a significant improvement in performance over the GTX 560Ti.

So I'm wondering what you guys think. Would the R9 290X give better performance - specifically with rendering times. I'm happy enough with the GTX 560Ti in terms of workflow and video preview - but improved rendering times would definetely be a bonus. I tend to mostly render in Sony AVC with a few MainConcept AVC projects now and then. In terms of Video FX, I tend to use Color Corrector a lot and most of my projects will have a lot of fades between clips in the timeline. I also frameserve to Handbrake to create slow motion clips with an avisynth slow motion interpolation script quite often.

Thanks again for all the help guys.

If you are going for rendering times with GPU assist... then looks like you need to stay with GTX 560Ti.

Previously I was using Radeon HD5750 1GB, and can support GPU rendering for Mainconcept AVC MP4. But, as I want to try DaVinci Resolve, I need to increase the GPU RAM, and 2 months ago I change to Radeon RX470 4GB (I already know in advance, that I will lose the GPU-assist MP4 rendering capability by doing this).

Just done the MP4 rendering some days ago, with SonyAVC as I curious about this issue. I got 1:2.5 for that project. If I use Mainconcept AVC, I will have 1:4! So now I have to switch to SonyAVC.

This article can help you understanding the recent status of Vegas Pro for GPU-assist rendering: https://www.studio1productions.com/Articles/SonyVideoCards.htm

Keeping old card like Fermi can be a double-edge sword depending project types. Fermi is slower in OpenCL compared to Maxwell/Pascal/GCN and when there is an rendering full of effects which will use OpenCL engine to help "first stage" this will make Fermi render the project slower than a modern card with faster OpenCL performance. I recently benchmarked my GTX560/770/390 and in Mainconcept when rendering a project with many GPU-accelerated effects 770 was 25% faster than 560 even with CUDA acceleration while 390 was 35% faster than GTX560. GTX560 will only win faster OpenCL cards when there is not many or any OpenCL accelerated feature in the project, like for a raw video without any customization/editing GTX560 will encode faster since it dont need to add OpenCL power.
In a benchmark with raw video things changed brutally, 770 and 390 dont need to spend any OpenCL work and this was a CPU only encoding which take 3 minutes for both cards against 1 minute of GTX560 CUDA since 560 dont need to put OpenCL work together.
Yet since Preview is OpenCL only 390 is much faster there, in the GPU effects project which is 1080p@60 with full preview quality 560 did 9fps playback against 20fps from 770 and 40fps of 390.

OK. Well I finally bit the bullet and updated my bios. Bingo!!! My machine instantly recognised the R9 209X and after installing the AMD Catalyst drivers everything seemed to be working 100% including HDMI connection to my TV.

I ran a series of encoding tests to try and assess performance, and the results were quite startling for me. I chose a selection of projects of different lengths and different original media. All projects had a variety of Video FX, transitions etc applied. I then rendered them with both cards using the same render template - Sony AVC, 60i @ 10Mbps. I left GPU acceleration switched to on. All projects were rendered with the assistance of Vegasaur Transcoder and the render times as shown below are as recorded in Transcoder.

Project 1

Original Media: Mp4, 1920x1080, 29.97fps, 3500kbps
Project Length: 41 minutes 29 seconds

Render Times

Nvidia GTX 560Ti  1.23.35
R9 290X                1.16.15

Project 2

Original Media: Mp4, 1080x720, 29.97fps,4000kbps
Project Length: 34 minutes 47 seconds

Render Times

Nvidia GTX 560Ti    2.10.17
R9 290X                  1.08.18

Project 3

Original Media: Mp4, 1920x1080, 29.97fps, 7500kbps
Project Length: 16 minutes 30 seconds

Render Times

Nvidia GTX 560Ti    49.31
R9 290X                   25.07

Project 4

Original Media: Mp4, 1920x1080, 60.00fps, 8700kbps
Project Length: 1 hour 8 minutes 34 seconds

Nvidia GTX 560Ti   5.45.59
R9 290X                 3.29.26

As you can see - with the exception of Project 1, there was a very marked improvement in render times. I haven't tried Main Concept AVC yet - but I only use that occaisonally.

I also tried frame serving to Handbrake with an Avisynth script to create interpolated slow motion clips. Absolutely no change there. I still can only get 3.0 fps.

I'm not sure if my methods are a really scientific way to assess performance - but I think its "real world" so to speak. So I'll be sticking with the R9 290X for as long as my PC continues living.

A big thanks to everyone for their contributions. It's been an experience. 😊

👏👏👏

As you can see - with the exception of Project 1, there was a very marked improvement in render times. I haven't tried Main Concept AVC yet - but I only use that occaisonally.

That shows very clear that there is a GPU support for rendering, if one has the right graphic card.

Maybe proect 1 is supported in a minor way only, because here you have a rescale process beside the rendering.

Would be interesting to see what the R9 290X  times are with GPU acceleration ON in the video preferences but OFF in the Sony AVC render settings. Also with both off. So we can see what effect each of those 2 settings is having.

If you own a business, and if you are willing to wait until December, AMD often puts their workstation cards up for a 50% rebate towards the end of the year. My W7100 was purchased for about $650 last December, and AMD provided a 50% rebate check, which brought the total investment down to below $350. Running benchmark tests with Vegas 11 against my previous video card (which was never recognized as GPU by Vegas) resulted in a 75% reduction in rendering time. I believe the W7100 has been replaced with an upgraded model for the same price in August of this year.

Would be interesting to see what the R9 290X  times are with GPU acceleration ON in the video preferences but OFF in the Sony AVC render settings. Also with both off. So we can see what effect each of those 2 settings is having.

In the four examples I gave above the render templates were set to CPU only - I think. After reading your post I checked my Sony AVC render templates and they all seem to be set to CPU only by default. I used Vegasaur Transcoder to batch render - so unless Transcoder does something wacky with the encoder settings they were all CPU only.

I might try some follow up tests with GPU turned off and on in both the encoders and the video preferences out of curiosity - but that's going to eat up a lot of time so it could take a while. I'll post results back here if I can get around to it.

I use GPU-Z from TechpowerUp to monitor GPU activity... probably handy for your later tests: https://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/

Add opinion: I count your Project 1 - 3 rendering ratio timing, and they are between 1:1.5 - 1:2. I think they will be similar as GPU rendering capability cannot run directly on any newer video cards, but they help reading media in the timeline. I got 1:1.5 when rendering 'clean' Sony AVCHD (without additional FXs) to SonyAVC MP4 Internet template. (reference: here / here )

Well it's taken some time to get around to trying to do a comprehensive comparison between the GTX 560 Ti and the R9 290X. There were a couple of aspects I wanted to look at.

1. What difference, if any, setting the render template encode mode to CPU/GPU would make to render times.
2. Would there be any improvement in render times using Main Concept AVC with Cuda enabled/disabled with the GTX 560 Ti.
3. What impact would having resample set to "Smart" or "Disabled" have on render times.

I carried out a series of renders through Vegasaur Transcoder. Original media was 60p, with transitions and Colour Correction applied, and just over 10 minutes in length. For each template I ran a test for both "CPU Only" and "GPU if available" in the render templates. And also set up versions for each with resample set to Smart and Disabled. The results for me were very interesting - though they may be old hat to more experienced/knowledgeable Vegas users.

There's not really a whole lot of difference between the cards imo, and the GTX with Cuda enabled didn't really improve performance.

The most significant setting to improve render times was disabling resample. That showed remarkable improvement cutting render times in half for Sony AVC output. I have looked closely at the results of renders with Smart resample and Disabled resample. To my eye at least I can't see any difference in shots where there is movement. For still images I see a marked improvement where movementis is applied with Pan/Crop when resample is disabled.

As an afterthought (because of OldSmoke's suggestion) I also tried two MPEG-2 renders. That was the most startling result of all. With resample disabled render times were slashed to just 7.65 minutes. That would have taken me about 32 minutes with my regular Sony AVC settings.

The results are set out below listed from fastest to slowest (with the exception of the two MPEG-2 renders shown at the bottom of the list.

I do realise that this is not a truly comprehensive test. There are big differences between the render templates being used and a whole bunch of other paramaters such as different frame rates, bitrates etc of original material in the test projects.

This article can help you understanding the recent status of Vegas Pro for GPU-assist rendering: https://www.studio1productions.com/Articles/SonyVideoCards.htm

I sent an e-mail to the folks that wrote the above article, asking if they had updated the article for Vegas Pro 14. They very quickly replied as follows:

Hi Len,
Hopefully once the holidays are over, I will have more time to update that article.  As far as Vegas Pro 14, everything is pretty much the same, GPU wise that is, in Vegas Pro 14 as it was in Vegas Pro 12 and 13.

If you are looking at a video card for Vegas, take a look at the AMD RX 480 video card.  I have been using it now for about a month and I really like it.

Best Regards,
Dave
Studio 1 Productions, Inc.
https://www.studio1productions.com
Phone 386-788-6075 Hours M-F 10am to 5pm EST.

This article can help you understanding the recent status of Vegas Pro for GPU-assist rendering: https://www.studio1productions.com/Articles/SonyVideoCards.htm

I sent an e-mail to the folks that wrote the above article, asking if they had updated the article for Vegas Pro 14. They very quickly replied as follows:

Hi Len,
Hopefully once the holidays are over, I will have more time to update that article.  As far as Vegas Pro 14, everything is pretty much the same, GPU wise that is, in Vegas Pro 14 as it was in Vegas Pro 12 and 13.

If you are looking at a video card for Vegas, take a look at the AMD RX 480 video card.  I have been using it now for about a month and I really like it.

Best Regards,
Dave
Studio 1 Productions, Inc.
https://www.studio1productions.com
Phone 386-788-6075 Hours M-F 10am to 5pm EST.

Thanks of the input Len - I have actually read that article.

Perhaps you'd be kind enough to post back here with a link to the update if it becomes available. I'd be very interested.

...I carried out a series of renders...

Thanks very much for this testing. The speed-up by disabling resample is a real eye-opener. I'm thinking of an FAQ post about speeding up rendering so this will be very useful.

Can I just confirm that you had "GPU acceleration of video processing" checked in the video preferences?

And what was your deinterlace method set to?

...I carried out a series of renders...

Thanks very much for this testing. The speed-up by disabling resample is a real eye-opener. I'm thinking of an FAQ post about speeding up rendering so this will be very useful.

Can I just confirm that you had "GPU acceleration of video processing" checked in the video preferences?

And what was your deinterlace method set to?

Hi Nick,

Glad this may be of help as I tend to post mainly questions in this forum, so it's nice to contribute something rather than take.

Yes, for all of the tests I had GPU acceleration of video processing turned on in the main video preference settings.

Just a small note on the tests. Since I posted the results I had a close look at the output from the MPEG-2 tests (burned to Blu-ray and viewed on my stand alone Blu-ray player). Unfortunately the picture quality is very poor compared to the AVC equivelants. So I wouldn't mention that as an option if you create your FAQ on rendering speed.

I've also been wondering if there is any way to make Disable Resample the default for Vegas when adding new media.

Just a small note on the tests. Since I posted the results I had a close look at the output from the MPEG-2 tests (burned to Blu-ray and viewed on my stand alone Blu-ray player). Unfortunately the picture quality is very poor compared to the AVC equivelants. So I wouldn't mention that as an option if you create your FAQ on rendering speed.

Not surprising, but someone might need MPEG-2 for DVD.

I've also been wondering if there is any way to make Disable Resample the default for Vegas when adding new media.

In VP14 you can: https://www.vegascreativesoftware.info/us/forum/faq-how-to-disable-resample--104623/