It had been the case that Adobe and others favored Nvidia, where AMD had yielded higher performance w Vegas. Now it seems that the Vegas developers are shifting towards Nvidia. Can anyone offer any reasons/insights, or am I missing something here?
Probably the same reason many other apps are not supporting the newer AMD cards at launch... AMD is horrible at coding drivers.
Well, if you saw that recent shootout for Graphics card and Vegas Pro, AMD dominated, especially when "bang for the buck" factored in. This would be for Vegas 16. So, I'm not sure how "horrible" drivers produced the better results. https://techgage.com/article/exploring-magix-vegas-pro-16-gpu-performance/
IMO AMD offers the best bang/buck if your primary app is Vegas... I got a liquid-cooled Vega 64 for $350 US which performs as good as $700+ offerings from Nvidia. I don't use the latest release of Vegas for paid work... I just recently started using Vegas 16 & probably won't use Vegas 17 until 2020... I refuse to be a BETA tester & don't want to risk sending paying clients work that Vegas messes-up... Our clients are less patient with us than most of us have been with Vegas bugs throughout the years... For instance, early versions of Vegas 10 64 rendered random black frames & I think I had to use Vegas 10 32 or Vegas 9 until the bugs were worked-out late into the release schedule...
@j-v I am asking for pertinent information, which TheRhino is providing. People are free to "like" Vegas for some things and still have some reservations. Or is that not OK? I do, also, think we are somewhat "beta testers" many times, in our quest to see Vegas realize its potential.
I don't disparage our development team, they have a complex and difficult task in keeping up with the many components and formats that comprise modern NLE. There are demands placed on them by "marketing department" and other internal "concerns." Which is WHY the Pro should speak up. "Bells and whistles" - favored by marketing - are sometimes the focus, often to the detriment of "rock solid performance" - which is what the Pro market wants and deserves. So, these sorts of comments are actually, to my way of thinking, not "carping" but actually advocating for a better Vegas.
It had been the case that Adobe and others favored Nvidia, where AMD had yielded higher performance w Vegas. Now it seems that the Vegas developers are shifting towards Nvidia. Can anyone offer any reasons/insights, or am I missing something here?
The most likely and obvious reason is because Nvidia has a larger market share over AMD. Go shopping for a Laptop and you'll likely find 80% of them include a Nvidia GPU where the other 20% are AMD. So while AMD may have the current higher performance, developers will tend to lean towards ensuring their software works best for the majority.
It is the same with CPUs. I use to be a fan of the AMD CPUs over Intel since they seemed to be the better bang for the buck in regards to price/performance. However, I eventually realized software compatibility and stability always favored Intel and when I had an issue with particular software that seemed to be related to AMD CPU compatibility I always felt like the red headed step child in regards to support. They would always seem to get to fixing it eventually, but there was never any urgency.
I've learned my lessons and now just lean towards Intel and Nvidia even if AMD has a technically better performance product at a lower cost. Until market share changes, I will continue down that path since stabability is more important to me than the minimal performance increase if it's there and if truth be told they're always playing leap frog on the performance spectrum anyways. At this time, AMD has the edge. I don't expect it to stay that way forever.
Here's the reality in regards to market Nvidia vs AMD GPU market share. Always expect software development to lean more towards supporting the majority.
Why are you still posting on this Vegas forum?
Maybe I (we)have to be glad to see you gountil 2020...
Well, that was rude... I have been using Vegas for paid work since 3.0 so probably have more to contribute to Vegas forums than the average hobbyist... I installed Vegas 17 the day it was released to see what benefits I can look forward to when the bugs are worked-out. I am especially interested in improved color-grading tools. I will also post my benchmarking tests, etc. on these forums to help others when making hardware choices. However, I cannot risk paid work missing deadlines due to bugs that have not been sorted-out & EVERY new release has had bugs...
Also..., I have used both Nvidia & AMD & typically have 4-5 workstations operating in my studio... Right now AMD is the best performance for the price for V16 & that will likely be the same once they update V17... I have actually installed Nvidia cards only to send them back because they lacked the performance of the AMD Vega 64 & were more expensive at the time...
@TheRhino “ I will also post my benchmarking tests, etc. on these forums to help others when making hardware choices.” Tis true.
"Bells and whistles" - favored by marketing - are sometimes the focus, often to the detriment of "rock solid performance" - which is what the Pro market wants and deserves. So, these sorts of comments are actually, to my way of thinking, not "carping" but actually advocating for a better Vegas.
This is not something new. It's something we have had to adapt to and accept. Many folks have to have the latest and greatest and with that comes having to meet a targeted timeline. You either hear the "This is not working well at all for me", or "Is Vegas Pro 17 ever going to be released?" complaints. You can already witness the "When is Vegas POST?" going to be released complaints.
I'm certain a developer's goal is to release a solid as possible release but the reality is that they're often put into a corner where it becomes a "well it's good enough for now" situation, we'll continue to work on fixing the other things later. Then there's always the problem that no matter how much internal beta testing you do, it will not be the same as when it hits the market and now there are 1000s of users, all with different systems and workflows finding problems not found by the 20 internal testers. It's a pretty complex piece of software with a lot of features, which can be installed on many different system configurations and OSes.
It's the same with purchasing a new car. Some have to have it when it 1st comes out and those are the same customers who often find themselves having to visit the dealership for updates/repairs until the kinks get worked out. It's the early adopter syndrome. I never purchase a new car until after 2 years it has been out in the market. I'm the same way with new software releases, just not a 2 year wait time. I haven't even downloaded the trial version of VP17. I expected the initial release would have some kinks that would need to be worked out. VP16 is still working fine for me in the meantime but I will continue to look for updates to VP17 before I commit to it. You got your exposure to the new shiny object in VP17 and with that always comes some blemishes, to expect anything more is just not the reality of the world we live in today. As of now, VP17 is working perfectly for me....because, I know better than to expect an initial release won't have any blemishes and I'm holding off trying it out to reduce the amount of blemishes I may see that may tarnish my 1st impressions like it has done to you. You seem to not be living in the reality of the real world with some of your expectations. Just try to be more productive. You can either choose to complain and criticize, or as you find problems report them in a productive manner to increase the likelihood they'll eventually get fixed. That choice is yours, I would recommend to choose wisely and choose the path that would benefit you the most.
I have actually installed Nvidia cards only to send them back because they lacked the performance of the AMD Vega 64 & were more expensive at the time...
65 % more performance for RTX 2080ti versus AMD vega 64 I would not call nvidea lacking performance, I assume you were talking pre-turing, older Nvidea cards, and of course you absolutely right about bang for the buck pricewise.
https://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-RTX-2080-Ti-vs-AMD-RX-Vega-64/4027vs3933
65 % more performance for RTX 2080ti versus AMD vega 64 I would not call nvidea lacking performance, I assume you were talking pre-turing, older Nvidea cards, and of course you absolutely right about bang for the buck pricewise.
https://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-RTX-2080-Ti-vs-AMD-RX-Vega-64/4027vs3933
Well, check the Vegas Pro specific benchmarks I referenced above, the Vega 64 are neck and neck with 2080, and in quite a few, Vega 64 is actually surpassing its performance. In gaming or other applications, 2080 certainly might be well outperforming, but on Vegas specific tasks, no.
"Bells and whistles" - favored by marketing - are sometimes the focus, often to the detriment of "rock solid performance" - which is what the Pro market wants and deserves. So, these sorts of comments are actually, to my way of thinking, not "carping" but actually advocating for a better Vegas.
This is not something new. It's something we have had to adapt to and accept. .........
.......... You seem to not be living in the reality of the real world with some of your expectations. Just try to be more productive. You can either choose to complain and criticize, or as you find problems report them in a productive manner to increase the likelihood they'll eventually get fixed. That choice is yours, I would recommend to choose wisely and choose the path that would benefit you the most.
I assure you, my comments are coming from an observer - myself - of phenomena - and those are totally within the realm of "reality based." I am describing the sort of corporate internal push and pull that is part and parcel of product development and sales - let's just say, "the nature of the beast." Who is to say what is more or less reasonable?
That is why I am suggesting that those who think more along the lines of myself and theRhino let our voices be heard. We represent part of "the target market." This is a "weighing in." Not a dreamy "wishology" of thinking.
@zdogg Your post title is something I ask myself too, so surely interesting, and best answered by Magix themselves, only if they would lift the veil to give us some insight without aggravating their relations with either nvidea and amd (and not some vague explanation that the current AMD drivers are not ready or flaky)
It had been the case that Adobe and others favored Nvidia, where AMD had yielded higher performance w Vegas. Now it seems that the Vegas developers are shifting towards Nvidia. Can anyone offer any reasons/insights, or am I missing something here?
The most likely and obvious reason is because Nvidia has a larger market share over AMD. Go shopping for a Laptop and you'll likely find 80% of them include a Nvidia GPU where the other 20% are AMD. So while AMD may have the current higher performance, developers will tend to lean towards ensuring their software works best for the majority.
It is the same with CPUs. I use to be a fan of the AMD CPUs over Intel since they seemed to be the better bang for the buck in regards to price/performance. However, I eventually realized software compatibility and stability always favored Intel and when I had an issue with particular software that seemed to be related to AMD CPU compatibility I always felt like the red headed step child in regards to support. They would always seem to get to fixing it eventually, but there was never any urgency.
I've learned my lessons and now just lean towards Intel and Nvidia even if AMD has a technically better performance product at a lower cost. Until market share changes, I will continue down that path since stabability is more important to me than the minimal performance increase if it's there and if truth be told they're always playing leap frog on the performance spectrum anyways. At this time, AMD has the edge. I don't expect it to stay that way forever.
Here's the reality in regards to market Nvidia vs AMD GPU market share. Always expect software development to lean more towards supporting the majority.
Here are the share numbers as of Q1 2019 https://www.reddit.com/r/nvidia/comments/c39cib/gpu_market_share_amd_vs_nvidia_is_2377_in_q12019/
I assure you, my comments are coming from an observer - myself - of phenomena - and those are totally within the realm of "reality based." I am describing the sort of corporate internal push and pull that is part and parcel of product development and sales - let's just say, "the nature of the beast." Who is to say what is more or less reasonable?
That is why I am suggesting that those who think more along the lines of myself and theRhino let our voices be heard. We represent part of "the target market." This is a "weighing in." Not a dreamy "wishology" of thinking.
There's nothing wrong with making your voice heard. I'm certain everyone wants a solid performing Vegas including Sales, Marketing, Developers, Program managers and users alike. My point was are you doing it in a constructive manner that would benefit you the most or is it coming across more as bitching, moaning and complaining where people aren't generally very receptive and responsive to others who are coming across that way where they tend to either ignore them as it starts to become background noise or they get defensive and start to lash back. I'm in agreement with most of your comments but I'm currently witnessing others tending to start to lash back which likely isn't going to benefit you and so far I haven't really noticed anything more constructive coming from you in these type of discussions. So I'm just suggesting it may be better to try a different approach. If you use a more constructive approach and they're still lashing back at you, then they're the ones who tend to come across as the A-holes and I'ld be right there along side you to point that out. I also think you may have some carry-over from previous discussions where others are just automatically assuming you're going down that non constructive path, so just try to stay on that positive path. Let those individuals spit their negative response and just try to ignore them when they do.
so far I haven't really noticed anything more constructive coming from you in these type of discussions. So I'm just suggesting it may be better to try a different approach. If you use a more constructive approach and they're still lashing back at you, then they're the ones who tend to come across as the A-holes and I'ld be right there along side you to point that out. I also think you may have some carry-over from previous discussions where others are just automatically assuming you're going down that non constructive path, so just try to stay on that positive path. Let those individuals spit their negative response and just try to ignore them when they do.
Point taken, and I don't disagree. My comments of late (but not overall) have been a bit vinegarish.... because I've not been thrilled with the recent trajectory, especially with a couple of issues - beyond the aspirational offerings of Vegas, that are high on hype and less so in execution... but.... I usually convey the idea that it is still a "let's wait and see" situation, that I will not join in the profuse praise, nor rancor, too quickly. My concerns/wish lists are more "where the rubber meets the road" and - sorry if redundantly - "nuts and bolts." The truth is, in the NLE world, the "road" is fast moving, and so we should cut the developers some slack, and I believe I do. Sorry if that comes across as negativity.
Bottom line, I'm not completely unhappy with Vegas, but I'm less than thrilled at this exact juncture, and I hope that changes, because I'm a believer in the program.
I typically refrain from entering too many of these debates, but I thought this should be addressed to some extent.
To say that we are favoring NVidia over AMD is simply not true. For this latest release, it was our hope to have hardware decoding completed for NVidia (NVDEC), Intel (QSV) and AMD (UVD).
We completed work with the NVidia cards and with Intel, but ran out of time before the AMD support was finished and fully tested. The options were to ship with the items we currently had finished (not including QSV, which we have been using to some extent for quite a while), or hold off until we finished the AMD implementation. The choice was to keep the NVidia stuff in for release since well over 50% of our users have NVidia cards (compared to only about 15% using AMD). It did not seem right to keep this feature away from all of those users.
The AMD support is very close to completion, but is not quite ready yet. We definitely do not want to release this until we are confident that it is solid or we will have an large headache on the support end as users experience problems. Also factoring into the decision delay AMD support was the fact that AMD announced its new GPUs with the new Navi architecture only in July. This new architecture would break some of the older SDKs which we were using. We want to make sure all the cards were supported before releasing the feature. I am not sure we will have this solution in place for the next update, but we truly hope to get it in at some point for VP 17.
Last year we ran into a similar problem when doing the encoding part of the hardware acceleration work. It was just a matter of how much time we had to get everything done and solidified. As often happens, integrating newer technologies into a mature code base, like that which VEGAS is built upon, often results in unexpected complications which slows the development process down.
I also know that some of you feel a little stung by the fact that NVidia support in the last two releases has come out before AMD since previously it was perceived that VEGAS worked better on the AMD platform. (As a result, many people bought AMD cards for a better VEGAS experience.) We have not actively tried to favor one brand over another at any point. Much of the early VEGAS GPU acceleration work was built around and tested on both AMD and NVidia professional level cards, which had good support for the technologies we used. At the time, the NVidia consumer level cards did not work as well with these technologies so we gained the perception of not really supporting NVidia. That is different now as the difference between professional level and consumer level cards is not nearly as great, especially in terms of the encoding and decoding technology which is now being employed by VEGAS. We still have a lot to do to improve things, but that work is not strictly focused on a single hardware platform.
Sorry for the long winded reply, but I wanted to give you a little bit of the inside information about why things are they way that are at the moment.
So far only Screen Capture has raised my blood pressure (and now using a different screen capture), 17 and my still installed 16 VP will make me productive. I'd much rather have some real examples than some of the folks who have posted here and are obviously trolls. If it stays focused on specific reasons without rankor, then I who have been hard on the troll welcome posts like Rhino's. I want the conductors to know all about the curves before the trains come off the tracks.
Thanks for the additional insight and taking the time to respond and share. I work in software development and fully understand the challenges and tough decisions which you have outlined. Hopefully, that helps everyone else as well.
One question I had is in regards to Nvidia drivers. My understanding is that Nvidia are now releasing 2 separate drivers, one with a focus for gaming and the other for studio work. I'm currently under the assumption that the Nvidia studio version drivers would likely be best for use with Vegas. Could you confirm one way or the other which would be best for our uses and share any insight you have observed between the 2 versions in regards to problems, performance, etc when using each with Vegas?
In regards to the Studio drivers which have been release by NVIDIA...
We have been in contact with NVIDIA and have been working closely with them in regards to drivers. They intend for the Studio versions of their drivers to be the ones that should be used for video editing. They are recommending that users of products such as VEGAS Pro install the latest Studio drivers. These drivers are intended to be more stable than the Game-Ready drivers and with less frequent updates. The result is that they may not have all the latest features available, but should provide a better editing experience.
The end result is that we will be in a far better position to recommend what driver a user should be using without worries that in the next week a new driver will be released that may break some features in VEGAS.
With all that said, we are still testing out the current Studio driver, so we are not in a position to give it our blessing quite yet. We have registered some issues with NVIDIA and they are actively working on resolving them. I expect at some point very soon we will recommend that everyone with compatible cards should use the most current Studio driver.
Studio drivers is not for GTX 970
Pierre, in your case, I would recommend finding a game ready driver that works as it should, and sticking with it, don't constantly update as the new ones come out unless something in Vegas stops working.