And what GPU or system may you have where switching off GPU acceleration is the way to go?

And what GPU or system may you have where switching off GPU acceleration is the way to go?That's a really good question.

And, that question once again brings us back to the same issue that is the elephant in the room in almost every thread in this forum where the acronym "GPU" is used, namely:

How the heck can we know what video card and what driver revision we should use if we want to get the fastest and also the most problem-free performance from Vegas 12 (or 13)?

I have an Nvidia GeForce 9800GTX 512M PCIe2.0 16x Graphics card which I purchased with my current computer back in January 2009. Unfortunately, it is pretty clear that it would be a waste of time to try to get this card to do anything useful with any modern version of Vegas.

OK, that's fine. I need to get a new graphic card. I have no problem with that. I have some spare change, and I can buy that card.

However ...

Like everyone else in this forum, I can't get any specific guidance from SCS as to what card and driver will be guaranteed to work with Vegas. I've waited a year-and-a-half (Vegas 12 was introduced on November 9, 2012) for an answer, and they haven't given one.

Hopefully, with Vegas 13, SCS will provide very specific specifications that will help me upgrade my computer with something that will provide significant performance advantages, while maintaining the stability that I still get with Vegas 7 & 8, the two versions I still use every day despite owning Vegas 10 & 11 which are installed on the Windows 7 64-bit boot drive on this same computer.

It is very promising to see occasional posts from the development team, but I hope the Vegas Product Manager, if there is one, also reads these posts and realizes that he or she has an obligation to provide this sort of information to both potential and existing customers.

"And what GPU or system may you have where switching off GPU acceleration is the way to go? "

i7 (3770) 16gig ram (no page file), Nvidia gtx 285

Full frame rate with gpu off. Frame rate cut (roughly) in 1/2 with gpu on

Rob
The GTX285 should be able to provide you with better performance then you currently get. Which GPU did you select in Vegas, the HD4000 from your CPU or the GTX285?
I had a 3770K with a GTX460 system before my current one. The only way I got GPU acceleration to work was by disabling the HD4000. This all depends very much on the motherboard you have too.
There are two drivers I can recommend for the GTX285, driver 275.33 and 296.10.
I also found a workaround for newer drivers http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?Forum=4&MessageID=887755 but that only worked for some users, still worth a try.

I downloaded some of the sample you provided and had no issues with frame rate palyback with the gpu off (i7 3770). It was only with gpu on that frame rate dropped to 10 or 12.

GPU on/off makes little difference for me. Not statistically significant enough to make any conclusion.

"GPU on/off makes little difference for me. Not statistically significant enough to make any conclusion."

You're aware that there are two different gpu switches... one for rendering control and one for playback?
Are you flicking the right switch?

You're aware that there are two different gpu switches... one for rendering control and one for playback?
Are you flicking the right switch?

..., yes I am aware of all the GPU options in Vegas.

I changed the GPU option in video preferences. It is the only one that affects the Vegas composite & effects engine, which is the only thing that matters during playback. Playback is what my post in this thread, and the other thread, was referencing.

The video prefs option affects both playback and rendering. The video stream is always assembled/composited. In one case it is played to a window. In the other, passed to an encoder.

"..., yes I am aware of all the GPU options in Vegas."

Okay. Sorry, didn't mean to insult your intelligence. I have run into some that aren't aware of 2 different switches.

Well, all I can tell you Norman is that either I have a very unique machine (which I doubt) or there is something wrong with yours. I thought maybe there was something different about go pro video, but after downloading and playing the samples you provided, I couldn't see a problem. If I remember correctly, you provided one of those samples in a MOV container? (or maybe it was somebody else) MOV means the use of the quicktime plugin which has caused problems for me.

What happens when you place a sample on the time line with no effects of any kind.... just let it play. Do you get low frame rate on simple playback?

I noticed you have a saphire vid card too. Have you got any old nvidia card around you can slide in there to test out? That's really the only difference I see between your setup and mine. Just wondering if the saphire is causing problems. Even if you have simple internal video on your mobo, try using that so you can take the saphire right out of the equation. At least that will eliminate it as a possibility because from my pioint of view it still sounds like the gpu is active with the switch off. I know for me it's a massive difference with the switch on vs off, anyway.

Actually the problem is with the GoPro file in the MP4 container. It doesn't play well on my system either and I don't have issues with the 1080 60p footage from my HF-G30.

"Actually the problem is with the GoPro file in the MP4 container. It doesn't play well on my system either and I don't have issues with the 1080 60p footage from my HF-G30. "

I have the "GOPRO005.mp4" sample and I will say that's a bit tougher. It plays at full frame rate, but it will drop a bit through a dissolve, then come back up to full

Maybe it is your hardware or maybe you any additional codecs installed that might play it back better.

Interesting... that gopro sample contains aac audio which I hate. Tried to strip the audio off of it (in TSmuxer) so I could just run the video and Tsmuxer spits out an error:

"MP4/MOV error: Invalid H.264/AVC frame at position 138241574:

Have you got any old nvidia card around you can slide in there to test out?

Nope. ATI/AMD guy from way back. All I have laying around is an old 5850.
My new machine(motherboard), the 4770K, obviously does have Intel video and I know some ways to get both operational. Not sure I want to go into the uninstall and install of Intel and AMD drivers just to do a test.

My old motherboard (pre January) was an i860 with the 5850 and then 7950. It had issues as well. At the time I just assumed the 860 was just missing the threshold of performance and I smart proxied my 1080p60 files. Smart proxies are mpeg-2 files. When I downloaded a GH3 1080p60 file and it worked fine, then I looked into it and the problem was only GoPro files. Everything else I could find and/or generate from Vegas(AVC) worked fine.

"eliminate it as a possibility because from my pioint of view it still sounds like the gpu is active with the switch off."

If the Vegas GPU preferences does not really turn things truly on/off then we can make no assumptions about anything GPU on versus off in any and all circumstances.

My original post had different sample files. I just took stuff from my disk and to make it small I used Avidemux to I-frame trim and remux to a shorter file. Some objected to that. I also got files out of MOV thinking I wanted Quicktime out of the picture. I have since learned that Vegas special cases MOV files with AVC video and PCM/AAC audio and decodes those directly.

I put new files up and it sounds like you have those since you mentioned a GoPro 5 file. It is a short video outside my front door.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/51868591/1080p60%20Test.zip
This is the ZIP file I sent to SCS support a couple of months ago. Maybe some day they will say something.
The VEG file has no audio and has no effects. I leave it to the uses to render (or ignore) the XAVC-S clip.
My current machine can at times do fine at Preview Half with the test files.
Good Half is in the toilet.

I am not sure why a progressive file, project and file
fps matched, should perform different Preview versus Good from what I have read about the differences between preview, good and best.
Note that ALL other AVC 1080p60 files I can come across perform just fine AND Vegas Pro 11 is just fine. No changes to the machine. Something in the current Vegas decoder. Curious it works for you. Not sure how to analyze that.

edit: I used avidemux to mux the video to a new file without the audio. Same performance.
I can understand how GPU can be involved with effects and such, since unless you preview at full and no scaling then then GPU will be involved with scaling the video in the preview window. Interpolation is interp regardless it it is due to quarter/half setting or the window not being at least full size of video resolution.
Once GPU is involved then we get data shuttling back and forth from CPU and GPU and this takes up some time. I do see better perf with GPU off, just not what I get with any other AVC file.

Well, I stuck that sample on my time line (best full) and it played back at full frame rate. I even did a screen capture for you... If I can figure out how to post it!

[url=http://i616.photobucket.com/albums/tt245/Bob_sanders/4-1-20146-34-09PM_zps2582b7e5.mp4]

The only other thing I can think of is time line thumbnail view. Frame rate does become an issue for me if I set thumbnail view to "ALL", as a result I leave it at "HEAD,CENTER,TAIL"