Vegas Pro 13 GPU crashing remedy

Jerry K wrote on 6/28/2014, 2:11 PM

After building a 30 second open with 4 layers playback freezes about 8 seconds in and vegas is not responding. I then close vegas down re-open and the something happens regardless of how many times I try. If I turn my GPU off in vegas no more crashing but the playback is terrible in contrast.

I tried 4 different older gpu drivers which did not help.

Besides turning off the gpu in vegas I found that if I turn the ram in vegas from my normal 200 MB to zero no more crashing and playback is good.

My question is having ram at zero will that affect any other functions besides dynamic ram preview? Has anyone ever try this zero ram before as a GPU fix?

Jerry K

Comments

OldSmoke wrote on 6/28/2014, 2:21 PM

Jerry, you have a GTX470, which drivers have tried so far? For Nvidia drivers 296.10 and 334.89 work best. Keep in mind, that going backwards with drivers requires a complete removal and clean install. The GTX470 is almost as good as a GTX560Ti. I also have a little tweak for the 334.89 driver that may help you too.

Steve Mann wrote on 6/28/2014, 9:48 PM

A few years ago, I don't recall whom, someone on this board did some experiments with render time vs Ram Preview set-aside.

Basically, he determined that something in Vegas needs some preview ram during rendering. The sweet spot was 1Mb. Any less and the render time went up and more made little difference.

OldSmoke wrote on 6/28/2014, 11:10 PM

Steve
I would rather say that the majority of systems works just fine with the default of 200. My system works actually best at the default, not any lower or any higher. There are systems where it seems to help setting the preview ram to 0 but there are also users that have it set way above the default to get better results.

Jerry K wrote on 6/29/2014, 12:23 AM

The drivers I tried Oldsmoke are the two you recommended 296.10 and 334.89 plus two that GeForce offered in the past few weeks. My next move is to play around with the GPU, CPU and RAM voltage and see if that might fix the crashing. Is it posable my GPU might need an extra power feed. I read somewhere that some GPUs need two power feeds for them to work properly. I'm not even sure if my GPU has two power inputs but I will check on that.

I have searched the internet and see that many people are having the same problem but I haven't found one pasting of someone that has found a fix. Has anyone ever reported back that an older driver or tweaking has fixed this problem?

Jerry K

OldSmoke wrote on 6/29/2014, 12:52 AM

Jerry
My first card that I used with VP11 and GPU acceleration was a GTX460 with driver 275.33. I never had any issue with that card and later upgraded to 560, 2x570 and now 2x580. The only drivers that worked well for me are those three, 275.33, 296.10 and 334.89. I don't remember my 460 but my 570 and 580 do require 2 additional power connectors. Also keep in mind that the 470 is quite power hungry and together with your CPU you need a good power supply, 750W are recommended.
There have been numerous reports that older drivers with older cards are better, much better. If you don't have any other app that would require a newer driver, stick with the older ones.

Jerry K wrote on 6/29/2014, 9:29 AM

OldSmoke my power supply is a XTREMEGEAR 950 WATT and my video card is a SUPERCLOCK EVGA NVIDIA GTX470 1.25GB.
I got this info from my invoice. I had the computer built by CyberPowerPC.com in California back in September 2010.

Jerry K

OldSmoke wrote on 6/29/2014, 9:40 AM

Jerry
I am sure the PSU is sufficient. Make sure the card has both additional power connectors on it. Maybe you get some overheating? It might be time to clean everything? Have you tried monitoring your CPU and GPU heat? Free tools such as HWiFO64 will give all this info and I always have it in the toolbar. It can also monitor your GPU load which helps with Vegas to monitor which codec gets you the most GPU support. As I mentioned before, the GTX470 is a good card for Vegas and well supported.

Guy S. wrote on 6/30/2014, 2:57 PM

I was unable to use GPU acceleration in Vegas at work (GeForce 460 and Quadro4000) or home GeForce 550ti. Timeline acceleration was minimal and crashes were frequent. I can't recall exactly which drivers I was running but always used what was recommended on this forum.

I recently got a new workstation (work) and we put in an ATI 5970 card that (so far) has not crashed. Timeline performance has markedly improved: 29.97 w/GPU vs. 3fps w/o (3x 720p video streams with track motion applied over a PNG graphic).

If you are unable to get the issue sorted out with video drivers you may want to consider switching to an ATI card.

Jerry K wrote on 7/1/2014, 9:02 AM

Thanks Guy G. I will look into the ATI 5970.

I would love to know if anyone else has had a good experience going from a GeForce card to a ATI 5970 in speeding up playback and eliminating crashes

Jerry K

NormanPCN wrote on 7/1/2014, 9:49 AM

I would love to know if anyone else has had a good experience going from a GeForce card to a ATI 5970 in speeding up playback and eliminating crashes

By no means is ATI/AMD perfect, but the apparent severity of issues I read in forums have not afflicted me. I have only had AMD video cards.

OldSmoke wrote on 7/1/2014, 9:58 AM

I have a HD6970 too and it works as well as my Nvidia cards. I actually put it in with my 2 GTX580 and set it as the main GPU, render times where very fast. However, my GTX580s are watercooled and I am waiting for a waterblock for the HD6970; once I have one; I will swap one GTX580 for the HD6970. This way I seem to get best of both, OpenCL which is used for preview is faster with the HD6970 and rendering to MCAVC is faster with the GTX580's CUDA.

Guy S. wrote on 7/1/2014, 7:17 PM

Great info, thanks! I was wondering about using an nVidia and ATI card together as I also use Adobe products which sometimes require CUDA vs Open CL/GL.