GPU upgrade...and disappointing initial results

WayneM wrote on 3/15/2015, 10:58 PM

The saga continues of upgrading from On-MoBo Intel graphics (HD 3000) to a card that would fit in my current workstation. I apologize in advance for the length of the results here but I was trying to provide all the info and not waste Forum members time having to ask to many more questions.

I was limited in the card I could use because of space. My first purchase was the ASUS R9 290X-DC2OC-4GD5 but it did not come close to fitting and got returned.

Thanks to OldSmoke and others I had some understanding of the options either to boost Preview speed or Render speed. I decided to go for better PREVIEW performance (OpenCL support with AMD) and to just stock up on beer for when Renders were being done.

The best I could do was an ASUS R9 270 OC (R9270-DC2OC-2GD5) which I now have installed.

My System Specs on the Forum are now updated. I'm running Vegas Pro 13 64-bit Bld 428 on Win 7 Pro 64-bit.

I ran FurMark and the performance seems to really scream for this generation of card. Got GPU up to 100% utilization and watched the temp go up and the fans dig in to maintain. I didn't think to run FurMark before the upgrade so have no benchmark there.

With the on-board graphics NewBlue Titler Pro 3 refused to run due to wimpy on-board GPU. NewBlue Titler Pro 3 now runs following install of this new ASUS R9 270 OC card.

I've now invested a couple days of research and testing after the card install trying to optimize performance on VP13 Pro 64 bit on a current project. I'm not satisfied with the results and think I'm doing something(s) wrong and/or have a setting wrong or my expectations that are too high. I'm thinking it likely there is just very simple thing I have missed here.

After the ASUS card install the On-board Intel graphics looks to be disabled. The Intel graphics no longer shows up in the Device Manager. One oddity is that Sony AVC still gives me an option for QuickSync, which the Intel had, but no mention of of OpenCL or anything else. I find no setting in the BIOS or MoBo jumpers/switches to disable on-board video. And the Device Manager now only shows the new ASUS card. The Intel is gone.

First off, I'm trying to figure how to make sure the ASUS card driver is current. After install of the GPU with the included CD the "Device Properties" showed I was running driver v 14.201.1001.0.

I went to ASUS and downloaded then installed the latest driver package and GPU Monitor and Tweak. Device properties showed I was STILL RUNNING driver v 14.201.1001.0 ! I went searching and the best info I found was that the latest driver is a higher number, 14.501.1003.0 . This I found on Toms Hardware.

I repeated the download and install process a second time (defies logic I know) and Device Manager still reports I am running what seems to be the original driver. I may try the Update Driver option from the Device Manager and see if it finds a newer driver in what was downloaded. GOOGLE searches haven't uncovered any solutions, but I know this issue is not unprecedented.

So I'm trying to figure out how to get the driver updated if the Tom's Hardware info is correct, but that might have much effect on the results below. UPDATE: I just ran the Live Update from the ASUS GPU Tweak tool and it says the VBIOS version I have IS the latest.

I have had only one crash with VP13-64 bit Bld 428 since installing the new ASUS card. None at all prior.

TESTS:

My Test project source video for all the tests is Canon XA20 1920x1080 59.94P. Full frame, Resample disabled, no FX or CROP/PAN. Throughout the 8 minute video simple text from "Sony ProType Titler" fades up then back out. (Before the new ASUS card NewBlue Titler Pro 3 wouldn't run.) The project properties are 1920x1080x8 59.940p. Pixel format is 8-bit, Full Resolution Rendering is GOOD, Motion blur is Gaussian, and Adjust source media. . . is UNchecked.

Prefs/Video has Dynamic RAM Preview @ 200, 16 threads, and GPU Acceleration is "Advanced Micro Devices, Pitcairn" which appeared after the new card was installed. I have tested with "Video Preview" settings for "Display at project size" and "Simulate device aspect ratio" ON and OFF.

Preview is 1920x1080x32, 59.940p and the display is at 900x506x32 from running the SCS benchmark. I've tried a variety of Preview Quality settings (Best vs Good, Auto vs Full vs Half) with no impact.

I've run a bunch of tests with the new ASUS card, watched previews at various settings and timed some renders. These are the issues I'm left with:

1. DISPLAY FRAME RATE IN PREVIEW: In the Preview window I see a Display frame rate of 59.940 until the Sony ProType Titler comes up, then it rapidly drops to as low as 3 FPS. When the title goes away it zips up to 59.940. This is the SAME PERFORMANCE I was seeing with the on MoBo Intel chipset! So no improvement in Preview and that's what I was banking on. I tried simplifying the already simple title and performance still took a nose dive. Then I put in a simple title using NewBlue Titler Pro 3. During preview the frame rate stayed close to 59, not taking the dive I see with Sony ProType Titler. I even further simplified the font Sony ProType Titler to plain Arial, but the preview frame rate still collapsed.

The second part: RENDER TESTS This is where I didn't bank on a necessarily big improvement, but I wasn't expecting renders to take even longer than with the Intel on-board video support! I thought the more powerful GPU would provide some sort of incremental gains. Note that I did NOT yet Over-Clock the GPU or Memory.

2. I ran a series of Render timing tests (see below) using both the Sony and the MC render engines on the full 8 minute video. Some tests were run using options I didn't expect to work . . . but since nothing seemed to be working I decided to try them all! Grasping at straws here.

2a: 37:15 (MM:ss) is my reference Render time for the test video with SONY AVC to Internet HD 1080P using the on-motherboard Intel chipset BEFORE INSTALLING THE NEW ASUS R9 270 card. So far this is the best time!!!! (I either missed something here or have something bollixed up.)

2b. 37:59 (MM:ss) RENDER time using SONY AVC: In setting up the Render options "QUICK SYNC" appears in the dropdown. (That was an option with the Intel on-board graphics chip. But the Intel chipset no longer appears in the Device Manager so I don't see how I can disable it any further without prying it off the board :-) I selected "Use GPU if available"

2c. 48:08 (MM:ss) RENDER time using MainConcept AVC: "Use OpenCL if available" rendering option was available and I chose it. (No option appeared related to the inactive Intel chipset.)

2e. 49:18 (MM:ss) RENDER time using MainConcept AVC: "Use CUDA if available" rendering option was available and I chose it. (No option appeared related to the inactive Intel chipset.)

Any thoughts on what I missed am doing wrong? I may not have remembered all the changes I made to settings on recommendations I saw in threads here. I gathered a lot of comments and tried to get this close to right from the beginning.

Any help greatly appreciated.

Wayne

Comments

musicvid10 wrote on 3/15/2015, 11:06 PM

With a high-powered CPU such as you list, any additional gains from GPU acceleration will be modest at best, often negligible.
It's a law of diminishing returns that is unlikely to be overcome.

NormanPCN wrote on 3/15/2015, 11:24 PM

Vegas will use your GPU for effects, transitions and compositing when the video prefs have that option enabled. This will affect playback and rendering.

NewBlue should work well with this video card.

Regarding encoding during render.

Mainconcept AVC does not support this video card. It is old and only supports older GPUs.

CUDA has no meaning to AMD GPUs. It is Nvidia only.

Sony AVC should use your GPU but Sony AVC does not use the GPU for very much and there is typically not much gain.

Sony AVC always lists the Intel Quicksync option even if it is not actually functional. It is listed on mine and I have never had Intel drivers installed.

Other encoders do not have GPU support, but again remember Vegas is always using the GPU to generate the video stream which is then passed to the encoder.

As for full GPU performance increase in Vegas "proper", well it depends on what is going on in the timeline. The Vegas GPU red car demo project uses heavy effects and only performs well with a fast GPU. In a simpler project, not much benefit may be seen.

JohnnyRoy wrote on 3/16/2015, 12:18 AM

Norman summed it up nicely but just to answer your question about the frame rate dropping to 3 fps when the Sony ProType Titler is used. ProType is not GPU accelerated which is why you saw no improvement in performance.

Also as Norman said, the MainConcept AVC encoder does not support your card which is why you aren't seeing any benefit. Don't be fooled by the dropdown choice saying "CUDA if available". That doesn't mean you have CUDA. Since it's not available these choices do nothing,

You will see a benefit in the Sony plug-ins that are GPU enabled which is practically all of them, so if you performed color correction without a GPU and the timeline fps slowed down and then you turn on the GPU, you should see the fps increase because the color corrector is GPU accelerated. Try adding FX with and without the GPU acceleration enabled and you should see a difference.

~jr

OldSmoke wrote on 3/16/2015, 11:21 AM

[I]With a high-powered CPU such as you list, any additional gains from GPU acceleration will be modest at best, often negligible.[/I]

There isn't a CPU in the market today where the whole system would not benefit from an additional GPU. A 2600K as listed in the OPs spec isn't that fast either; I had one before.

As already mentioned in tis thread and many others, R9 series card are not supported by MC AVC and SONY AVC render codecs, you would have to go back to the HD7xxx series or older and FERMI for Nvidia.

To install a new driver, use first AMD's clean uninstall utility; I wish Nvidia would have one. If you cant find it, you can download it from here.

Try rendering the SCS Benchmark project to XDCAM or any MPEG-2 codec and you should see major improvements. If you need to render to MP4, use the framserve from Vegas to HB method. The frameserver is actually working like previewing the timeline hence any effect that is OpenCL will be accelerated for it.

Arthur.S wrote on 3/16/2015, 12:35 PM

"There isn't a CPU in the market toady"

There's no need for name calling oldsmoke. :-)

OldSmoke wrote on 3/16/2015, 12:46 PM

Not even the auto correct can catch that one! LOL. Anyway, I corrected it.

astar wrote on 3/16/2015, 1:39 PM

The R9 270 is closer to an HD6000 series, but it sounds like without the backwards compatibility with MC.

@oldsmoke - Do you have the AMD APP SDK installed. That SDK has elements for OpenCL development. I was just wondering maybe elements of OpenCL are not supplied with the latest gaming adapter driver, and that might be the reason MC does not work. When I do a shift+preferences, the opencl ver comes up in my Vegas as "OpenCL 1.1 AMD SDK 2.4." Would your or someone else test this and see if it makes a difference?

@WanyeM - Your post reads like you are running an ASUS driver. This is not how I would do this. I would uninstall the asus driver and reboot. Then download from AMD the latest driver set for your GPU. Asus might not supply the latest driver for your chip type, but I did not spend the time looking what the latest is for the r9 270.

Would you be willing to post a screen shot of your GPU-z? Does Luxmark see and use both CPU&GPU?

OldSmoke wrote on 3/16/2015, 1:50 PM

I don't mind testing it; do you have a download link for the SDK?

astar wrote on 3/16/2015, 2:05 PM

http://developer.amd.com/tools-and-sdks/opencl-zone/amd-accelerated-parallel-processing-app-sdk/download-archive/

WayneM wrote on 3/17/2015, 5:53 PM

Thanks for the link regarding the driver. On my ToDo list.

Any many thanks to all the fine Forum members who slogged through my post and (further down) have provided valuable information. You all reaffirmed my decision to hang with Vegas for this upgrade and it's more because of the intelligent and giving (and humorous at times) community that almost makes up for, IMHO, the lame work product in upgrades from Sony. <RANT INVOKE> I don't get how they focus on bells, whistles, all kinds of 3D and yet can't get the basics down like decent Preview in modest HD video projects. <END RANT>

I was clear to me, even though I reported the benchmarks, that the R9 270 wasn't going to buy me anything with either MC or Sony Renders. It was my obsessive compulsive nature that made my run those tests. . .to confirm the obvious I guess :-) I did hope that maybe it would just be a wee bit (it is St. Patrick's Day) faster but I guess the CPU is the hang-up, but that doesn't matter. I made mention of CUDA in my notes but was aware it was only supported by nVidia and expected no change.

I concluded that just getting better Preview frame rates would be a worth all this. When I read the following in the thread I thought the R9 270 would get me that:

"...Most of the timeline acceleration is written in OpenCL and OpenGL ... The only newer cards that work well are AMD/ATI R9 2xx series with the R9 290 or 290X being the top models. However, those are not supported by the MC AVC and Sony AVC render codecs and will be as fast as CPU only during rendering." (http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?MessageID=917099)

I expected the R9 270 to have some impact on the snail-like frame rates with even a simple title from Sony Pro Titler on top of video. That's my key issue I don't understand.

So, with the R9 270 NewBlue's Titler actually will start. (I don't see why it refused to run at all with the Intel on MoBo graphics if those are really fairly robust.) So, I had to get a new card to run NewBlue which I'd already paid for. Oh well.

An interesting thing (buried in my long report) is that in Preview the frame rate pretty much stays at 60 when it hits the NewBlue Titles while simple Sony Pro titles drag it down to under 3 FPS! So, I'll put a bullet thru the head of the Sony "Pro" Titler and transition to NewBlue for all future projects.

What I was expecting to find, and did not, in the threads here was mention that the Sony Titler is an incredible resource hog. I haven't found anything yet.

Thanks again for all the reponses. . .

Wayne

WayneM wrote on 3/17/2015, 5:59 PM

I am running the ASUS driver. I'll try to find the AMD drivers.

"Would you be willing to post a screen shot of your GPU-z? Does Luxmark see and use both CPU&GPU?"

Is this question to me? I'm not familiar with either GPU-z or LUXMARK.

Thanks,

Wayne

WayneM wrote on 3/17/2015, 6:07 PM

I failed to mention that the video I was testing with does have a color curve correction applied to the video throughout. The old on-MoBo Intel graphics had no problem keeping Preview at 60 frames.

WayneM wrote on 3/17/2015, 6:08 PM

OT: How do you Italicize the text you are replying to? I just end up using quotes.

Tnx

Wayne

WayneM wrote on 3/17/2015, 6:29 PM

Finally tracked down the latest AMD Catalyst package for the R9 270. It says the driver version is 14.501.1003 while my current is 14.201.1001.0.

Once I wrap up a couple open projects I'll try to make the transition.

Wayne

WayneM wrote on 3/17/2015, 6:59 PM

I was trying to track down the Luxmark reference and it is quite the rabbit hole I found myself in. Is there just a tool that I download and the support files to do the benchmark?

Wayne

WayneM wrote on 3/22/2015, 3:48 PM

Thanks for the suggestions, playing catch-up here.

I did track down the AMD Driver Package for the ASUS R9 270. That did get me to the target driver version of v 14.501.1003.0.

That was a couple days ago. I did some test renders against some benchmarks (my own projects) I had done with the ASUS driver (14.201.1001.0) and the times were much better.

However, VP13 Bld 428 did crash/'Stop Working' a couple times. Machine had been cold booted, but I'm letting it stabilize as I do other work for a couple days. When VP stopped, in case it is worth anything (is it) I did have it do the data capture and send it off to Sony. I hoped it might be looked at for a future build. No other programs have crashed or appear to have changed since the driver update for the ASUS R9 270.

I do plan to run a render of the Red Car project but didn't (duh) before I updated the driver. I'll post more when I get results.

Thanks!

Wayne

Altzone wrote on 3/22/2015, 6:37 PM

I've been through the a same saga. With a modern CPU like an i7, GPU acceleration is brings little or no gain at all using the fastest GPU supported by Sony, the Radeon R9 290.
You are wasting your time trying to get GPU acceleration working, just use the fastest i7 CPU and memory you can get.

OldSmoke wrote on 3/22/2015, 8:38 PM

just use the fastest i7 CPU and memory you can get.

Statements like this usually come form user that didn't manage to get GPU acceleration going and therefore can not see the benefit in it. There is no single CPU in the market today that would be even close as fast/powerful as a lower CPU with GPU acceleration. Certain 3rd party plugins don't even work without it; NB Titler Pro comes to my mind. Sure, if you are still in the SD world then maybe, but with HD1080 60p and more, you will need a powerful machine if you don't want to work with proxies.

WayneM wrote on 3/24/2015, 3:59 PM

"Try rendering the SCS Benchmark project to XDCAM or any MPEG-2 codec and you should see major improvements."

Unfortunately, I hadn't tracked down the SCS Benchmark project until after the ASUS R9 270 was installed so I don't have a before and after result against the on MoBo Intel HD3000 result. I did several renders as suggested by Oldsmoke, hoping I used the right selections. Let me know if there is anything else I should do. I did not change the Project Properties from the downloaded files. Below are the times and resulting file sizes. I updated this post with a couple renders using a Sony engine. One is an MXF which I know nothing about but figured it would make for some work by the render, which it did.

Two additional things I noticed. First, for the track events Smart Resample is on in the original project. I left it that way. Second, when I Previewed the project with my settings (such as Preview Size) matching those of the Sony Press Release document the Preview Frame Rate NEVER drops below 29.970p. (I did note that the project doesn't use the Sony ProTitler. :-)

Render SCS Benchmark as: (UPDATED by EDIT)
XDCAM 1920x1080x24P MP4: 1:27 (MM:SS) 186 MB
MC Internet HD 1920x1080x30P MP4: 2:49 (MM:SS) 111 MB
MC BluRay 1920x1080x24P M2V: 1:31 (MM:SS) 165 MB
SONY Blu-ray 1920x1080-24p, 16 Mbps AVC: 2:10 (MM:SS) 97 MB
SONY XAVC 4K 4096x2160 Intra 29.97p MXF: 9:28 (MM:SS) 1634 MB

Wayne

OldSmoke wrote on 3/24/2015, 4:34 PM

Wayne

If you get 1:27 rendering to XDCAM 24p (not sure why you chose that) then that isn't bad at all; I get 00:56. Try XDCAM 30p or 60i. 30p with resample disabled on all events I get 00:18. 60i with resample on, as per SCS test, I get 00:28.

XDCAM 24p at 1:27 vs. 00:56 is not bad considering your lower spec CPU and GPU.

PS: Is there a reason why you haven't OC the 2600K? I used to run it at 4.3HGz with exactly the same MB and a H100 cooler almost 24/7... it was a good and busy time. If you OC your CPU your render time will drop down close 1:00 mark.

WayneM wrote on 3/24/2015, 5:12 PM

I'll try your suggestions and post the full render set again. I'm just pulling rabbits out of a hat here in case it might be of use to someone. . .like that "SONY XAVC 4K 4096x2160 Intra 29.97p MXF" which I have no clue how to use but figured it would take some work. . .and it did. I'll repost the whole gaggle of result below here in a while.

I may try overclocking the CPU. If memory serves that is in the AI Suite. I also am running the ASUS R9 270 at stock speeds. I'll probably boost that up with the ASUS GPU Tweaker since I did get the OC version of hardware just to see the impact on one of the times.

Thanks for the feedback.

Wayne

WayneM wrote on 3/24/2015, 5:30 PM

I don't see XDCAM 30p as a template, so can I make it by changing the 60i one from Upper Field First to Progressive? Do I stay with the 35 Mbps VBR. Again, I've never taken a real deep dive into all the rendering options since HD, BluRay, etc. Brave New World and all that.

OldSmoke wrote on 3/24/2015, 5:43 PM

Yes, changing to progressive will get you 29.97p (30p) but do a test at 60i too.

[I]Again, I've never taken a real deep dive into all the rendering options since HD, BluRay, etc.[/I] Not sure what you mean.

WayneM wrote on 3/24/2015, 6:19 PM

Under the XDCAM EX templates, when I change to 59.940 and Progressive the Frame Size drops to 1280x720. Makes me think I'm in the wrong area or doing something else wrong.

On the Rendering options, I'm saying that they have vastly expanded from when I did some DVDs and so I'm still trying to learn why there are all the options for HD output.

And it is really rhetorical at the moment since I've just got a project with Canon XA20 footage (AVCHD 1920x1080 60p) that needs to go on a DVD (not BluRay) for availability via CreateSpace.

But I suspect BluRay isn't too far in the future for me, so I need to learn.

Thanks for the responses.

Wayne