Comments

Spectralis wrote on 10/22/2011, 2:01 PM
I chose NVidia because it's compatible with After Effects as well.
Byron K wrote on 10/22/2011, 2:21 PM
As VidMus mentioned on this thread:
http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?MessageID=782777&Replies=20

Depending if you use apps that only work w/ CUDA nVidea would probably be the way to go.
Golfer wrote on 10/22/2011, 2:27 PM
thank you ,, I think my issue was that this was the best nvidia card they could offer with there config.. But they could offer 6870 also.. Didn't think 450 would be up to par with pro 11 requirements.. But video cards isn't my specialty.
TheHappyFriar wrote on 10/22/2011, 3:05 PM
If you're only using Vegas the ATI should be better then the Nvidia in preview but the Nvidia should be better in rendering to the specific formats Vegas supports for OpenCL rendering.

6870 is what Sony used for an example benchmark. Assume that a lower # card will perform worse then what Sony says the 6870 will (same with Nvidia).

I'd expect that in a year instead of everything being Nvidia hardware specific we'll see stuff move to OpenCL.
richard-courtney wrote on 10/22/2011, 3:23 PM
If for a broadcast station, I'd go with NVIDIA like the Quadro 6000 with HD-SDI.
(In case you're asking: $3000, but not my money)
Steve Mann wrote on 10/22/2011, 9:26 PM
I try to avoid ATI/Radeon because I have had driver issues with Radeon products in the past. But that's just me.
John_Cline wrote on 10/22/2011, 9:48 PM
Steve, it's me, too. ATI makes decent enough hardware, but their drivers are problematic at best.
Chienworks wrote on 10/22/2011, 9:56 PM
Staunch user of ATI for somewhere close to two decades. I haven't used the drivers that come with the card for probably 15 years. ATI's drivers are a disaster. I let Windows install the Microsoft driver for the card and it Just Plain Works.
monoparadox wrote on 10/22/2011, 9:56 PM
Ditto. I've always found nVidia to have more stable drivers.
UlfLaursen wrote on 10/23/2011, 6:17 AM
Me too :-)

I just got the nvidia 560 and I love it

Ulf
Grazie wrote on 10/23/2011, 7:38 AM
Had the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti since June(?). No complaints with VP11. Slinkily & slithery with Preview at BEST, but MUST use SONY Fxs, MBL - nah, not so much . . .

Grazie


hazydave wrote on 10/23/2011, 9:52 PM
It's not just the drivers. Years and years ago, I had ATi cards, back when everything was analog but only ATi or Matrox has really clean signals.

I had repeated problems with the ATi installers failing to install things, and other problems with support software -- forget about the drivers.

Seems to still be there. The installer for my HD6970 listed errors on install. At least one case was not even remotely an error -- they were trying to install a Microsoft package, a .NET framework or some-such, and the installer got kicked out because a newer version was in place. They can't even check return codes? I've honestly seen better coding done by summer interns.

And once I did it installed, I try to load the "AMD Vision Engine Control Center"... nope. Not only do I not see a window, but the attempt bogs down and eventually crashes my system. They supposedly have a GPU-accelerated AVC encoder in that module... I really wanted to give it a chance.

As a result of this, and, well, less than amazing results on "regular stuff", I've now ordered a GTX570 as well. I'll compare results on my system, but unless the ATi is amazingly faster, it's going back... the software DOES matter. Plus, the nVidia will, in theory, also accelerate TMPGEnc Video Mastering Works.. a tool I find fairly useful for low bitrate web AVC (seems cleaner than MainConcept or AVC at lower bitrates) and also in particular its batch encoding function. And there's also the lastest Neat Video.

I'd like to see the open standard get full support, but AMD isn't helping, with this level of software.
hazydave wrote on 10/30/2011, 12:35 AM
I eventually found out the secret... AMD drivers want to be installed just once. And the error report has been there forever, but doesn't actually affect anything. Very user hostile, but if I totally wiped everything, I got the drivers and the Control Center program working normally.

I did some comparisons with the nVidia GTX570... the AMD HD6970 was the clear winner on my system. There are certainly faster nVidia cards, but for the price, nope.

I put some of the results up here:
http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=784345

I had a few issues with the nVidia rig. First of all was video quality -- the nVidia card output (DVI to HDMI on two monitors) was horrible... it looked like an timey analog display with a nasty impedance mismatch. I'm not even sure how you'd do that with a digital interface.

Second problem was the latest drivers.. I got a number of OpenCL errors. I saw these on both MainConcept CODECs, and also on the LuxMark and Sandra GpCryptBench benchmarks. On the HD6970 I got a LuxMark rating of 10326, for what it's worth.

I also ran the OpenGL benchmark "FurMark", since I use BCC7, and some of those (and Sony's) plug-ins are more dependent on OpenGL than OpenCL. The nVidia did a 3937, the AMD did a 7676... and that AMD rating was with a DVD Architect rendering going on the background, so I bet it goes a little faster otherwise (larger = better for FurMark).

The TMPGenc encoder didn't actually use CUDA for any H.264 rendering, only for some filters you can apply, I suppose similar to FX one can apply in Vegas. I'm unlikely to ever use those, I mostly use TMPGenc to encode AVC at multiple resolutions in batch mode for online use, from something mastered in Vegas.