ATI Stream vs. nVidia CUDA battle royale

[thilanliyan]

http://www.pcper.com/article.p...=745&type=expert&pid=1

I'd take image quality over faster encode times (unless I was just encoding for a PMP) so nV would be my choice if I used those programs. Thankfully there are free programs that will do this on the CPU (I just let it do some batch encoding overnight since it takes a couple of hours).

 

[TurtleCrusher]

It appears as if they looks nearly identical unless to source material is unnatural (the plush life). Its only that example where the difference is clear CUDA is better, the other two differ due to taste in soft vs grain video quality.

With that said, I'd still pick CUDA as their GPGPU performance is only marginally slower for marginally better, permanent results.

 

[thilanliyan]

Yeah I prefer the sharper look so I'd go with Cuda as well. However, I won't be switching from CPU encoding anytime soon...it feels to me like those programs are skipping work. If something like Ripbot264 came with GPU encoding I'd definitely try that.

 

[alyarb]

meh. i'd like there to be fewer alterations to the source. if i want it sharper or softer, then i would've specified that prior to encoding. the speed is great, and it definitely has potential for compressing 720/1080 down to PSP/ipod or whatever. but yeah, when it comes to compressing blurays for full-size playback i think i'll stick with a 30-hour x264 job with all the fixins.

 

[thilanliyan]

Originally posted by: alyarb
i'll stick with a 30-hour x264 job with all the fixins.

30 hours!!! What type of encoding takes that long? Is that with a quad core?

 

[WelshBloke]

How do you know if the GPU is doing any work? My g80 dosnt heat up at all.

 

[WelshBloke]

oops sry dp

 

[thilanliyan]

Originally posted by: WelshBloke
How do you know if the GPU is doing any work? My g80 dosnt heat up at all.

You can check the GPU usage in Rivatuner. Yeah it's not gonna heat up much...mine didn't with Stream.

 

[WelshBloke]

Originally posted by: thilan29

Originally posted by: WelshBloke
How do you know if the GPU is doing any work? My g80 dosnt heat up at all.

You can check the GPU usage in Rivatuner. Yeah it's not gonna heat up much...mine didn't with Stream.

Gpu usage doesnt work with g80, and I'm using win7 so rivatuner dosnt either.

 

[Qbah]

Originally posted by: WelshBloke
Gpu usage doesnt work with g80, and I'm using win7 so rivatuner dosnt either.

OT, but I'm running Win7 RC 64bit and Riva Tuner works fine for me. I got some nice plugins for temps too ! See?

 

[evolucion8]

AFAIK, there's no way to track GPU usage with nVidia GPU's.

The match up was nice, CUDA image quality was slighly better overall, even though is very hard to pin point and probably is unnoticeable when viewed during motion, but is nice to see how much power can be untapped on both GPU vendors.

 

[Nemesis 1]

That was interesting but the testing was flawed.

2 systems should have been used . One intel nehalem 1 phII . than we get system compared
We also see how much work the CPU is actually doing . For a really good REEL TRUE test of transcoding The cpu shouldn't even run as this is GPU transcoding . Or the weakest cpu should have been used single core than 2 cores than 3 cores than 4 cores.

But that would only show what the CPU is doing comparred to the GPU . I like the AMD vs. NV thing . But lets be honest . This is suppose to be about GPU transcoding . I am more interested in knowing what the GPU is doing VS. The CPUs workload /.

The best test woul be use of a cpu that runs but does zero transcoding . Than lets see how gpus do in time . Problem is eternity be a long wait for GPU transcoding if the CPU doesn't do that which the GPU cannot do. GPU is only a helper here. Until I see a gpu transcode without CPU . GPU is nothing more than helper. Besides transcoding on GPUs look like hell. Comparred to AMD/INTEL cpu transcode

 

[TurtleCrusher]

Originally posted by: Nemesis 1
That was interesting but the testing was flawed.

2 systems should have been used . One intel nehalem 1 phII . than we get system compared
We also see how much work the CPU is actually doing . For a really good REEL TRUE test of transcoding The cpu shouldn't even run as this is GPU transcoding . Or the weakest cpu should have been used single core than 2 cores than 3 cores than 4 cores.

But that would only show what the CPU is doing comparred to the GPU . I like the AMD vs. NV thing . But lets be honest . This is suppose to be about GPU transcoding . I am more interested in knowing what the GPU is doing VS. The CPUs workload /.

The best test woul be use of a cpu that runs but does zero transcoding . Than lets see how gpus do in time . Problem is eternity be a long wait for GPU transcoding if the CPU doesn't do that which the GPU cannot do. GPU is only a helper here. Until I see a gpu transcode without CPU . GPU is nothing more than helper. Besides transcoding on GPUs look like hell. Comparred to AMD/INTEL cpu transcode

That makes sense. More variables are needed in this case to show what is actually happening.

 

[WelshBloke]

Originally posted by: Qbah

Originally posted by: WelshBloke
Gpu usage doesnt work with g80, and I'm using win7 so rivatuner dosnt either.

OT, but I'm running Win7 RC 64bit and Riva Tuner works fine for me. I got some nice plugins for temps too ! See?

Forgive the late reply I'e been playing with my hackintosh.

Are you using Win7 drivers and a standard rivatuner install?

 

[Qbah]

Originally posted by: WelshBloke

Originally posted by: Qbah

Originally posted by: WelshBloke
Gpu usage doesnt work with g80, and I'm using win7 so rivatuner dosnt either.

OT, but I'm running Win7 RC 64bit and Riva Tuner works fine for me. I got some nice plugins for temps too ! See?

Forgive the late reply I'e been playing with my hackintosh.

Are you using Win7 drivers and a standard rivatuner install?

Yep, using the newest Catalysts now (9.7 I think?) and a standard Riva Tuner v2.24 from Guru3D. Sometimes the temps on my tray don't show up after reboot, need to re-enable the two plugins to fix it. That's the only thing that one can consider "not working".

 

[bobross419]

Unfortunately, I can't see a difference in anything there and I'm sure plenty of other people (not necessarily techies that frequent the Vid Card section of AT) won't see any difference either. All the stuff I read about in that article was exciting, but I was really disappointed that I couldn't see any difference at all - I spent a few minutes looking at each picture too... maybe my monitor sucks or my eyes suck.

 

[thilanliyan]

There are definitely differences...the ATI imnage is a bit softer.

 

[Pelu]

omg... I only want hardware physics in ati cards thats IT!!!!!

 

[Pelu]

oh by the way.... physcs in cards but in a not of the same generation one lol