CUDA support in Premiere Pro and After Effects CS4

[Davidh373]

Hi Guys,
I'm going to be building a workstation for my production company (we aren't big yet, don't think we have millions to throw around yet...)

I'm just wondering if CUDA excellerates CS4? I can't find information on CS4 stuff anymore. If so, are there only certain cards that are supported for GPU acceleration at all?

Another question, There is a lot of talk about CS5's "Mercury Playback Engine." I've seen a list of supported cards, but I'm wondering if other CUDA cards will accelerate stuff like rendering even if they don't help at all with the playback. This question would apply to both CS4 and CS5.

I don't really see a reason for CUDA to only work on certain cards... it seems... lacking? Anyway, I was thinking about getting a 465 1GB for the workstation. If that doesn't work the 285 (on the CS5 supported CUDA Card list) will be my next choice. If that doesn't work I guess i'll just get the 465 and have no Cuda support... which seems stupid but I guess it'll have to do...

 

[zagood]

Some info and recommendations here regarding CS5 (some of mine...just don't want to retype):
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2092798

Theoretically, CUDA workarounds should work with any of the cards listed here:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/cuda_gpus.html

The lower-class ones will be slow, obviously, but should still work.

I believe ATI Stream works to accelerate in Premiere CS4 (as well as CUDA). Other than that, it's all OpenGL so works on both vendors.

p.s. oh...heh...you're actually looking for confirmation on your own posts in that thread...

 

[BenSkywalker]

I'm just wondering if CUDA excellerates CS4?

No, OpenGL support in CS4(for ATi or nVidia).

There is a lot of talk about CS5's "Mercury Playback Engine." I've seen a list of supported cards, but I'm wondering if other CUDA cards will accelerate stuff like rendering even if they don't help at all with the playback.

There are workarounds to get at least the GT26x or higher parts running Mercury under CS5, not sure about the G9x core parts. I posted how to do it on these boards previously, if you have CS5 and want to give it a whirl I can track it down for you. The reason why they have restrictions is that Mercury is designed to be entirely real time. If a GPU can't handle the maximum level of effects applied at once in real time, then it fails to match the requirements for Mercury standards. I'm sure nVidia encouraged Adobe to err on the side of caution and push for a GTX285 or higher(and Adobe's target customers for the most part don't bat an eye at a $300 video card that improves performance by ~ an order of magnitude ).

 

[Davidh373]

No, OpenGL support in CS4(for ATi or nVidia).



There are workarounds to get at least the GT26x or higher parts running Mercury under CS5, not sure about the G9x core parts. I posted how to do it on these boards previously, if you have CS5 and want to give it a whirl I can track it down for you. The reason why they have restrictions is that Mercury is designed to be entirely real time. If a GPU can't handle the maximum level of effects applied at once in real time, then it fails to match the requirements for Mercury standards. I'm sure nVidia encouraged Adobe to err on the side of caution and push for a GTX285 or higher(and Adobe's target customers for the most part don't bat an eye at a $300 video card that improves performance by ~ an order of magnitude ).

I've been looking around for hacks and have some bookmarked. Pretty much any card with CUDA cores seems able to use The Mercury Playback Engine, but the site tends to recommend the higher end cards. All of the Fermi cards seem highly recommended. Do you by chance know how stable it will run with the hacks enabled? I don't think we need a lot of crashing or errors going on... especially if we are going to pay the extra $500 for CS5 over CS4 just to use them. (on the 465)