Fairly basic graphics card question

[larryccf]

My computer's specs are in my sig below

I asked this in another forum and received a couple of suggestions but not an answer to my question (in bold below)

basically, my dilemna is that the Samsung SM951 or the new Samsung 950 Pro coming out needs a PCIe 3.0 slot to reach spec'd transfer speeds. My Asus Z97M-Plus (micro-ATX) mobo only has one PCIe 3.0 slot, and it currently has an Asus Nvidia GTX 750 Ti GPU installed.

I don't want to have buy a new mobo, new case, etc just to have a PCIe 3.0 slot available. I do not do any gaming, and only occasionally watch any videos on my monitor, otherwise the computer is used for business applications, internet browsing and email an video capture and rendering.

I actually do a lot of video rendering (using Handbrake), which seems to be primarily CPU activity - when i'm rendering, i'm not playing or watching any video files. HandBrake converts / compresses any captured video files to mp4-h.264.

So my question, is the GTX 750 graphics card doing anything i'll miss if i remove it? - the reason for the samsung 950 PRO, when i installed the current OS drive, a samsung xp941 (first gen PCIe SSD), my video rendering times dropped by 55-60%, so i'm hoping or looking for even faster rendering times when writing from one PCIe SSD to another.

Yesterday i removed the GTX 750 Ti card, and right away noticed that
general resolution seems sharper - not sure why, but it's definitely higher res - monitor is an Asus VE247 24" and set to 1920x1080. The audio on my monitor's speakers has not only improved but volume is higher which is great - before if you turned the volume up they sounded like two crack addled ducks being strangled

i ripped 3 BDs using MakeMKV last night - didn't see any time to rip difference but i did not do an exact side-by-side comparison ripping the same BD with and without the graphics card -- but the rip times are right at what they were. This morning i used HandBrake to convert / compress to mp4-h.264, and again saw no time increase. Watching task manager, saw the same 99-100% cpu usage and the same 3 - 3.5 GB memory usage

Is there something a graphics card does in the above scenarios that i am not noticing?

Appreciate any insight into this

 

[LurchFrinky]

It looks like the answer is "no."
I was going to say that you would miss the performance of discrete graphics, but this is apparently not the case.

You could move the video card to the PCIe 2.0 slot if you wanted to keep it for some other reason. Although I find it odd that video and audio performance would increase with the removal of a video card.

 

[larryccf]

i would but the whole purpose of buying a 2nd PCIe SSD is to speed up video rendering - when i first installed the xp941 as OS drive, files that took 65-75 minutes to render (generally 31-36 GB files), time to render dropped to 28-38 minutes. 2nd reason is my mobo is micro-ATX - the PCIe 2.0 slot is too close to the edge of the board - the 750 Ti fan shroud would be rubbing the case's side cover, and that's only if it clears the connector plugged in - see pix below with the xp941 currently installed in the 2.0 slot

That got me thinking, basically, while the xp941 has decent specs compared to a sata SSD, i'm still hampered by the sata SSD's read speed, as when the file is being rendered, it's being "read" from a sammy 840 EVO. I'd like to keep the xp941 in the PCIe 2.0 slot and use it for my "worktable" SSD and see how much times drop further.

 

[Piroko]

So my question, is the GTX 750 graphics card doing anything i'll miss if i remove it?

Don't think so, no.

- the reason for the samsung 950 PRO, when i installed the current OS drive, a samsung xp941 (first gen PCIe SSD), my video rendering times dropped by 55-60%, so i'm hoping or looking for even faster rendering times when writing from one PCIe SSD to another.

You were probably a little bit I/O bottlenecked when you were reading and writing to and from the same drive. That can happen, especially with some uncompressed/lossless video formats. But I think you removed that bottleneck, adding more SSDs might not get you much of an additional return past that point. You're free to try though and give us an update if you might

 

[Techhog]

Your board has an M.2 slot. You can just take the SSD off of the PCIe card and put it in the M.2 slot, can't you? Or is there some reason that wouldn't work?

EDIT: Nevermind, it wouldn't work... Take out the graphics card and sell it for a few bucks.

 

[larryccf]

Your board has an M.2 slot. You can just take the SSD off of the PCIe card and put it in the M.2 slot, can't you? Or is there some reason that wouldn't work?

EDIT: Nevermind, it wouldn't work... Take out the graphics card and sell it for a few bucks.

You're right there is a M.2 socket but it's x2 - the xp941 when i mounted in the M.2 socket only showed 770Mb/s read and 560 MB/s write - moved to the PCIe 2.0 slot, it hit full transfer speeds (1180 read, 870 write)plus that M.2 socket kills or dis-ables 2 sata ports

and depending what a 2nd PCIe shows, i may have no choice but to go with a new build- i can always throw the 750 Ti back in this and give it to the wife or turn it into a HTPC

Piroko: "....You were probably a little bit I/O bottlenecked when you were reading and writing to and from the same drive..."

I suspect you're correct, i'm not that computer literate but i assumed there was probably some "turbulence" as it's referred to in fluid dynamics.

I've tried all the combos i could with the one PCIe drive, ie which to render from/to, but if i see an improvement in render times similiar to what i saw jumping from a sata SSD to the xp941, that will motivate me to assembling a rig with 3 PCIe drive capacity - I'd consider this board a 3 PCIe drive board if the M.2 socket wasn't x2 and the fact that using it dis-ables 2 sata ports - i've got five sata drives connected plus a BD Rewriter.

 

[Headfoot]

If you're really serious about your render times, I'd altogether switch your board and CPU to a 5820k on an Asrock x99 Extreme4 or better. The asrock boards have x4 M.2 slots which would solve your problem and allow you to keep your GPU. And the 5820k is going to be faster than the 4790 at rendering provided you're using a modern multithreaded renderer (and you're overclocking?). You should be able to get the majority of the cost of the new stuff by selling your current stuff, the 4790 has pretty good resale value.

 

[larryccf]

Headfoot - you're right but just having finished this build 10 or 11 months ago, and about $800 overbudget, i'd really rather stretch this build's life out a little. I'd like to see 3 years use out of it at a minimum.

When the X99 boards came out i looked into the cost to upgrade, and between the cpu (5820k or iirc 5930k) i was looking at approx $1000-$1100 for cpu, board & ram

Keep in mind, up until this build i was using an old duo core system, that the rendering time ran 3-4 hours on a 30 - 36 GB file, so i'm already feeling like i'm "cooking, smoking & burning". If i can step it up a little with the addition of another PCIe SSD, that's an easy step to take.

Plus, at 66 yrs old, you have no idea the electronic terminology i had to learn to make sure i knew what i was buying, as far as compatibility (this was my first DIY build).

Thanks for the suggestion though

 

[boozzer]

you found the problem, sell it.