Video Card for Encoding/Rendering

[swilli89]

Hey guys, long time reader and lurker here.

I'm a small time videographer as well as a student and am looking into using a video card to accelerate my video encoding and rendering.

Currently, the longest time draws in the process (besides editing of course!) of making my videos are capturing, rendering any effects, and encoding the final file to be put on disc. Obviously I can't help the capturing process as it is strictly in real time, at least for me so I am looking to speed up the latter two. I remember reading in different places sometime ago that modern graphics cards can help the CPU when encoding or rendering. My system is as follows

Core 2 Q6600 at 3.0 ghz
4 GB DDR2 - 800
Radeon 1950xt 256mb (i know, i know)
Asus P5W DH Delux

Now of course I would love to have a 980x and 12 gb ram and quadfire 5870's but that is NOT in the cards for me. I simply want to know the most economical GPU solution to aid in what I am doing. I use the latest version of Adobe's creative suite including Encore DVD, Premier Pro, and After Effects.

Can anyone recommend a card for this job or at least point me to an article where that is examined? All of the reviews I read are strictly FPS charts for games. Thanks!

 

[swilli89]

Well nevermind, I can't believe this bullshit I read at adobe.com

http://www.adobe.com/products/creativesuite/production/performance/

http://www.nvidia.com/object/adobe_mercury_playback_engine.html

It seems that not only does Premier Pro STILL not support GPU's for hardware encoding, but when it does in a "future release" it will ONLY be nVidia cards! If you look at the video on that site of encoding performance, I was floored by the improvement that using a video card gives. I can't say how many hours I have been just waiting by my computer as it encodes, sometimes 3 or 4 hour encoding sessions!

And even better, it only supports a handful of quadro cards and the ONLY GTX card it supports is the 285. NOT the 280 or 275 or 260, all with the exact same architecture.. what bullshit.

 

[Dark4ng3l]

Welcome to the massive price gauging/proprietary standard world of the dear leader JHH. He knows whats best for ya and does not care on bit about what you actually want.

 

[gsellis]

The reason Mercury is requires those cards is CUDA. CUDA already works on the Quadros. And if you look into Mercury further, they do state that they will look at other cards in the future. I already found mention of the FX 3700 working with it somewhere in the bowels of the internet (iow - I cannot find the link again). New 3700's (last years model) can be had for under $400.

 

[tcsenter]

There may be other options or alternative products out there that support GPU encoding or acceleration but most are going to be CUDA implementations at present time.

 

[tweakboy]

Quadro my friend

www.nvidia.com

 

[happy medium]

Well nevermind, I can't believe this bullshit I read at adobe.com

http://www.adobe.com/products/creativesuite/production/performance/

http://www.nvidia.com/object/adobe_mercury_playback_engine.html

It seems that not only does Premier Pro STILL not support GPU's for hardware encoding, but when it does in a "future release" it will ONLY be nVidia cards! If you look at the video on that site of encoding performance, I was floored by the improvement that using a video card gives. I can't say how many hours I have been just waiting by my computer as it encodes, sometimes 3 or 4 hour encoding sessions!

And even better, it only supports a handful of quadro cards and the ONLY GTX card it supports is the 285. NOT the 280 or 275 or 260, all with the exact same architecture.. what bullshit.

Used gtx 285's go for 250$, thats not too bad ha?
edit:
Ask this guy to buy just 1 ,he's selling 2 gtx 285's for 450$ shipped.

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2062566

 

[Dark Shroud]

This is why ATI should be supported in the push for OpenCL support.

 

[BenSkywalker]

It seems that not only does Premier Pro STILL not support GPU's for hardware encoding, but when it does in a "future release" it will ONLY be nVidia cards!

In all honesty for what you are looking for I would go with a GTX470 solution. There is a reason the part is six months late, has an extra billion transistors and costs extra compared to the ATi counterpart- it is precisely because nVidia spent enormous resources on making sure that they dominated this market segment.

And even better, it only supports a handful of quadro cards and the ONLY GTX card it supports is the 285. NOT the 280 or 275 or 260, all with the exact same architecture.. what bullshit.

The Mercury engine is supposed to be entirely in real time with no rendering required. It is possible that the other parts simply aren't fast enough to handle it; not saying that is the case but it may be why they have that limitation in place. IME apps that state they require a Quadro part have all worked on a GeForce counterpart albeit with some performance issues from time to time.

This is why ATI should be supported in the push for OpenCL support.

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3783&p=6

The 5870 loses out to the GTX285, sometimes badly, under OpenCL. ATi isn't making any serious effort into being competitive in this particular market, while nVidia is. This is very evident when you start looking at the state of GPGPU as it stands now. It is a tradeoff, ship six months earlier, smaller die and cooler running while getting stomped at GPGPU tasks. ATi knew the tradeoff and took it, most people think they were right in doing so too.

 

[soccerballtux]

In all honesty for what you are looking for I would go with a GTX470 solution. There is a reason the part is six months late, has an extra billion transistors and costs extra compared to the ATi counterpart- it is precisely because nVidia spent enormous resources on making sure that they dominated this market segment.



The Mercury engine is supposed to be entirely in real time with no rendering required. It is possible that the other parts simply aren't fast enough to handle it; not saying that is the case but it may be why they have that limitation in place. IME apps that state they require a Quadro part have all worked on a GeForce counterpart albeit with some performance issues from time to time.



http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3783&p=6

The 5870 loses out to the GTX285, sometimes badly, under OpenCL. ATi isn't making any serious effort into being competitive in this particular market, while nVidia is. This is very evident when you start looking at the state of GPGPU as it stands now. It is a tradeoff, ship six months earlier, smaller die and cooler running while getting stomped at GPGPU tasks. ATi knew the tradeoff and took it, most people think they were right in doing so too.

that's a cache problem, the shaders can't compute anything if they're starved for data.

 

[BenSkywalker]

that's a cache problem, the shaders can't compute anything if they're starved for data.

If it was solely a cache issue I would expect the 480 to have a much larger advantage over the 285 then it does. Not saying that cache isn't an issue by any means, just that there are likely multiple factors contributing to the performance disparity.

 

[T2k]

The reason Mercury is requires those cards is CUDA. CUDA already works on the Quadros. And if you look into Mercury further, they do state that they will look at other cards in the future. I already found mention of the FX 3700 working with it somewhere in the bowels of the internet (iow - I cannot find the link again). New 3700's (last years model) can be had for under $400.

The problem is that CUDA works on any Nvidia card so it is to screw you, nothing else.

 

[T2k]

welcome to the massive price gauging/proprietary standard world of the dear leader jhh. He knows whats best for ya and does not care on bit about what you actually want.

this... ^_^