What is Cuda

[Mir96TA]

What is Cuda (I read some sort parrell computing or some thing)
How can it benfit me
I do not do programing
OS XP Sp3
MB GigaByte P35C DS3R
Should I just ignore cause it meant for every day user ?

 

[Keysplayr]

You may not have a use for it at all. What do you use your computer for?

 

[Mir96TA]

Originally posted by: Keysplayr
You may not have a use for it at all. What do you use your computer for?

HD TV
HD DvD and Blu Ray Player
Divx and H264 Codec base Video files
I play CC3
DVi to Mpeg or DvD Disc
Watch Internet Porn :evil:
Browsing the Forums E mail

 

[akugami]

Basically if you're not doing video encoding or some other task that lends itself to massive parallelism (or are a programmer) then it won't really benefit you. Unfortunately pretty much all the encoders are not quite up to snuff yet and probably more useful for limited encoding to some resolutions or as a demo.

PhysX, the nVidia physics acceleration engine, also runs on top of CUDA but games out now don't really do much. Some games add a few extra graphical effects but its in no way a game changer yet. The most impressive of the added effects was realistic cloth movements in Mirror's Edge.

For now, it's basically a checkbox feature.

 

[Mir96TA]

I See now
Thanks

 

[Wreckage]

Folding@home, video transcoding and game physics are some of the more popular applications for CUDA.

 

[FuryofFive]

Updated...
apparently the 8800GTS may not have cuda... unfortunately. i found this out the hardway. I use tmpegexpress 4, and they were praising CUDA and how it makes life soo much faster heh.. and how the plain old cpu runs crappy. they even did fun little C2Q benchmarks.

I say this because i have an 8800GTS.. im actually considering going downward to find a CUDA enabled card heh

 

[Scali]

The 8800GTS does have Cuda. Cuda was first introduced with the 8800 series.
I use an 8800GTS 320 (the old model) myself, and I've dabbled a bit with the Cuda SDK. Works fine, as does PhysX, and Badaboom and such (ofcourse you do need to install the latest drivers to get decent support for Cuda/PhysX).

What Cuda is, has changed over the years. At first it was the name for nVidia's programming language for the 8800 series of GPUs. But they later revised the naming. Cuda is now only the 'framework' for programming the GPUs (much like how .NET is the framework and eg C# or VB.NET are programming languages for that framework).
The programming language is now called C for Cuda.

So in short, Cuda is for using your GPU for non-graphics calculations. Especially tasks that are very parallel in nature and/or use lots of floating-point calculations can be accelerated by Cuda. Examples of such are physics, video encoding, photo processing (PhotoShop CS4) or things like protein folding (eg Folding@Home).
So it could be useful to you if you can use an application that is accelerated with Cuda.

 

[FuryofFive]

Originally posted by: Scali
The 8800GTS does have Cuda. Cuda was first introduced with the 8800 series.
I use an 8800GTS 320 (the old model) myself, and I've dabbled a bit with the Cuda SDK. Works fine, as does PhysX, and Badaboom and such (ofcourse you do need to install the latest drivers to get decent support for Cuda/PhysX).

What Cuda is, has changed over the years. At first it was the name for nVidia's programming language for the 8800 series of GPUs. But they later revised the naming. Cuda is now only the 'framework' for programming the GPUs (much like how .NET is the framework and eg C# or VB.NET are programming languages for that framework).
The programming language is now called C for Cuda.

So in short, Cuda is for using your GPU for non-graphics calculations. Especially tasks that are very parallel in nature and/or use lots of floating-point calculations can be accelerated by Cuda. Examples of such are physics, video encoding, photo processing (PhotoShop CS4) or things like protein folding (eg Folding@Home).
So it could be useful to you if you can use an application that is accelerated with Cuda.

aww that sux then... that pegasys doesnt support it for tmpeg express... i dont wanna upgrade my card just to support cuda.. i suppose if it worked faster heh

 

[Scali]

Yea, I just looked on their site:
"The GeForce8800 GTX/GTS video card using the G80 core is not currently supported. Thank you for your understanding."

This could be because there are different versions of Cuda hardware support.
nVidia calls this "Compute Capability"
G80 supports only version 1.0
Newer videocards support 1.1 or 1.2. It could be that they require a higher version than 1.0. One reason I could think of is that newer versions support double precision floating point arithmetic.

 

[FuryofFive]

Originally posted by: Scali
Yea, I just looked on their site:
"The GeForce8800 GTX/GTS video card using the G80 core is not currently supported. Thank you for your understanding."

This could be because there are different versions of Cuda hardware support.
nVidia calls this "Compute Capability"
G80 supports only version 1.0
Newer videocards support 1.1 or 1.2. It could be that they require a higher version than 1.0. One reason I could think of is that newer versions support double precision floating point arithmetic.

oh well, ill just look up a card on newegg and get something equivalent, probaly cost me 100 bux heh

 

[FuryofFive]

hmmm i guess cuda is in the newer versions of tmpeg express
http://tmpgenc.pegasys-inc.com/en/product/te4xp.html

i wanna get a card to use to use CUDA

would having more memory make a difference for CUDA?

i was eyeing 2 cards
GTS 250 w/ 1mb
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16814125268
GTX 260
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16814130372

im actually confused.. because it says with filters. i dont usually run filters. i usually only re-code the video from the AVCHD format to .wmv format for dvd creation
will i still see a speed increase without adding all the filters?

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: FuryofFive

Originally posted by: Scali
The 8800GTS does have Cuda. Cuda was first introduced with the 8800 series.
I use an 8800GTS 320 (the old model) myself, and I've dabbled a bit with the Cuda SDK. Works fine, as does PhysX, and Badaboom and such (ofcourse you do need to install the latest drivers to get decent support for Cuda/PhysX).

What Cuda is, has changed over the years. At first it was the name for nVidia's programming language for the 8800 series of GPUs. But they later revised the naming. Cuda is now only the 'framework' for programming the GPUs (much like how .NET is the framework and eg C# or VB.NET are programming languages for that framework).
The programming language is now called C for Cuda.

So in short, Cuda is for using your GPU for non-graphics calculations. Especially tasks that are very parallel in nature and/or use lots of floating-point calculations can be accelerated by Cuda. Examples of such are physics, video encoding, photo processing (PhotoShop CS4) or things like protein folding (eg Folding@Home).
So it could be useful to you if you can use an application that is accelerated with Cuda.

aww that sux then... that pegasys doesnt support it for tmpeg express... i dont wanna upgrade my card just to support cuda.. i suppose if it worked faster heh

TMPGEnc Cuda support works great on my 8600 GT. I love it. I didn't purchase my 8600 for the Cuda support in TMPGenc, nor did I buy TMPGEnc for the Cuda features. I just realized after the fact they worked together once I enabled the "use Cuda if available" option in the menus, then I saw the encoder offloading 25-75% of the encode work to the GPU.

For me it was like finding $5 under a couch cushion, surely it was my $5 to begin with, and I already owned the couch, but for some reason finding money that you didn't realize you had makes it seem like you are $5 richer. With Cuda and TMPGEnc I feel like I got something for nothing, which isn't true of course, but it feels that way every time I run an encode job.

 

[FuryofFive]

Originally posted by: Idontcare

Originally posted by: FuryofFive

Originally posted by: Scali
The 8800GTS does have Cuda. Cuda was first introduced with the 8800 series.
I use an 8800GTS 320 (the old model) myself, and I've dabbled a bit with the Cuda SDK. Works fine, as does PhysX, and Badaboom and such (ofcourse you do need to install the latest drivers to get decent support for Cuda/PhysX).

What Cuda is, has changed over the years. At first it was the name for nVidia's programming language for the 8800 series of GPUs. But they later revised the naming. Cuda is now only the 'framework' for programming the GPUs (much like how .NET is the framework and eg C# or VB.NET are programming languages for that framework).
The programming language is now called C for Cuda.

So in short, Cuda is for using your GPU for non-graphics calculations. Especially tasks that are very parallel in nature and/or use lots of floating-point calculations can be accelerated by Cuda. Examples of such are physics, video encoding, photo processing (PhotoShop CS4) or things like protein folding (eg Folding@Home).
So it could be useful to you if you can use an application that is accelerated with Cuda.

aww that sux then... that pegasys doesnt support it for tmpeg express... i dont wanna upgrade my card just to support cuda.. i suppose if it worked faster heh

TMPGEnc Cuda support works great on my 8600 GT. I love it. I didn't purchase my 8600 for the Cuda support in TMPGenc, nor did I buy TMPGEnc for the Cuda features. I just realized after the fact they worked together once I enabled the "use Cuda if available" option in the menus, then I saw the encoder offloading 25-75% of the encode work to the GPU.

For me it was like finding $5 under a couch cushion, surely it was my $5 to begin with, and I already owned the couch, but for some reason finding money that you didn't realize you had makes it seem like you are $5 richer. With Cuda and TMPGEnc I feel like I got something for nothing, which isn't true of course, but it feels that way every time I run an encode job.

would that work with an 8500GT??? i have a spare one lying around lol

 

[FuryofFive]

this one http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16814150245

 

[FuryofFive]

in thinking that card is a piece of crap lol... im better of buying something like an 8600GT heh

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: FuryofFive
would that work with an 8500GT??? i have a spare one lying around lol

I am really the wrong person to ask, I track very little of the "which GPU is in my card" stuff because the names change during rebrands/etc and I get tired of making the mental investment TBH. I'm sure someone here can chime in and tell you if it does or doesn't. I can only confirm that whatever CUDA is supported by the 8600 GT is usable with TMPGEnc 4.x.

 

[Wreckage]

Originally posted by: FuryofFive


would having more memory make a difference for CUDA?

i was eyeing 2 cards
GTS 250 w/ 1mb
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16814125268
GTX 260
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16814130372

Memory has no impact on CUDA really. The 260 will be a lot faster than the 250 in CUDA applications.

 

[FuryofFive]

Originally posted by: Idontcare

Originally posted by: FuryofFive
would that work with an 8500GT??? i have a spare one lying around lol

I am really the wrong person to ask, I track very little of the "which GPU is in my card" stuff because the names change during rebrands/etc and I get tired of making the mental investment TBH. I'm sure someone here can chime in and tell you if it does or doesn't. I can only confirm that whatever CUDA is supported by the 8600 GT is usable with TMPGEnc 4.x.

ok, im not looking to game with it. i have my laptop for that at the moment. 8600GT or 9600GT would work

 

[FuryofFive]

Originally posted by: Wreckage

Originally posted by: FuryofFive


would having more memory make a difference for CUDA?

i was eyeing 2 cards
GTS 250 w/ 1mb
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16814125268
GTX 260
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16814130372

Memory has no impact on CUDA really. The 260 will be a lot faster than the 250 in CUDA applications.

for just converting between formats? because those benchmarks are for added filters and whatnot. and i dont really use filters. more of just converting for me

for the price though, i think 50$ differnece, would you say its a drastic gain?

i was looking at the 250, mainly for the price and the 1gb of memory

 

[Scali]

Yea, funny enough the 8600 series is a newer, more advanced GPU than the 8800 series.
You also notice that with things like mpg4/BluRay acceleration.

I'd go for the GTX260 personally. It's an incredibly fast card (great if you like gaming), and it is the latest GPU from nVidia, so with the best possible Cuda support (the GTS250 is actually a rebranded 9800GTX+, which has a long history, because that chip started out as the 8800GT at some point).
I'd buy one myself, it's just that I'm trying to wait for the DX11 cards from ATi and/or nVidia that should start arriving later this year.

 

[FuryofFive]

Originally posted by: Scali
Yea, funny enough the 8600 series is a newer, more advanced GPU than the 8800 series.
You also notice that with things like mpg4/BluRay acceleration.

I'd go for the GTX260 personally. It's an incredibly fast card (great if you like gaming), and it is the latest GPU from nVidia, so with the best possible Cuda support (the GTS250 is actually a rebranded 9800GTX+, which has a long history, because that chip started out as the 8800GT at some point).
I'd buy one myself, it's just that I'm trying to wait for the DX11 cards from ATi and/or nVidia that should start arriving later this year.

true, but if you wait forever. you'll never buy anything