Cuda impact on renders in Premiere Pro CS5

[Peter Cote]

I've been using CS5.5 for editing, and I know that CUDA cores will improve playback using the Adobe mercury engine. Does it help equally with render times out of premiere? I am currently experiencing decent playback due to lots of RAM but my render times are terribly long. What kind of performance difference would I see with a CUDA enabled card?

I am also not sure what the best option is. GTX 590 seems to be the winner for max CUDA cores, but professional users swear by Quadro 4000.

[Subhadip Sen]

CUDA helps massively with scaling. Not only is it much faster, but IQ is better too, as CUDA scaling uses Lanczos versus Bicubic for CPU scaling with "Maximum Render Quality" (Bicubic really kills performance) or even Bilinear with that unchecked. CUDA also accelerates colour space conversions as many deliverables are YUV. GTX 580 is the best solution for Premiere Pro today. Quadro 4000 is awfully slow and Premiere Pro can only access one half of the GTX 590 (it is a dual-GPU card), which is effectively an underclocked GTX 580.

[Peter Cote]

My understanding is that GTX 580 does not output 10 bit color. Any way to get GTX 580 performance level but with 10 bit color?

[Subhadip Sen]

My understanding is that GTX 580 does not output 10 bit color. Any way to get GTX 580 performance level but with 10 bit color?

If you use a 10-bit monitor, then you have two options - using a 10-bit output card like DeckLink for previews or Quadro. If you opt for Quadro, go for at least Quadro 5000. Quadro 6000 is close enough to GTX 580.

Just to clarify, you use DeckLink with GTX 580. DeckLink offers the 10-bit monitoring, GTX 580 would do the processing + GUI output. Quadro will do both.

[Peter Cote]

Cool, I've heard of people getting performance comparable to a Red Rocket through CUDA enabled graphics cards. Would GTX 580 be one of those cards? The system will be pretty well equipped outside of graphics (64 GB RAM, Overclocked six core, SSD).

Thanks for the info. It seems like DeckLink with GTX 580 is going to be the best solution.

[Subhadip Sen]

Cool, I've heard of people getting performance comparable to a Red Rocket through CUDA enabled graphics cards. Would GTX 580 be one of those cards? The system will be pretty well equipped outside of graphics (64 GB RAM, Overclocked six core, SSD).

Thanks for the info. It seems like DeckLink with GTX 580 is going to be the best solution.

Red Rocket and GTX 580 perform different functions altogether. Rocket is dedicated to debayering R3Ds, while GTX 580 does other things. In the absence of a Rocket, the debayer process defaults to the CPU. Thankfully even modern mainstream CPUs are powerful enough to enable 1/2 res (2.5K) real-time playback. Full-res real-time is still restricted to Rocket, but considering common monitoring solutions are restricted to 2.5K, CPU debayer is good enough for most of us. Of course, for 3D, HDRx or multiple streams, multiple Rockets are necessary.

[Wim Verbeek]

If you use a 10-bit monitor, then you have two options - using a 10-bit output card like DeckLink for previews or Quadro. If you opt for Quadro, go for at least Quadro 5000. Quadro 6000 is close enough to GTX 580.

Just to clarify, you use DeckLink with GTX 580. DeckLink offers the 10-bit monitoring, GTX 580 would do the processing + GUI output. Quadro will do both.

Thanks for all this worthy information!
Trying to configure a PC to run Adobe 5.5 AE/Premiere and BMD Resolve.
Few questions:
1. Is it correct that one card (i.e. Quadro 4000) is used for processing only (in Resolve) and the card is not connected to any output for best performance?
2. The second card (i.e GTX 580) is used for GUI, monitors?
3. How does Adobe 5.5 take best benefit of the 2 cards?

[Subhadip Sen]

Thanks for all this worthy information!
Trying to configure a PC to run Adobe 5.5 AE/Premiere and BMD Resolve.
Few questions:
1. Is it correct that one card (i.e. Quadro 4000) is used for processing only (in Resolve) and the card is not connected to any output for best performance?
2. The second card (i.e GTX 580) is used for GUI, monitors?
3. How does Adobe 5.5 take best benefit of the 2 cards?

Yes, for Resolve one card is used for GUI (let's say GPU A), the others (GPU B etc) are for processing. But Premiere Pro can only use the GUI card (GPU A) for processing, while the others (GPU B etc) sit idle. For Resolve DeckLink seems like the only way to monitor, so you would want that as well.

Note that GTX 580 3GB offers 3x performance of Quadro 4000 at a lower price, so avoid Quadro 4000. (Unless you need Quadro, in which case much rather invest in a Quadro 5000) So maybe it is best to go for GTX 580 + GTX 580.

[Wim Verbeek]

THX subhadip, for the clear answer!
So 2x GTX580 + Decklink will do?
Thought I'd need the Quadro4000 (as a pro solution to also support my AVID - now running at MC5.5 with Adrenaline Hardware)
Have to check if Quadro5000 is really needed for Avid. Maybe I better keep Avid on the existing HP8400 workstation and upgrade MC to 6.0 with aditional Matrox output (as Adrenaline will be obsolete then).

waiting for Scarlet-X #...

[Danai Chutinaton]

For Resolve, if I had two GTX 580's would resolve use both GPU's for processing? Or would it use just the non GUI GPU for processing?

[Subhadip Sen]

For Resolve, if I had two GTX 580's would resolve use both GPU's for processing? Or would it use just the non GUI GPU for processing?

The GUI one seems to be dedicated to its purpose, so only the non-GUI GPUs are used for processing.