Test to Compare Nvidia Cards for CS5

[Steve Kalle]

EDIT: THIS IS NOT HACKING! It is simply opening a txt document in notepad and typing in the name of your video card. If Adobe really didn't want people to do this, then they would have made it very difficult to do so. Heck, I wonder if an Adobe employee is the one who leaked this info.

Actually, this is a great discussion that I would like to continue if a mod could cut out these last several posts and create a new thread about Adobe Stability.

Here is what I see:

Avid: releases features Premiere already has but Avid MC users celebrate as though Avid is sooo great for giving them these features. Avid users treat their workstations with a lot of respect and don't install a bunch of crap software.

FCP: Apple adds a few features Premiere already has but then slows down the software, especially Compressor and FCP users flock to the upgrade. FCP users are inherently limited to the amount of crap software that can be installed since not much is made for OSX.

Adobe: innovates and adds NEW features far before anyone else does. Adobe does try to be everything to everyone, which does hurt its reputation.

[Pete Bauer]

Originally Posted by Paul Cook

Unless some friendly hacker finds out what Adobe did in their code and writes a workaround. I know their used to be ways to both softmod and hardmod geforce cards to flash the bios and make them appear as Quadro's

Not about hacking? Ok.

At request, 12 posts copied or moved to:
http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/adobe-cr...s5-thread.html

[Steve Kalle]

Thanks Pete for splitting the posts.

Not Hacking - I am referring to the process of getting a nvidia card to work with MPE hardware acceleration. Heck, it is far harder to overclock a CPU than it is to make a nvidia card work with MPE. And I wouldn't classify overclocking as 'hacking'.

[Randall Leong]

Gosh, I need to get one of the higher-end NVIDIA cards. My system's current HD 4850 has been falling a little behind now...

(To be specific, my system got only slightly better overall performance with CS5 than it did with CS4...)

[Harm Millaard]

I use the http://ppbm4.com/Benchmark.html so see the improvements between CS4 and CS5. I have seen these test results on my own system:

1. CS4 4.2.1 with HD 4870: 38.0 seconds

2. CS5 with HD 4870: 23.3 seconds

3. CS5 with GTX-480: 14.8 seconds

This was on the exact same hardware, apart from the video card. One may argue the validity of the test, but with over 100 systems tested it gives a good indication of performance. Notice that the 3-rd results have not yet been published.

I think that the improvement of CS5 is great and with hardware MPE even stunning.

[David Dwyer]

Originally Posted by Harm Millaard

I use the http://ppbm4.com/Benchmark.html so see the improvements between CS4 and CS5. I have seen these test results on my own system:

I think that the improvement of CS5 is great and with hardware MPE even stunning.

I can't wait to test my new system and compare it to my very slow AMD chip.

Will be able to post the results Wednesday.

[Pete Bauer]

Originally Posted by Harm Millaard

One may argue the validity of the test, but with over 100 systems tested it gives a good indication of performance.

Yeah, I suspect the utility of PPBM4 may be a bit less for CS5 than previously. I'm hoping that Bill G is working on a PPBM5 that accounts for such changes as GPU acceleration with its near absence of need for rendering of preview files to disk in most cases, and the optimized decoding of compressed HD source files in the new Intel processors.

Nevertheless, I'm sure it is still a rough approximation and I finally got around to running PPBM4 yesterday on my new system (980X, 12GB, Quadro FX4800, RAID0 x 4). Although I don't have a monster 12-disk RAID like Harm's Beast, mine still turned in 19.6 seconds at default and 18 seconds while overclocked to 4.133GHz.

So the point is this: as you guys go forward with your GPU testing, PPBM4 will allow you to use the same yard stick for each config. That's good. On the other hand, it is somewhat a render-to-disk biased test so may not evenly reflect GPU benefits.

Harm, I did send both those results to Bill yesterday via the email listed in the PPBM4 web site. Actually, thinking about this a little, it might be nice if PPBM5 (assuming there will be one) split out subsystem performance in addition to one composite number. Then folks would know where to put their money for system upgrades.

[Harm Millaard]

Pete,

Bill and I are working on it and trying to use actual footage from AVCHD, XDCAM, HDC, DSLR and maybe RED at various frame rates. And use encoding to H.264 and MPEG2-DVD. Also a modified AVI test is considered for disk intensive testing.

The changes in CS5 require a new approach to testing the various system components, but we are thinking along these lines:

1. a disk intensive test, that measures I/O efficiency
2. a CPU intensive test, that measures CPU performance
3. a GPU/CPU intensive test, that measures the impact of MPE
4. a generic video workflow, that reflects common approaches and is a combination of the earlier 3 tests.

[Pete Bauer]

Sounds like a LOT of work!

[Tim Kolb]

Originally Posted by David Dwyer

I can't wait to test my new system and compare it to my very slow AMD chip.

Will be able to post the results Wednesday.

Keep in mind that the GPU cores come on line in MPE when you use effects...not for decode.

Some have been confused because they can lay out 6 tracks of AVCHD on their Nehalem when the card they have is a GTX 285 (which has been limited to three layers as opposed to the Quadros...), but what you can decode for playback is CPU-dependent. You won't get a red line on a big CPU until you reach the computer's ceiling for decode streams...drive speed likely a part of this as well. With the GTX 285, you'll red line the timeline if you have more than three layers -of effects- for the GPU to handle.

A lesser CPU config will make the GPU help look weaker to a user trying to emulate Adobe's demos because the computer won't be able to decode as much video...so you'll get lots of effects on one or two layers to play with vs lots of layers with effects...even with a new, approved Quadro card.

I haven't noticed these nuances covered In Adobe's marketing approach, but perhaps I've simply not seen the correct brochure...

[Randall Leong]

Originally Posted by Randall Leong

Gosh, I need to get one of the higher-end NVIDIA cards. My system's current HD 4850 has been falling a little behind now...

(To be specific, my system got only slightly better overall performance with CS5 than it did with CS4...)

Ack, I discovered that my HD 4850 has only 512MB of total graphics RAM. No wonder why I did not see as much of an improvement in performance as others did. It seems as though I would need a graphics card with at least 1GB of RAM in order to even make anywhere near the full use of the software mode in CS5.

[Randall Leong]

And despite the lackluster performance of my system in the PPBM4 test under CS5, the software-assisted playback turned out to be much faster and smoother than it ever was on CS4. In order to get those nice benchmark results, I needed either a higher-end NVIDIA card with 896MB or more RAM or a faster drive subsystem than my RAID array's current Intel software RAID 0 setup.

[Harm Millaard]

Randall,

My score of 38.0 with CS4 was with a HD4870 with 512 MB. With CS5 it dropped to 23.3. With the same 512 MB video card. The further drop to 14.8 was (I think) caused by MPE, not by the 1,536Mb memory on the new video card.

[Craig Coston]

Harm,

How overclocked are you running your machine right now? I was wondering if I could get close to your settings and then run PPBM4 against the GTX285 I have. I have one of the rarer 2GB models. Would love to see the difference between your GPU and mine. I forgot about the EVGA trade up program and finally remembered when I was 96 days out, 6 days past their cutoff, so no Fermi for me. I will be going to CS5 next week after I finish up a big edit I've been working on for the past month. I fear trying to upgrade before I'm done and delivered, so it will wait until then.

[Randall Leong]

Originally Posted by Harm Millaard

Randall,

My score of 38.0 with CS4 was with a HD4870 with 512 MB. With CS5 it dropped to 23.3. With the same 512 MB video card. The further drop to 14.8 was (I think) caused by MPE, not by the 1,536Mb memory on the new video card.

With my 4850, I got only a score of about 47 with CS5 versus a score of about 51 with CS4.

And since the test isn't using the drives very much, I might conclude that it could have been my slower drive config than the higher-ranked scorers. And then, maybe it's the fact that I still have only 6GB of RAM in my machine although standard-definition projects should not have been that memory-intensive. And yes, I did try both my old HD 4850 512MB and a newer HD 5770 1GB with the same results (and that my scores varied very widely from one run to another even at the exact same settings). (I put in a 5770 on my main editing machine only because I moved my 4850 to another rig whose older graphics card died out.) With that, I opted not to submit the scores since they were inconclusive.

Even with such lackluster scores, importing/editing/rendering/encoding the videos whose projects originate in CS5 is faster in CS5 than CS4 ever performed in my machine. And that's more important than a benchmark test that isn't quite optimized for CS5. I can't wait for the release of PPBM5!

Originally Posted by Craig Coston

Harm,

How overclocked are you running your machine right now?

Looking at the PPBM4 results list, that rig is OC'd to 3.7 GHz. But that rig also has a 12-drive RAID array.