Test to Compare Nvidia Cards for CS5

[Steve Kalle]

UPDATE: using a PNY 9800GT 1GB (112 cores) and exporting the same 2 minute clip, it took 15m 34s. Something odd I noticed, the CPU usage was only 40-45% during encode whereas it was 75-85% with the GTX 275.

It certainly appears that the number of CUDA cores plays a significant role in rendering/exporting video.

[Randall Leong]

Originally Posted by Randall Leong

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!

I found out why I've been getting such lackluster scores in CS5 relative to the other CS5 systems in the PPBM4 list:

It's my RAID setup. It is running off of the exact same SATA controller as my non-RAID system drive - and it is using the same Intel RAID driver for both RAID and non-RAID drives connected to the same controller. Most of the systems that achieve higher scores are using a separate controller for their RAID arrays from the one used for their system drives. Unfortunately, my motherboard does not have a secondary RAID controller for any internal SATA hard drives - and the only secondary RAID-capable controller on my mobo is a Marvell eSATA controller for external SATA drives.

[Craig Coston]

Randall,

Are you editing off a RAID 0? If so, are you creating it via the RAID controller or are you creating a software RAID 0 in windows? If you haven't tried creating the software RAID, give it a try. I have built plenty of machines utilizing only the Intel onboard RAID controllers and have had no issues with performance.

[Harm Millaard]

Randall,

Looking at your results, I guess you have much more processes running than is really necessary. Your MPEG encoding times are far worse than I would have expected at the clock speed you are running.

Check with Process Explorer that you have not more than around 40 processes running before starting PR or AME. Check that you have compression and indexing turned off on all your disks, that sidebar is not started and that your services are in line with Windows 7 Service Configurations by Black Viper

[Randall Leong]

Originally Posted by Craig Coston

Randall,

Are you editing off a RAID 0? If so, are you creating it via the RAID controller or are you creating a software RAID 0 in windows? If you haven't tried creating the software RAID, give it a try. I have built plenty of machines utilizing only the Intel onboard RAID controllers and have had no issues with performance.

Yes, I am editing off of a RAID 0. And my current RAID 0 array was created via Intel's Rapid Storage utility.

[Randall Leong]

Originally Posted by Harm Millaard

Randall,

Looking at your results, I guess you have much more processes running than is really necessary. Your MPEG encoding times are far worse than I would have expected at the clock speed you are running.

Check with Process Explorer that you have not more than around 40 processes running before starting PR or AME. Check that you have compression and indexing turned off on all your disks, that sidebar is not started and that your services are in line with Windows 7 Service Configurations by Black Viper

Even when I got the process count down to 34 processes and compression and indexing turned off and the configuration set to Black Viper's "Safe" configuration (which I used for now), I still get the same PPBM4 score I had been getting with all of the default processes running.

Perhaps this may be because I was/am using an ATi card (an HD 5770, at that)? (In general, the consumer ATi cards do not perform as well in OpenGL mode as NVIDIA's consumer cards do.) I am suspecting this because the HD 5xxx series - at least with the drivers that are currently available for them - perform rather poorly on some of the critical 2D tasks compared to the older cards or the NVIDIA cards.

Or maybe it's the fact that I am also using the same editing system for other uses, such as gaming or as a media center? The software used in such systems also adds resource-hogging processes (much of which can't be disabled or uninstalled without screwing up those programs).

Even after this lackluster MPEG encoding performance with standard-definition material, I would have to say that transcoding 1920x1080/59.94i Cineform AVI files to Blu-Ray-compatible H.264 AVC is about 20 percent faster in CS5 than it was in CS4 or Vegas.

[Steve Kalle]

Randall,

Not trying to be rude, but this is totally off-topic. I started this thread to help people make a decision on which nvidia card they should get.

On topic: so far, it appears that Adobe has not yet optimized Premiere to take advantage of more than 240 cores due to the fact that my PPBM CS5 scores do not differ much from Harm's scores, even though Harm's video card has 4 times the # of cores.

[Randall Leong]

Originally Posted by Steve Kalle

Randall,

Not trying to be rude, but this is totally off-topic. I started this thread to help people make a decision on which nvidia card they should get.

On topic: so far, it appears that Adobe has not yet optimized Premiere to take advantage of more than 240 cores due to the fact that my PPBM CS5 scores do not differ much from Harm's scores, even though Harm's video card has 4 times the # of cores.

Fair enough. I should have started a new thread about this.