Any GTS 450 Tests Yet?

[Steve Kalle]

I just noticed that the GTS 450 with 1GB vram and 192 cores is available for only $130. I am ordering 2 more HP workstations (Z400 & Z600) in a week and I was considering the 460 until I saw the 450, but I would like to know if there is a noticeable performance difference within Premiere & AME.

[David Knarr]

Steve,

The GTS450 card only has a 128bit memory bandwidth, where the 460 with 1 gig of DDR5 has a 256bit memory bandwidth. So performance won't be a good as a 460.

[Randall Leong]

Originally Posted by David Knarr

Steve,

The GTS450 card only has a 128bit memory bandwidth, where the 460 with 1 gig of DDR5 has a 256bit memory bandwidth. So performance won't be a good as a 460.

True. Although if all else is being equal, 128-bit GDDR5 memory is about equal in bandwidth to 256-bit DDR3 memory. So, a GTS 450 should be quite a bit better than the GTS 250 it replaces due to it having 50 percent more CUDA cores than its predecessor. This results in a $130-ish card from NVIDIA that's more competitive in this class.

[Paul Digges]

So if someone could confirm for me here I'd appreciate it. With CS5 having any CUDA enabled card with the little supported card list "hack" would be better than an old 8800GTS?

If this card would be a decent upgrade for now I'd gladly buy it while saving the scratch for a better card, then toss this one into my gaming machine when its replaced.

[Mikel Arturo]

Hmmmmm, I'm very interested in this card.

Here's the Tom's review: Nvidia GeForce GTS 450: Hello GF106, Farewell G92 : GeForce GTS 450: Farewell, G92

Performance: 2/3 of a GTX460 (768 megas version). Less if you compare with GTX460 1 Giga version.
Versus the Gforce GTS250, more or less x2.
If the GTS250 helps something rendering or previewing, this will do better job.

Power Cosumption at full load: 219 W. Only one PCI-E conector (GTX-460 needs two).

Bad: prize. I bet for 100$, or less.
In Europe, Spain, costs 152,22 Euros (199$). Very high prize IMO.
1 Euro = 1,3076 Dolars

If ATI cards could work with Adobe apps...

[Alex Artem]

Hi Paul,

Yesterday I've replaced my old EN9800GT 512 Mb wit PALI GTS 450 1Gb.
After running Premiere Benchmark on Core i7 920, 12 Gb, Win 7 64, Premiere CS 5.02
I've got 10 times faster RENDERING Timlene. For all the other tests dosn't matter if
I use MPE hardware mode or soft only. That's on my computer and tomorrow
I'm gonna give a try for GTX460.

Alex

[Mikel Arturo]

Hi Alex,

Any news about yours tests with the GTX460 versus the GTS450?

Thanks.

[Randall Leong]

Originally Posted by Mikel Arturo

Hi Alex,

Any news about yours tests with the GTX460 versus the GTS450?

Thanks.

I'm not Alex, but based on my results on a backup stock-speed i7-920 with 6GB of RAM and a GT 240 1GB DDR5 card, expect the MPE performance of the GTX 460 to be no more than a second or two faster than the GTS 450. That's because the el-cheapo 1GB DDR5 GT 240 is surprisingly close in MPE performance to that of the GTX 470 that's in my main rig (which I have since "upgraded" CPU-wise to an i7-950) when both rigs are running at the same CPU clock speeds. (When I ran the two cards on a stock-speed i7-920, I got 14 seconds in PPBM5's timeline rendering test with the GT 240 versus 12 seconds with the GTX 470 - both with Premiere Pro 5.0.2.) And my results are all the more incredible since the GT 240 has only 96 CUDA cores and a 128-bit memory bus versus 448 CUDA cores and a 320-bit GDDR5 memory bus in the GTX 470.

Keep in mind that my 14-second result with the GT 240 applies only to the 1GB (G)DDR5 version of that card. There are 1GB GT 240s with DDR3 memory, which would have produced a result that's closer to 20 seconds under these same conditions.

[Peter Chung]

That is great news! I hope your results can be verified / reproduced by others.

I've been trying to find Premiere CS5 benchmarks of the same system with different CUDA cards to see which card offers the best value.

I wonder if there are more significant performance gains with more video tracks and effects.

Thanks for sharing your results, Randall.

[Randall Leong]

Originally Posted by Peter Chung

That is great news! I hope your results can be verified / reproduced by others.

I've been trying to find Premiere CS5 benchmarks of the same system with different CUDA cards to see which card offers the best value.

I wonder if there are more significant performance gains with more video tracks and effects.

Thanks for sharing your results, Randall.

No problem. Keep in mind that my particular set of results is only applicable to a stock-speed i7-920 system. If you overclock the i7 CPU, or run a hexa-core Intel CPU, the difference between the two cards may be greater. Thus, if someone is running an overclocked i7-970 or i7-980X, that person may very well need a GTX 470 or 480 to attain maximum MPE performance.

In addition, my tests clearly proved that MPE (in its current form) does not take full advantage of the higher-end CUDA GPUs, especially on slower systems.

[Peter Chung]

Just made the connection that David Knarr (who has posted in this thread) wrote the article about MPE playback in CS5 at studio1productions!

Here's an excerpt from his well-written article:

Originally Posted by http://www.studio1productions.com/Articles/PremiereCS5.htm

To give you an example of the performance difference between DDR3 and DDR5 memory, we ran some tests using a GT240 video card with 1 gig of DDR5 memory and a GT240 video card with 1 gig of DDR3. The video card with the DDR5 memory gave us around a 45% speed increase over a GT240 with DDR3 memory.

We also tested the GT240 with DDR5 memory against a GT250, GT260 and a GT 430, with DDR3 memory, The GT240 with DDR5 memory was faster in every test, even though some of the video cards had more CUDA cores. This was due to the GT240 having DDR5 memory and the fact that the Mercury Playback Engine isn't using all of the CUDA cores.

We are trying to find out exactly how many CUDA core the Mercury Playback Engine is using. I have heard rumors that it only use around 100 CUDA cores. Now remember, this is only a rumor. But from the tests we have run and what a few other people are reporting, I would have to say this may be true.

What I get from this is that the most important criteria in choosing a card for MPE playback right now (not taking into consideration potential in the future) are: 1) DDR5 memory, and 2) at least 100 cores (96 cores is close enough).

A logical conclusion, if these statements are true, is that having more cores only provides marginal improvements.

Elsewhere in his article, he says:

Right now, you will get the same performance across all the GTX 400 series of video cards. Right now, the performance is about the same as the GTX240 to GTX 285 video cards.

It would be great if you could chime in, David, with your experiences and if there are any considerations for buying a more expensive card than a GT240 with DDR5 memory.

It would be very exciting if a GT240 provides close to the same performance as a GTX480 when it comes to Mercury Playback. I don't play games and am just interested in Premiere CS5 performance. Also, I believe the GT2xx series is compatible with OSX, whereas there are no Fermi (4xx series) drivers (yet) for OSX.

Thanks in advance!

[Randall Leong]

Thanks for the additional info, Peter!

So, it looks like any NVIDIA GPU with 1GB or more DDR5 memory and at least 96 CUDA cores would do almost equally well in Premiere Pro CS5 (at least on a stock-speed i7-9xx series CPU-based system). Hence, if you have a slower system such as a Core 2 Quad or an AMD Athlon II or Phenom II based system, going with anything higher than a GTS 450 for use with Premiere Pro CS5 is a waste of money. (I said "GTS 450" instead of "GT 240" because the latter is about to go EOL.)

By the way, the GTS 450 is slower than a GTX 260 in gaming. But the reverse is true when it comes to CS5's MPE.

By the way, I have a 1GB DDR5 version of the GT 240 happily sitting in my auxiliary editing rig. I was originally planning to use that rig as a Web access-only rig with a Core 2 Duo, 2GB of DDR2 memory and an el-cheapo 512MB version of the GT 240. But since I now have a spare X58 motherboard and 6GB of spare DDR3 memory, I might as well remake that system into an auxiliary editing rig.

[David Knarr]

Hi Peter,

I am chimming in....

I am still running tests, but what I have found is, on the SAME system testing a GT240 with DDR5 memory gave me the same performance as a 460 and 480. (I was testing on an AMD Quad Core system at 2.9 Ghz. The main reason is the Mercury Playback Engine does not use all of the CUDA cores that are availble on the higher end cards.

In a test I was running last night ( and I haven't posted this yet on our website) when running on a AMD 6 core system, we did see a slight improvement between the 240 and a 460 and 470 card. It wasn't that much of an improvement, about 10 to15%. To me it wasn't worth the expense of the 470 card.

However, with all of that said, if Adobe in the future changes the Mercury Playback Engine to use more CUDA cores, then of course the 460 and 470 will be faster cards.

Also, as a side note. DO NOT bother with the new GT 430 card, it only has DDR3 memory. I tested this card last night also and the GT240 card with DDR5 memory is about 40% to 50% faster.

All test were run with the lastest drivers 258.96 WHQL

[Brad Higerd]

Newest NVIDIA driver released is "260.89," for what it's worth.

[Randall Leong]

Originally Posted by David Knarr

Hi Peter,

I am chimming in....

I am still running tests, but what I have found is, on the SAME system testing a GT240 with DDR5 memory gave me the same performance as a 460 and 480. (I was testing on an AMD Quad Core system at 2.9 Ghz. The main reason is the Mercury Playback Engine does not use all of the CUDA cores that are availble on the higher end cards.

In a test I was running last night ( and I haven't posted this yet on our website) when running on a AMD 6 core system, we did see a slight improvement between the 240 and a 460 and 470 card. It wasn't that much of an improvement, about 10 to15%. To me it wasn't worth the expense of the 470 card.

However, with all of that said, if Adobe in the future changes the Mercury Playback Engine to use more CUDA cores, then of course the 460 and 470 will be faster cards.

Also, as a side note. DO NOT bother with the new GT 430 card, it only has DDR3 memory. I tested this card last night also and the GT240 card with DDR5 memory is about 40% to 50% faster.

All test were run with the lastest drivers 258.96 WHQL

Agreed. :)

And keep in mind that the fastest AMD 6-core CPU-based system would be roughly on a par with a lower-end Intel i7 quad-core Bloomfield CPU-based system when it comes to performance in Premiere Pro CS5.

So to recap:

1) A GTS 450 or GTX 460 would more than suffice for a stock-speed Intel i7 quad-core system or an AMD 6-core system. An Intel 6-core system at stock speed might need the 460.

2) If you have an older or slower system, such as a Core 2 Quad or a quad-core AMD system, just pick the least-expensive NVIDIA card with at least 1GB of DDR5 memory that you can find (if you're going to run just CS5 on that system). A low-end 1GB card that uses only DDR3 memory should be considered only if you're stuck with a low-end dual-core CPU and you're not planning any CPU upgrades for the foreseeable future. (But then again, if you're really stuck with such a slow CPU, you might as well disable MPE GPU acceleration and run CS5 in software-only mode.)

3) If you have a very high-end or highly-overclocked Intel i7 or a dual-CPU Xeon 5500/5600-series system, then you may want to spend the extra dollars for a GTX 470 or 480.

SPECIAL NOTE: An i3 or i5-6xx system would have been competent if unremarkable in high-definition encoding performance but would have choked in standard-definition MPEG-2 encoding performance.