Hi Ozan,

You asked about the new NVIDIA drivers 257.21 WHQL.

I had been running the 197.45 WHQL drivers on 8 different systems. Premiere CS5 worked perfectly on all the computers.

I installed the 257.21 WHQL drivers on all 8 systems, then the problems began. Two of the systems are crashing on bootup, BSOD. A third system is having problems with Premiere CS5 with the 257.21 WHQL driver. It randomly crashes while using Premiere CS5. The other 5 computers are running fine.

All computers are running Windows 7 64 bit and have 6 gigs of memory. I am running several different models of video cards from NVIDIA in the computers. I went so far as to swap cards around and reinstalled the 257.21 driver several times and the systems that are having problems, still have the problems.

I have restored all the systems back to the 197.45 WHQL driver and ALL systems are back to running perfectly.

Dave
Studio 1 Productions

i ended up downlaoding 197.45 but didnt install it yet. I was curious to see wa happens with 257.21.

Im running it now with 257.21 driver and prem cs5....

What am i suppose to be seeing wrong? Everthing seems to work ok i guess soo far. What are the problems that people are running into with the latest driver?

I have 5 layers of video, all CC'd and other effects with a yellow bar. My cpu usage is hovering around 14% - 36% ish durin play bck. She seems to play fine without any hickups. Going to play with it more over the weekend.

... i have around 90-95% GPU usage and around 50% CPU usage (Q6600@2,4) when i export something or when i play something. I have a 7 min screen capture at 1680x1050 and i tried to export it H.264 HDTV 1080p. Without GPU-acceleration it estimated around 60 min, i wait more than 15 sec and not even 1% done, when i change to GPU it estimated around 9-10 min and in a few second it has 5% progress :D.

Does this mean that Mercury Playback Engine also assists in the encoding of files to disk? I thought it was only a playback feature. Am I wrong?

Or am I missing the boat here?

Well actually MPE can export to disk, can make effects, playback and other in CUDA. Actually Premiere CS5 is almost top to bottom CUDA :). You can see some demos on youtube about exporting.

Is anyone having any problems with their Nvidia cards (specifically the GTX 480) and power consumption?

The Nvida specs say that the MINIMUM recommended system power is 600 Watts. My system (that I thought was pretty beefy) is only 480 watts.

I was just about the click the purchase button when I saw this. Any thoughts?

Lloyd Ubshura,

A full system with a 480 card consumes 400w at peak.

Your 480w delivers as best 85% of 480 = 408w, so you are walking on the thin red line there.

I'd go for the Corsair 750w modular PSU as well.

// LAsse

I just ordered a new custom built system with the 480. An online power calculator showed the system would draw 612W and recommended a 650W PS. I included a Corsair 850W PS just to play it safe.

Hi Ozan,

I was having Premiere CS5 cash on me when using additive dissolves and fast blur in & out when I was using the 257.21 drive. This was happening on a couple of our systems. I have 8 systems running CS5 and 3 are giving me problems under 257.21 drivers.

No problems under the 197.45 drivers even with the additive dissolves and fast blur in & out. The problem doesn't seen to be with any certain video card either, as I've tried several in these systems.

It's got to be something with the new drivers and these few of systems.

I have only judged that based on my view of the performance list in the PPBM4 site. I do not currently own any NVIDIA cards with more than 512MB of RAM, which cannot run MPE in GPU-accelerated mode at all. And I do not have a GTX 4xx series card at all due to its cost that's much higher than I can afford right now. Because of this, I can call my findings as "hearsay" or "inconclusive".

By the way, the 9400 GT is the exact same GPU as the 9500 GT but with half of the G96 GPU's 32 stream processors disabled internally at the manufacturing level.

Hi Randall,

Just to let you know, the GTX 470 works great with the hack and both sets of drivers, the 197.45 and 257.21driver. Everything ran smoothly on the system I used to test it.

Getting a GTX 480 in here latter in the week to try.

Does this mean that Mercury Playback Engine also assists in the encoding of files to disk? I thought it was only a playback feature. Am I wrong?

Or am I missing the boat here?

The first step in encoding is to render the timeline. The MPE assists in that step. However, the actually encoding is done by whatever codec you choose for output and the MPE has no effect on that step. MainConcept sells an H.264 codec that utilizes CUDA and that would speed up encoding additionally, if you were to use that codec. Most codecs are written to utilize the CPU(s), so a fast CPU is till the best way of improving encoding times.

The net result of all this is that the MPE may improve encoding times from only marginally to significantly, depending on whether rendering the timeline is the limiting step or utilizing the codec is limiting.

Hi Randall,

Just to let you know, the GTX 470 works great with the hack and both sets of drivers, the 197.45 and 257.21driver. Everything ran smoothly on the system I used to test it.

Getting a GTX 480 in here latter in the week to try.

From the result, I can conclude that that system's slow performance on exports is the result of a less-than-optimal memory configuration: There is no way that one can run 16GB of RAM on a 1366 system in proper triple-channel. That system had been running in a Flex mode of mixed triple- and single-channel mode. What that does is increase the total latency of the i7's memory controller, causing everything to run slower than expected. I confirmed this after inspecting the PPBM4 result of a GTX 480 system with MPE turned off: That system's export times were about the same as most of the other high-ranked systems with MPE off.

Hi Ozan,

I was having Premiere CS5 cash on me when using additive dissolves and fast blur in & out when I was using the 257.21 drive. This was happening on a couple of our systems. I have 8 systems running CS5 and 3 are giving me problems under 257.21 drivers.

No problems under the 197.45 drivers even with the additive dissolves and fast blur in & out. The problem doesn't seen to be with any certain video card either, as I've tried several in these systems.

It's got to be something with the new drivers and these few of systems.


Hey david,

im trying to re-create your problems... ive tried appplying fast blurr and additive dissolve into various of cross fades and in and out key points. I do get a red bar for the additive dissolve. But still seems to play ok. I havent installed 197.45 and to compare it with 257.21.

Hi Ozan,

Well I spent the day wiping the hard drive in 1 of the 3 systems that have been giving me a problem with the 257.21 drivers. I reloaded just Windows 7 64bit, the 257.21 NVIDIA driver and Premiere CS5. The problem is gone!

I guess I will be reloading the other 2 systems over the next few days. I went back and loaded 257.21 on the 5 computers that had no problem with it before and they are still running fine.

Is there suppose to be a special setup when setting up the gtx series. I read somewhere that tweaking is need or something.

I am not doing anything special other than following the directions for the hack. It's worked with all the different cards I've tried.

I also have all my computers working under 257.21 WHQL drivers. The 3 computer's I had problems with I had to do a fresh install of Windows 7 64 bit, then the driver, then CS5. Now all 8 systems are running the 257.21 drivers and no problems yet. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

I figured out how to activate CUDA acceleration without a GTX 285 or Quadro... I'm pretty sure it should work with other 200 GPUs. Note that i'm using 2 monitors and there's a extra tweak to play with CUDA seamlessly with 2 monitors.

I ment this.... special setup for 2 monitors?!? "extra tweak"

Ozan,

I not running any of our systems with dual monitors, but the only thing I can think of is in the NVIDIA control panel
in the hack where you go to the "Multi-display/mixed-GPU acceleration" option and under settings switch it from "Multiple display performance mode" to "Compatibility performance mode", you may want to leave it set for "Multiple display performance mode".

Also in the NVIDIA control panel you may want to check in the Setup Multiple Display, that it is seeing both display monitors.

Has anybody tried the hack on the new Macbook Pro's that have the nVidia 330m?

Works on my hackintosh with GTX 275 1792 MB. Just go to Premiere folder, right click on the app package and click Show Package Contents and then go to Contents folder and over there you'll find the CUDA txt file, edit the file with Smultron to gain permission easily and type GeForce GT 330M or whatever card you have :P . Enjoy.

..... edit the file with Smultron to gain permission easily and type GeForce GT 330M or whatever card you have :P . Enjoy.

Why does one have to utilize Smultron? Can't the basic text editor do the same job?

Wat is wrong with smultron? Is just a small text editor. With based text editors you'll not have permission when you try to modify the text file and then you'll need to write thousands os cods in terminal to gain access. With smultron when you edit the text and click save the root password window will pop up, super easy.

Wat is wrong with smultron? Is just a small text editor. With based text editors you'll not have permission when you try to modify the text file and then you'll need to write thousands os cods in terminal to gain access. With smultron when you edit the text and click save the root password window will pop up, super easy.

Thanks Maryus.

Just to clarify, I did not state anything was wrong utilizing Smultron; just didn't quite understand why it would be a better choice....which you clarified for me and I appreciate that!!

But what about on the (Bootcamp) Windows 7 side? Would the basic text editor, that is included with Windows, work as well?

In windows just use notepad should work fine :P.

made it work with my nvidia 280m mobile gpu.
great hack

Just a quick update about the new driver in 10.6.4 + CUDA 3.1. What I am trying to say is that with the new update CS5 works very well.

As a kudos to Martin for sharing such a useful bit of information, this is to confirm another success of his technique on a PC with Nvidia's GTX 260. Works like a charm. Real-time video editing is truly a joy.

Thanks very much, Martin.

Best wishes - Vikram.

Well I just ordered a Palit GTX 460 1gb card which has a nice number of CUDA cores for the price. So when it arrives and I get it installed I will let you know if it works OK - which it should :-)

this hack works on my sager 8690 laptop with the nvidia 280m.
thanks for sharing

Well looks as though I will need to update to driver v 258.96 as this is the only one that I see lists 'support added for GTX 460 added'

Fingers crossed...

Ok well from all my initial preliminary testing seems to work like a charm on the 460. I have to say that I thought native avchd from the t2i would be smoother than it is scrubbing - playback is fine up to 3 layers with effects but putting in a 4th layer makes it stutter and skip. This is not the case with other codecs such as hdv or ex1 footage so dunno?

But render speeds are amazing - 34 second 1080p sequence with 3way colour, 3d pip and drop shadow renders to H.264 720p 6-10mbps in only 1:32 verses 12:10 without GPU. Thats insane!

Adobe just release an update that fixed the 3 layers problem :).

Maryus I have the update, like I said with other codecs I can do more than 3 layers with effects all in real-time no problems. Its not a data rate issue either as I tried it with Cineform files which are around 20Mb/s (not mbps) and I can do 5 layers in real-time - 6 starts to stutter.

I seem to remember reading that the MPE uses the GPU for the effects and the CPU for the codec so it seems my findings back this up.

Either way still very impressed!

Just out of curiosity I did some more testing, this time to see how Ppro benched against the exact same sequence / composition as in After Effects. So with 5 layers, 4 pip with blur and a drop shadow - AE took 15 minutes to render 30 seconds while Ppro only took 3 minutes 23 seconds using the MPE.

I also threw in some red 4k footage as I was keen to see how it played / benched. It started smoothly enough but then it got choppy and the red importer engine (or something like that) crashed so i didnt bother further.

Paul, thanks for sharing your experience with the palit gtx 460. I was thinking about this gpu, too.

I read that the palit is getting loud after a while. Can you ackknowledge that?

Maryus I have the update, like I said with other codecs I can do more than 3 layers with effects all in real-time no problems. Its not a data rate issue either as I tried it with Cineform files which are around 20Mb/s (not mbps) and I can do 5 layers in real-time - 6 starts to stutter.

Paul: when you are working with more than three layers of AVCHD in PProCS5, are you doing this in a sequence using Adobe's AVCHD sequence preset?

Has anybody tried the hack on the new Macbook Pro's that have the nVidia 330m?

Did you find an answer to your question !!
I am interested in the Sony Vaio Z series but can't seem to dare to do it ... \

Thanks,
Amr Toukhy

Hello Amr -

Others have tried it with success...but on a Windows only laptop. But honestly, I don't think it would matter if it was a Windows only laptop or a MBP.

Give it shot, I don't think you can screw up your machine...unless you totally don't know what you're doing. But if you follow the instructions to the letter, I don't think you can go wrong.

And just remember, the community members here, are here to help out too!! So you're not alone.

Hallo Martin
The FX1800 + CS5 work with this?
Thanks

Yes, in software mode only. The hack will not work. Not enough memory.

FX 1800 have 768 MB I think it will work.

C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Premiere Pro CS5>GPUSniffer.exe
Device: 0000000000216CC8 has video RAM(MB): 768
Vendor string: NVIDIA Corporation
Renderer string: Quadro FX 1800/PCI/SSE2
Version string: 3.0.0

OpenGL version as determined by Extensionator...
OpenGL Version 3.0
Supports shaders!
Supports BGRA -> BGRA Shader
Supports VUYA Shader -> BGRA
Supports UYVY/YUYV ->BGRA Shader
Supports YUV 4:2:0 -> BGRA Shader
Testing for CUDA support...
Found 1 devices supporting CUDA.
CUDA Device # 0 properties -
CUDA device details:
Name: Quadro FX 1800 Compute capability: 1.1
Total Video Memory: 749MB
CUDA driver version: 3000
CUDA Device # 0 not choosen because 765MB are required, and 749MB are present.
Completed shader test!
Internal return value: 7
---------------------------------------------------------

So close but not enough, should I buy screen card again. What is using ram on my video card?

I had one but 16MB is missing. So I bought GTX 480.

Ufff to bad :(. Let's say I have a FX card for 3D and others and a second one for CUDA usage. Other CUDA software like octane render has a special menu that let you select a different card forum the system to do the rendering without touching the system card ( Quadro FX). It is possible to do the same with Premiere Pro CS5? I for example if I have a FX 580 and a GTX 275 in my system and make the GTX usable for Premiere? If I edit the CUDA txt file and put GTX 275, Premiere is able to use that card even is not the system default card? I'm planing to buy a Quadro FX 580 or 1800 for modeling and other stuff, but I still need the CUDA power from the GTX 275.

Based on what? Doesn't matter, the FX1800 is just a lousy card.

Doesn't matter, the FX1800 is just a lousy card.

Yes, that FX 1800 is basically a 9600 GT with a lower clock speed and a 192-bit memory bus. This makes it no faster than a GT 240 with DDR3 memory. Heck, even a GT 240 with GDDR5 memory will beat an FX 1800. And while a GT 240 with 1GB of GDDR5 memory now costs just under $100, that FX 1800 costs nearly five times more. Plus, a GT 240 has 32 more stream processors (96) than that 64-stream-processor FX 1800.

Maryus,

Yes you can use multiple cards with Premiere. Tim Kolb, a member here, uses a Quadro FX4800 as his main card plus another nvidia card going to 2 more LCDs. However, I don't know if you can use a non-Quadro and a Quadro in the same PC since they use different drivers.

What 3D software do you use, and have you looked for any benchmarks comparing the low-end Quadros to the GTX cards? Depending on the software, you will probably be better off getting only a GTX 460.

Yes Quadro FX 580 has around 500-600% more performance than my GTX 275 in most scene not all. I'm working in Autodesk Maya and render in Octane Render. All the forum recommend a FX 580 for modeling and an other GTX card in parallel for CUDA use only. Octane render has a device manager menu to select wich GPU forum the system should do the rendering. This is very convenient.

Only if some one doesn't believe me

The 16 fps screen is my GTX 275 with maya 2011 ( maya in mac os or windows have about the same performance, tested with tones of scenes)

The 32 fps screen was my old 8800GT which was bios modded to FX 3700 and used modded Quadro drivers (without the mod I had @ 15 fps)

The 130 fps screen is a FX 580 (9500GT specs) with some tweaks in nvidia contro panel from a friend of mine who had the pleasure to do a test.

Also the score from viewperf 10 and 11 was favorable for FX 580 and the numbers differences are huge.

All the test was made on a Q6600 stock clocks and P35 motherboards

And there is Octane Render device manager were you can select which card you can use for render. ( I have only a single GTX 275)

Now, how can Premiere use multiple or an other GPU from the system? It has a special menu or is enough to change CUDA txt file with the card I want to be used with premiere and premiere automatically recognize the card?

BTW: I never tested GTX 400 cards in maya but I guess the difference in performance in not that big compared to other GeForce cards, driver limitation and marketing stuff I guess.
BTW2: FX 1800 is a 9600GS with 768 MB ram and 192 bit :P 9600GT is a bit different.
BTW3: About the drivers, you can install FX 580 drivers and for GTX 275 use only Physx\CUDA drivers which is the same for Quadro or GeForce driver.

Maryus,

IIRC the FX 1800 has only 64 CUDA cores versus 96 on the 9600 GS. Thus, it is a combination of the lesser features of both the 9600 GS and the 9600 GT - a combination that's not found at all on any of the consumer 9600s.

On the other hand, all of the FX 580s have only 512MB of RAM. As a result, it cannot use MPE's GPU acceleration at all due to an insufficient amount of graphics RAM. And the FX 580 is based on the 9500 GT. And the only reason why it outperformed the GTX 275 in 3D modeling programs is that the GTX 275's drivers are not optimized for 3D content creation work. As a result, the FX 580 might be faster than most of the consumer GeForce cards in MPE's software-only mode.

The ideea was to use GTX for premiere and FX for modeling. It doesn't matter :P I'll anounce if it works when I get the card :D.

However, I don't know if you can use a non-Quadro and a Quadro in the same PC since they use different drivers.I have read on the nVidia web site that they do not recommend mixing Quadro and non-Quadro cards in the same system for exactly that reason.

Hello Amr -

Others have tried it with success...but on a Windows only laptop. But honestly, I don't think it would matter if it was a Windows only laptop or a MBP.

Give it shot, I don't think you can screw up your machine...unless you totally don't know what you're doing. But if you follow the instructions to the letter, I don't think you can go wrong.

And just remember, the community members here, are here to help out too!! So you're not alone.

Thanks Andrew,

I seem to be misunderstood, i am not able to dare to buy the machine because it is expensive and that is gonna be a major loss if the PPE doesn't work on the GT 330M so this is why ám asking before i buy the machine ...


But what ám getting from your answer is ( YES ) the hack works on the GT 330M windows laptops ! right ..

Thanks again
Amr Toukhy

Ive jst noticed there is a newer driver that came out last month.. 258.96

At the bottom is says "Supports the new GPU-accelerated features in Adobe CS5 ".... sOO its already been approved? Dont need to hack anymore?

Im running on 275.21 any point going to 258.96?