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.

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.

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.

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.

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 (http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-gts-450-gf106-radeon-hd-5750,2734.html)

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...

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

Hi Alex,

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

Thanks.

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.

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.

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.

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:

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!

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.

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

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

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.

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

Thanks for chiming in, David. Again, thank you for writing such an extensive article on the MPE performance in CS5.

I am doing research for a new build, switching back from Mac to PC. My build will most likely be a Core i7 950.

A GT 240 1GB DDR5 can be had for as low as $76 and I've seen the GTS 450 1GB for $105. Those are pretty hot deals, especially if their performance is comparable to a $300 GTX 470 or $200 GTX 460.

My main preference for wanting to go for the GT 240 vs the GTS 450 is in case I miss my Mac and want to turn it into a Hackintosh. To my understanding, there are no Fermi drivers for Mac so the 4xx series wouldn't work in the Hackintosh, if I go that route. The GTS 450 is probably the best value, though, and some room for improvement if Adobe improves CUDA core usage.

How does the GT 240 performance compare with the GTS 450? Is the GTS 450 limited significantly by its 128bit memory bandwidth? It seems the GT 240 also has a 128bit memory bandwidth...

Note: I do check back and refer to your article often and it looks like it gets updated fairly often. It would be helpful to know what you've updated to your article so I can keep current more easily. Thanks again!

Thanks for chiming in, David. Again, thank you for writing such an extensive article on the MPE performance in CS5.

I am doing research for a new build, switching back from Mac to PC. My build will most likely be a Core i7 950.

A GT 240 1GB DDR5 can be had for as low as $76 and I've seen the GTS 450 1GB for $105. Those are pretty hot deals, especially if their performance is comparable to a $300 GTX 470 or $200 GTX 460.

My main preference for wanting to go for the GT 240 vs the GTS 450 is in case I miss my Mac and want to turn it into a Hackintosh. To my understanding, there are no Fermi drivers for Mac so the 4xx series wouldn't work in the Hackintosh, if I go that route. The GTS 450 is probably the best value, though, and some room for improvement if Adobe improves CUDA core usage.

How does the GT 240 performance compare with the GTS 450? Is the GTS 450 limited significantly by its 128bit memory bandwidth? It seems the GT 240 also has a 128bit memory bandwidth...

Note: I do check back and refer to your article often and it looks like it gets updated fairly often. It would be helpful to know what you've updated to your article so I can keep current more easily. Thanks again!

I can explain why the GT 240 DDR5 did as well as it did: MPE (as currently implemented) barely takes full advantage of current 128-bit DDR5 graphics memory (as used on most mainstream graphics cards these days). The GT 240, like the GTS 450, has a 128-bit memory bus.

Brad, yes I check this morning and the latest driver is now 260.89. I just got down loading it on all of our computers.

Peter, right now the 450, 460, 470, 480 all perform pretty much the same with Premiere CS5 (when tested on the same computer, an AMD X4 and X6 systems.) Who knows about the future if Adobe starts using more CUDA cores.

I haven't got access to an Intel I7 system to run the tests on myself, but from the emails I have recieved, it doesn't sound like there is a whole lot of difference between the video cards on the I7 CPUs.

Peter, the 240 and 450 performed the same on my systems here. Both are 128bit bandwidth.

Randall, I agree with your statement "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).

One person did email about having a I7-930 system that was overclocked. He didn't see any difference between the 460 and the 480 with Premiere CS5. These were the only two video cards he had to test. He is trying to get his hands on the GT240 or 250 to see what the performance difference is like.

Question to everyone -- Does anyone know how many CUDA cores Adobe is using with Premiere CS5? I have heard several rumors that it is only around 100 CUDA cores and that is why the performace isn't that different bewteen most of the video cards when tested in the same system.

What's the successor to the Nvidia GT240?

All the series have been updated to 4xx, but I don't see the update of the 240.

More or less:
- 270 to 470
- 260 to 460
- 250 to 450
Etc. But, what about 240? No Fermi upgrade?

I ask this because is a one year old card (the last of the 2xx series) and all the versions have been upgraded to Fermi chops. Is coming a 440 or similar card?

There is the GT430 but I wouldn't recommend it because it uses DDR3 memory instead of DDR5. Both the GT430 and GT240 have 96 cores but you can get the GT240 with DDR5 memory.

Randall,

If you have a look at Latest News (http://ppbm5.com/News.html) you will see I mentioned you explicitly. If you want me to remove that sentence, please say so, but I think it shows how you can use a system that really delivers performance without spending all future inheritances now. It may not be the top performer, but per $ spent, it now ranks in second place after my own system, albeit at the very left of the horizontal axis around 30%, which is not visible on the scale used for the top 25 performers.

Randall,

If you have a look at Latest News (http://ppbm5.com/News.html) you will see I mentioned you explicitly. If you want me to remove that sentence, please say so, but I think it shows how you can use a system that really delivers performance without spending all future inheritances now. It may not be the top performer, but per $ spent, it now ranks in second place after my own system, albeit at the very left of the horizontal axis around 30%, which is not visible on the scale used for the top 25 performers.

Thanks for the mention. It does mean that not everyone needs a top-performing system for his or her own needs.

By extension, it also means that a Socket 1156 system (i7-8xx) can be used to achieve similar results as long as one does not overtax the system with an excessive number of PCI-e expansion cards (as the LGA 1156 CPU itself has only 16 PCI-e 2.0 lanes running at full bandwidth and the P55 chipset adds an additional eight PCI-e 2.0 lanes which are restricted to PCI-e 1.0 bandwidth). The caveat: Any hardware RAID controller added to a P55 system will either be forced to run at PCI-e 1.0 x4 bandwidth or drop the graphics card's slot to PCI-e 2.0 x8 mode. That will limit the future expansion capability of that platform since only three PCI-e 1.0-bandwidth lanes will then be available (after accounting for the onboard LAN which on most motherboards eat up one PCI-e 1.0-bandwidth lane). And forget about P55 or 1156 if you also want to use USB 3.0 and/or SATA 6 Gbps: Current onboard solutions eat up up to four additional PCI-e lanes. On Gigabyte's P55A-UD3 motherboard, the use of a hardware RAID card will force the onboard SATA 6 Gbps and USB 3.0 controllers to use the Turbo mode, which will drop the primary PCI-e 2.0 x16 slot to x8 mode.

Randall,

If you have a look at Latest News (http://ppbm5.com/News.html) you will see I mentioned you explicitly. If you want me to remove that sentence, please say so, but I think it shows how you can use a system that really delivers performance without spending all future inheritances now. It may not be the top performer, but per $ spent, it now ranks in second place after my own system, albeit at the very left of the horizontal axis around 30%, which is not visible on the scale used for the top 25 performers.

Again, Harm, thanks for the acknowledgement.

I have since rebuilt that system with a RAID 0 array and a better CPU cooler (and a new name). I retested that system, and submitted its PPBM5 result. Its 317-second total time shows you that a properly tuned i7-9xx system with only 6GB of RAM can outperform a poorly tuned i7 system with 12GB or 24GB of RAM.

Randall's results also show that a GT240 (I'm assuming with DDR5) can hold up against a GTX470(!)

What else did you tune besides higher overclock, RAID0 array, new CPU cooler (which are you using?), and 5.03 upgrade?

Also, what did you change from Steamer 3.7 to Steamer 3.67? Did the upgrade from 5.01 to 5.02 cut the results a whole minute or was there something else?

And on a side note, have you tried running a hackintosh on your Steamer? The UD3R seems to be very popular for that and I'm thinking of using it for my next build.

Thanks!

Randall's results also show that a GT240 (I'm assuming with DDR5) can hold up against a GTX470(!)

What else did you tune besides higher overclock, RAID0 array, new CPU cooler (which are you using?), and 5.03 upgrade?

Also, what did you change from Steamer 3.7 to Steamer 3.67? Did the upgrade from 5.01 to 5.02 cut the results a whole minute or was there something else?

And on a side note, have you tried running a hackintosh on your Steamer? The UD3R seems to be very popular for that and I'm thinking of using it for my next build.

Thanks!

The upgrade from 5.0.1 to 5.0.2 improved my overall results by a minute. Also, I changed from 3.7 to 3.67 because the CPU was running at 3.738 GHz when I ran 5.0.1 compared to 3.675 GHz when I ran 5.0.2.

On the system with the 6GB of RAM, I did no other tuning besides what I stated above. 5.0.2 and 5.0.3 performed virtually equally to one another. I switched from the stock Intel boxed CPU cooler (which limited my overclock to 3.36 GHz because any higher resulted in an internal CPU core temperature that exceeded 85°C in Prime95 and IBT) to a Cooler Master Hyper 212+ (which kept the CPU temperature to the upper 60s C despite the higher overclock to 3.677 GHz, and my i7-920 could not go higher than that without requiring a Vcore increase to higher than 1.225V, which is the upper end of Intel's nominal operating voltage range).

Since then, I have noticed three very slow results in MPE from the GT 240 in two different systems - 63 seconds on one system and 107 seconds (CPU at stock speed)/92 seconds (CPU overclocked) on another system. I am suspecting that either they have driver issues or are using GT 240s with only DDR3 memory. This compares to the 10 to 12 seconds that the DDR5 version of that same card can achieve in a properly tuned system.

Since then, I have noticed three very slow results in MPE from the GT 240 in two different systems - 63 seconds on one system and 107 seconds (CPU at stock speed)/92 seconds (CPU overclocked) on another system. I am suspecting that either they have driver issues or are using GT 240s with only DDR3 memory. This compares to the 10 to 12 seconds that the DDR5 version of that same card can achieve in a properly tuned system.

The system that had the 107/92 seconds was retested because some of the video clips were off-line when he originally tested the system. His new result was 13 seconds in MPE mode.

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.

Hi Steve, I'm currently in the same situation as you were, and have also been debating between the GST 450 and GTX 460. But in light of the more-than-extensive information David Knarr has gathered and posted about the GT 240, I think I may just go with that one (1G DDR5 of course). From everything I have read, it seems to be almost right on par with a GTX 470 or 480 (!) where the CS5 MPE is concerned. I play no games on my vid editing box so that's no concern, and it will save me a PSU change-out. Just something to consider.

I supposed the only caveat would be the distinct, and most likely, possibility that PPCSx will use more CUDA cores in the future (it will be a great hook for an upgrade). As of now (aside from having a Xeon X5680, i7 980x system or greater) that is the only reason I can see for getting anything more than the GT 240.

Hi Steve, I'm currently in the same situation as you were, and have also been debating between the GST 450 and GTX 460. But in light of the more-than-extensive information David Knarr has gathered and posted about the GT 240, I think I may just go with that one (1G DDR5 of course). From everything I have read, it seems to be almost right on par with a GTX 470 or 480 (!) where the CS5 MPE is concerned. I play no games on my vid editing box so that's no concern, and it will save me a PSU change-out. Just something to consider.

I supposed the only caveat would be the distinct, and most likely, possibility that PPCSx will use more CUDA cores in the future (it will be a great hook for an upgrade). As of now (aside from having a Xeon X5680, i7 980x system or greater) that is the only reason I can see for getting anything more than the GT 240.

It's been over nine months since the last post in this thread, but I am going to update this (based on my own personal results) now that Premiere Pro CS5.5 is out and is up to 5.5.2 (as of this posting).

Simply put, the GTS 450 is where the performance in CS5.5 will start slowing down significantly, especially in HD-to-MPEG-2 SD transcodes: It has only 128-bit access to its DDR5 RAM. And the GTX 550 Ti, which effectively replaces the GTS 450, is just slower than a GTX 260 due to the former's 192-bit DDR5 memory bus (which puts its memory throughput just below that of the GTX 260 with its 448-bit DDR3 memory bus). As such, the GTX 550 Ti is acceptable if your system has a low-end i5 or below for a CPU - but I'd strongly recommend a GTX 560 or higher if you can afford it even if your CPU isn't quite up to speed.

As for the GTX 470, my particular GTX 470 only performs on a par with a top-end GPU from the generation that's previous to the Fermi series, the GTX 285. That's mainly because the Nvidia reference cooler for the GTX 470 could not prevent the GPU from throttling itself down in clock speed during MPEG-2 DVD encodes -- in other words, the GTX 470's reference cooler is ineffective.

Also, keep in mind that the faster or more highly overclocked your system's CPU is, the higher-end (faster) GPU you'll need in order to keep the system's performance in good balance. That's because the article referenced for the CUDA hack used an AMD Phenom II x4 CPU, which lacks support for the SSE 4.x instructions that Intel CPUs have and which Adobe Premiere Pro makes extensive use of. What's more, the Phenom II x4 only performs on a par with a higher-end old-generation Intel Core 2 Quad or a low-end dual-core Sandy Bridge i3 CPU overall in the PPBM5 tests under Premiere Pro CS5.5. A true quad-core i5 of the Sandy Bridge generation (such as the i5-2400) will easily outperform the AMD CPUs in this situation.