GPU acceleration turned off?

[James Binder]

v.11 build 595 64bit

I want to make sure my video card is taking advantage of GPU acceleration --

Under>>> preferences>video tab>GPU acceleration of video processing:

This is off by default with no option to tun it "on" -- only "off" Is this correct, or is my card not able to take advantage? I was under the impression it was. My card is:

Nvidia GeForce GTX 460

Any thoughts or insight here? Much appreciated.

i7 980 3.33 GHz 12GB ram

[Ray Turcotte]

yes that is the global on/off switch for GPU acceleration. You need to use Nvidea drivers 275 or newer to use GPU acceleration.

Personally, I've been getting odd results with my gt440 card (no matter the VP11 version or nvidea driver version) and so i have this switch off. I prefer the quality and stable results I get from CPU rendering.

There also is a GPU switch under the "render as" dialog, but I found it does not override the global switch.

[Edward Troxel]

Definitely go to nVidia's website and see what the current version currently is. I am guessing it is probably a much newer version than you are currently using. You definitely need a current driver for GPU acceleration to properly work.

[James Binder]

Thanks guys -- I did indeed update my driver and can now turn on acceleration, but alas, I still see no boost in the video preview (dropping farms). Can anyone point me in the direction toward info regarding optimizing for best video preview?

Or maybe I'm expecting too much. I'm currently working on a 1280x720 60p project (for slow-mo, speed ramps ala twixter) with some compositing -- nothing too crazy, just lower thirds -- graphics/text, etc.

What do you think? I thought my i7 was powerful enough, or maybe my card isn't up to the task?

BTW - running in 'preview/auto' mode - 426x240 window

Thanks --

[Ray Turcotte]

at the top of the preview window there is a drop down box for setting the preview render quality. I normally leave it on (preview auto) which is ok for general playback. However if I want to inspect my output in more detail I switch it up to (qood auto) and inspect it frame by frame. Theres lots of variations here which you can choose from depending on the hardware you have and how complex the time line is.

[Gints Klimanis]

Originally Posted by James Binder

What do you think? I thought my i7 was powerful enough, or maybe my card isn't up to the task?
Thanks --

Even my 560ti doesn't show much of an improvement in rendering with an i7 3.33 GHZ (over clocked to 4-4.5) doesn't show much of an improvement for Vegas, but the DVD Fab Platinum encoding is hugely faster and shows a much higher GPU usage.

Will the new nVidia 680 (Kepler) devices be any better?

[Jeff Harper]

I'm thinking yes, it should blow away my GTX 460. 1536 cuda cores vs 336 cuda cores. I believe it's the cuda cores that makes the difference with Vegas. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

[Craig Longman]

Originally Posted by Jeff Harper

I'm thinking yes, it should blow away my GTX 460. 1536 cuda cores vs 336 cuda cores. I believe it's the cuda cores that makes the difference with Vegas. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

Yeah, that seems to be what NVidia call 'em. AMD calls the Stream Processors. Any GPU operation happens in parallel with the # of cores involved; well, there are lots of factors involved, but the more cores/processors available, the more data-parallelized the kernel can process.

However, that's just processing the data once it's in the card, there are many more, frequently slower steps that need to happen to get it in the video memory and then back out, so it certainly won't scale linearly. However, the higher end cards tend to have faster everything, as well as adding image support and other features that make the expensive transferring of the data faster/more efficient.

CraigL