Multiple GPU's for Video Editing

I wanted to ask about using two graphics cards for digital video editing.

I have been doing some research and have come across a few articles. At this point it seems that this technique doesnt involve Crossfire or SLI, but does involve Open CL (also have read Open GL).

here's one article

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1607181

"Except that Apple is updating OS X to Mavericks prior to the Mac Pro's release. And they're promising a new version of Final Cut Pro X that'll coincide with the new Mac Pro. Wanna bet that the new version of that software will be multi-GPU aware?
Then there's Adobe's new version of Premiere Pro: already multi-GPU ready"

I guess I am looking for advice regarding the usage of multiple graphics cards for the sole purpose of digital video editing. Im afraid that this might be over my head as I am a newbie and have never programmed before... would I need to be able to do this (program)? Are there any programs out there that would enable one to use multiple graphics cards for editing video? Im not interested in any gaming, just video editing.

This works just fine. You will want good open CL cards, look for the Nvidia 5xx cards. The newer 6xx and 7xx series are "gimped" in the computing department for OpenCL work.

Just throw in as many cards as your PSU can handle and OSX will automatically feed the GPUs work during editing.

Gordo74 said:

This works just fine. You will want good open CL cards, look for the Nvidia 5xx cards. The newer 6xx and 7xx series are "gimped" in the computing department for OpenCL work.

Just throw in as many cards as your PSU can handle and OSX will automatically feed the GPUs work during editing.

Click to expand...

Thank you for the reply. I found a mac website: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4664 (and two others below) which lists Radeon cards which are compatible with Final Cut Pro, Motion 5, and Compressor 4.

I also found this website which lists Radeon GFX cards which are said to be compatible with OpenCL. This interests me because of their price. Not sure what to make of it other than "newer" Radeon cards are OpenCL capable. Would love an experts opinion on that!

Also one more link after the below link and its list. I'm "trying to get to the bottom" of this subject. It seems from these three links (again) that OpenCL is supported in NVIDIA -and- Radeon Graphics Cards. So it seems and the reason for my post(s).

If I ever do figure this out I will put together a comprehensive list for anyone/everyone else who might be interested. This information Ive found very hard to find. Youd think a graphics card would state "Supports OpenCL" if it did... but they dont. Strange! Who wouldnt want to know? (Specs on the box: SLI, Crossfire, *OpenCL, Cuda Cores, Stream Processors, etc).

http://streamcomputing.eu/blog/2011-12-29/opencl-hardware-support/


AMD/ATI GPUs

Over the years the architecture of AMD/ATI GPUs changed to get better support for OpenCL. Below is a list of GPUs that have good support for OpenCL 1.1 or 1.2.

• Recent APUs with embedded Radeon HD.
• Radeon HD 6450 and up.
• Radeon HD 5450 and up.
• FirePro V8800, V7800, V5800, V4800 and V3800.
• Mobility Radeon HD 5430 and up.
• HD 6330M and up.
• Mobility FirePro M7820 and M5800.

Older GPUs do have (beta) support, but won’t give really good speed-ups. It might be of interest when you have CrossFire. Here is the list:

• Radeon 4350 and up.
• FirePro V8750, V8700, V7750, V5700 and V3750.
• FireStream 9270 and 9250.
• Mobility Radeon HD 4300 Series and up.
• Mobility FirePro M7740.

Recent drivers have the OpenCL runtime. The SDK can be downloaded from http://developer.amd.com/amdapp


Heres another list with AMD GPU's

http://streamcomputing.eu/blog/2013-08-05/list-of-gpu-architectures/

Below you’ll find a list of the architecture names of all OpenCL-capable GPU models of Intel, NVIDA and AMD. It does not contain the professional lines for now – first we are focusing on getting the general models right.
Understand it took a lot of time to gather the below information.
Other associated knowledge is to be found in our upcoming OpenCL 2.0 book.
The table of GPU architectures

You see it is quite a mix and it’s hard to find general rules for each articture.
Search:
[TR="class: row-1 odd"] [TR="class: row-2 even"] [TR="class: row-3 odd"] [TR="class: row-4 even"] [TR="class: row-5 odd"] [TR="class: row-6 even"] [TR="class: row-7 odd"] [TR="class: row-8 even"] [TR="class: row-9 odd"] [TR="class: row-10 even"] [TR="class: row-11 odd"] [TR="class: row-12 even"] [TR="class: row-13 odd"] [TR="class: row-14 even"] [TR="class: row-15 odd"] [TR="class: row-16 even"]

Vendor	Architecture	GPUs
AMD	R700	HD4xxx
AMD	VLIW5	HD5xxx, 63xx - 68xx, 69xxM, 73xx, 83xx - 84xx
AMD	VLIW4	Radeon HD 69xx, 7xx0D, 7xx0G
AMD	GCN	Radeon HD 74xx - 79xx, 85xx - 89xx
NVIDIA	G80	GeForce 8800GTX/Ultra, 9400GT, 9600GT, 9800GT
NVIDIA	G80-2	GeForce 8400GS/GT, 8600GT/GTS, 8800GT/GTS, 9600 GSO, 9800GTX/GX2, GTS 250, GT 120/30/40
NVIDIA	Tesla	Geforce (GT) 3xx, 405.
NVIDIA	Tesla2	Geforce GTX 260 - 295
NVIDIA	Fermi	Geforce GTX 465 - 480, GTX 560 - 590
NVIDIA	Fermi2	Geforce GT 420 - 440, GTS 450, GTX 460, GT 510 - 545, GTX 550 - 560, GT 605 - 630, GT 640, GT 645
NVIDIA	Kepler	GTX 645 - 690, GTX 760 - 770
NVIDIA	Kepler2	GeForce GTX TITAN, GTX 780
NVIDIA	Kepler3	Geforce GT 635, 640
Intel	Gen7	HD2500, HD4000
Intel	Gen7-2	HD4x00, HD5x00

Thanks for posting all this, I'm also interested in "getting to the bottom" of it. Sound's like you are sticking with FCPX and the Apple suite. I went the other route and switched to Adobe stuff a couple years ago, and so I picked my graphics card based on CUDA for speeding up Premiere and After Effects renders.

For what it's worth, my GTX 670 give me the option of rendering through OpenCL in AE and Premiere, although it seems to be "unofficial" support. When I check the OpenCL box, it gives me a warning that says it's an unsupported graphics card, but still lets you run it and seems to work fine.

Sounds to me like CUDA is on its way out and it's all going to be OpenCL, so I'm interested in your findings.

teawhy said:

Thanks for posting all this, I'm also interested in "getting to the bottom" of it. Sound's like you are sticking with FCPX and the Apple suite. I went the other route and switched to Adobe stuff a couple years ago, and so I picked my graphics card based on CUDA for speeding up Premiere and After Effects renders.

For what it's worth, my GTX 670 give me the option of rendering through OpenCL in AE and Premiere, although it seems to be "unofficial" support. When I check the OpenCL box, it gives me a warning that says it's an unsupported graphics card, but still lets you run it and seems to work fine.

Sounds to me like CUDA is on its way out and it's all going to be OpenCL, so I'm interested in your findings.

Click to expand...

Cool, thanks for the info. Glad someone is interested other than me!

Went to Frys today and did some research/reading the "specs"

Some boxes did specify "OpenCL" support, on the box specs.

A few NVIDIA did specify they support OpenCL. Two Radeon cards also did specify OpenCL support (Open CL 1.2), but they were "lower end" cards which were 128bit floating point, one had 1GB RAM and the other 2GB RAM.

Radeon HD7850 1GB (Frys) 128 bit Floating Point, Open CL 1.2 support $184.99
Radeon HD7850 2GB (Frys) 128 bit Floating Point, Open CL 1.2 support $194.99

NVIDIA cards which specified Open CL support
EVGA GTX770 SC 2GB 256bit $419.99
EVGA GTX770 FTW 4GB 256bit $479.99
EVGA GTX780 SC 3GB 384 bit $669.99
EVGA 760 DUAL SC 2GB $269.99
PNY GTX770 $399.99

If I find out anything else I will post.

Also Ive heard Motion 5 is much easier to use then AE as well, and Motion is only $49, so is Compressor 4. Thats the software thats being taught where Im studying this semester, so I decided to go that route (if Im able to that is, I havent built my hackintosh yet, waiting for the mobo).

If this "Radeon thing" pans out/if I can figure it out then for $500 could have 6GB DDR5, 384 bit, and 3500+ stream processors (2 cards). Just ONE 3GB 384bit NVIDIA card is $659.99! OUCH!

Radeon twice as much for less than half the price of NVIDIA. If it would work, thatd be FN SWEET!

teawhy said:

Thanks for posting all this, I'm also interested in "getting to the bottom" of it. Sound's like you are sticking with FCPX and the Apple suite. I went the other route and switched to Adobe stuff a couple years ago, and so I picked my graphics card based on CUDA for speeding up Premiere and After Effects renders.

For what it's worth, my GTX 670 give me the option of rendering through OpenCL in AE and Premiere, although it seems to be "unofficial" support. When I check the OpenCL box, it gives me a warning that says it's an unsupported graphics card, but still lets you run it and seems to work fine.

Sounds to me like CUDA is on its way out and it's all going to be OpenCL, so I'm interested in your findings.

Click to expand...

Almost there so it seems... I joined an AMD Developers forum and was able to post a question and received two replies along with some links, which led to this card:

"note that some OpenCL programs may require Double Precision support, so those programs can't run on all of the listed cards."
-and-
"Any GPU based on Evergreen family or newer support OpenCL. That mean radeon 5xxx,6xxx and 7xxx."

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121716

• 3GB 384-bit GDDR5
• PCI Express 3.0
• $299.99
• $254[SUP].99[/SUP]
• Save: $45.00 (15%)
• $234.99 after $20.00 rebate card

AMD App Acceleration AMD App Acceleration lets you speed up applications and enjoy brilliant video. Enjoy improved general purpose computing performance and new features including Video Codec Engine (VCE) in many top media, entertainment and everyday productivity applications powered by the unprecedented 28nm GCN Architecture. AMD Radeon HD 7xxx fully supports DirectCompute 11 and OpenCL 1.2, enabling broad application support today and tomorrow.

Did I overlook or am I missing something? Im still a newbie and dont mind being corrected, it could (would) save me some hard earned cash!

Any comments/opinions welcomed!

thank you in advance!

teawhy said:

Thanks for posting all this, I'm also interested in "getting to the bottom" of it. Sound's like you are sticking with FCPX and the Apple suite. I went the other route and switched to Adobe stuff a couple years ago, and so I picked my graphics card based on CUDA for speeding up Premiere and After Effects renders.

For what it's worth, my GTX 670 give me the option of rendering through OpenCL in AE and Premiere, although it seems to be "unofficial" support. When I check the OpenCL box, it gives me a warning that says it's an unsupported graphics card, but still lets you run it and seems to work fine.

Sounds to me like CUDA is on its way out and it's all going to be OpenCL, so I'm interested in your findings.

Click to expand...

Forgot to ask "I picked my graphics card based on CUDA for speeding up Premiere and After Effects renders." Are you saying/implying Cuda is faster than Stream Processing?

Heres a useful link with some great info/specs on Radeon Cards

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radeon_HD_7000_Series

They all support OpenCL, so I was thinking about using two of them. But am now concerned about what you meant when you said you chose based on Cuda for speeding up renders.

FPC M5 and C4 state they require an OpenCL capable graphics card, but Im now concerned about Radeon and the speed of rendering.

If you get a chance and can let me know itd be appreciated. Im concerned that I may have over looked something here. thanks

All the tech specs are nice, but support in applications, real world usage is more important. It really does depend on applications you want to use. Thats mostly what matters.

So far perfomance in FCP-X and Motion is better on Nvidia cards (considering same price ranges). Better nvidia driver and application support thrumps a lot better specifications (OpenCL nirvana) of AMD cards. I speak from experience, as i own 7970, previously owned nvidia 670.

I went ahead because i expected better FCPX performance, but alas, the speedup was marginal. It really depends on the effects, because lot of the times my CPU utilisation in fcpx is very high. GPU is faster than the CPU and waits for CPU (that means i would probably be ok with slower card. There is only so much in editing that can be done by GPU, rest goes to CPU). Some very intensive generators and effects do stress mostly GPU and that results in nice speedup, but generally that is not the case in everyday usage.

All this is fcpx, i dont have much experience in motion except for very basic stuff.

I advise you to wait till the new Mac Pro is released, probably joined with Mavericks. There should be some optimisations for AMD cards and we will see about the performance then. That is what im doing anyway. Workarounds to make 7xxx cards work in ML suck. Also dual gpu is expected in Mavericks (maybe simultaneous, maybe one for background processing and second for foreground apps though, noone knows). OpenCL is the future on OSX, but we need to use the computers today. In two years when all apps go OpenCL full throttle, I will be buying newer card anyway.

A good site to visit is www.barefeats.com, check their benchmarks, all the info is in the graphs.

And i must stress this again, all that matters is support in apps and your choice of apps!

ps: AMD 7950 performance is very buggy right now (inconsistent behaviour), the only possible choice is 7970 right now.

I don't know if you guys use Davinci for grading at all but 10 just got a beta release. It has AMD support through opencl now and if you buy it you can use multiple cards http://nofilmschool.com/2013/09/blackmagic-davinci-resolve-10-lite-beta-color-grading/#more-66858

studdmufin said:

I don't know if you guys use Davinci for grading at all but 10 just got a beta release. It has AMD support through opencl now and if you buy it you can use multiple cards http://nofilmschool.com/2013/09/blackmagic-davinci-resolve-10-lite-beta-color-grading/#more-66858

Click to expand...

I actually read an article on DaVinci Resolve 10 today. Very cool, thank you for the info and the link. Ive never used it but it sounds sweet! Hopefully one day Ill have the chance. Here's the article I read earlier:

http://provideocoalition.com/news/s...vinci-resolve-10-public-beta-is-available-now