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NVIDIA CUDA vs METAL vs OPENCL tested on Premiere

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Jul 6, 2018
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Motherboard
asus Z97-A USB 3.1
CPU
i7-4790k
Graphics
GTX 1060
Warning, this is VERY unscientific--just a quick thumbnail sketch, not comprehensive benchmarks.

So, I have been working on my hackintosh for a week after finding out the PC I scrounged together from used parts would make a surprisingly good choice.

First the premiere part, then the 'Adobe performance in general from a hackintosh noob' part.

After going back and forth between playback of a very mixed timeline--lots of formats, GPU color correction, etc, I was looking for the "best performance" option, and going by 'feel' alone, I knew that OpenCL was the worst...The lag was noticeable. Barely better than software only.

I wasn't sure whether CUDA or Metal was better--I *thought* metal was slightly smoother as I dragged back and forth on the timeline, but it wasn't obvious.

I ran the GPU performance graph on the activity monitor and was surprised by the results..

The 3 different settings very consistently ran the GPU at these levels: Open CL lowest at roughly 30% usage, Cuda right in the center around 55%, and Metal at about 75%.

This is consistent with how it 'felt.' It's interesting that metal does outperform CUDA.. I'm sure the internals on metal are super efficient, compared to whatever hardware-level access Nvidia gets on MacOS, but still, I would have expected closer to even performance.

I went back and forth several times, and the graph was very consistent throughout different parts of my timeline.

ASUS z97-A USB 3.1
High Sierra 10.13.6
NVIDIA WEB DRIVERS 387.....40.105
Intel i7-4790k
16 GB Ram (temporarily)
NVIDIA 1060 6GB
THUNDERBOLT EX II
PEGASUS R6 RAID 5
(slightly hobbled due to one replacement drive that was an older WD Green drive I didn't need--I'm waiting to upgrade the entire raid at some point with 4TB IRONWolfs or something.)

Media h.264 HD resolution, also mixed uncompressed overlays (png sequences and stuff)

BACKGROUND

I'm a video producer/shooter/editor person and I've missed MACOS as my main machine--I still use a macbook pro 17" from 2011. (The last of its kind) But 4k is just too much to handle (That it even supports 4k output at 30hz is impressive.)

So, after picking up a second 4k monitor, I decided it was time to try the hackintosh, and after a fairly short week of tweaks, the only thing missing that I really wish I had was thunderbolt wake from sleep. (oh well)

I haven't done anyhardcore editing, but besides the highly superior OS in general, it's the little things that blow my mind-- In Audition, I can crank the latency for my cheap balanced audio I/O (Behringer UM2) down to 16ms latency and it works without a hitch-- Making round-trip audio almost useful (audition is fine with RT monitoring through the box, but there are other Applications that make this a nice thing to have)

Anhow, Adobe people, hope this gives you a nugget of something to work with.
 

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Warning, this is VERY unscientific--just a quick thumbnail sketch, not comprehensive benchmarks.

So, I have been working on my hackintosh for a week after finding out the PC I scrounged together from used parts would make a surprisingly good choice.

First the premiere part, then the 'Adobe performance in general from a hackintosh noob' part.

After going back and forth between playback of a very mixed timeline--lots of formats, GPU color correction, etc, I was looking for the "best performance" option, and going by 'feel' alone, I knew that OpenCL was the worst...The lag was noticeable. Barely better than software only.

I wasn't sure whether CUDA or Metal was better--I *thought* metal was slightly smoother as I dragged back and forth on the timeline, but it wasn't obvious.

I ran the GPU performance graph on the activity monitor and was surprised by the results..

The 3 different settings very consistently ran the GPU at these levels: Open CL lowest at roughly 30% usage, Cuda right in the center around 55%, and Metal at about 75%.

This is consistent with how it 'felt.' It's interesting that metal does outperform CUDA.. I'm sure the internals on metal are super efficient, compared to whatever hardware-level access Nvidia gets on MacOS, but still, I would have expected closer to even performance.

I went back and forth several times, and the graph was very consistent throughout different parts of my timeline.

ASUS z97-A USB 3.1
High Sierra 10.13.6
NVIDIA WEB DRIVERS 387.....40.105
Intel i7-4790k
16 GB Ram (temporarily)
NVIDIA 1060 6GB
THUNDERBOLT EX II
PEGASUS R6 RAID 5
(slightly hobbled due to one replacement drive that was an older WD Green drive I didn't need--I'm waiting to upgrade the entire raid at some point with 4TB IRONWolfs or something.)

Media h.264 HD resolution, also mixed uncompressed overlays (png sequences and stuff)

BACKGROUND

I'm a video producer/shooter/editor person and I've missed MACOS as my main machine--I still use a macbook pro 17" from 2011. (The last of its kind) But 4k is just too much to handle (That it even supports 4k output at 30hz is impressive.)

So, after picking up a second 4k monitor, I decided it was time to try the hackintosh, and after a fairly short week of tweaks, the only thing missing that I really wish I had was thunderbolt wake from sleep. (oh well)

I haven't done anyhardcore editing, but besides the highly superior OS in general, it's the little things that blow my mind-- In Audition, I can crank the latency for my cheap balanced audio I/O (Behringer UM2) down to 16ms latency and it works without a hitch-- Making round-trip audio almost useful (audition is fine with RT monitoring through the box, but there are other Applications that make this a nice thing to have)

Anhow, Adobe people, hope this gives you a nugget of something to work with.
Sorry to dig this old thread up but I've just put together a 8700k + 1070ti for the purpose of video editing. I just noticed you didn't list CUDA driver installed. Could that be why CUDA is performing so badly. Also do you know how da Vinci would perform on our setup vs premiere?
 
I ran the GPU performance graph on the activity monitor and was surprised by the results..

If you car burns more fuel does it mean it's better or faster than the one that burns it less?
 
If you car burns more fuel does it mean it's better or faster than the one that burns it less?

Car 1 can go up to 1000 mph
Car 2 can go up to 240 mph

Car 1 takes 10 seconds to get from 0-60
Car 2 takes 3 seconds to get from 0-60

So car 1 has greater potential but car 2 is faster in practical use. inb4 synthetic benchmarks
 
thank you for making this basic rundown! I wanted to add that in my experience (especially on "unsupported" builds) CUDA is more stable than Metal. though on my home build Metal seems to work much much better
 
Don't know, but rx 580 openCL blows away 1070 cuda I had before / Premiere
the card costs roughly 70% less...
I wonder what will hapen when Navi hits and no nvidia support in Mojave... nvidia and hackintosh love is OVER
 
It's well known and documented that the Nvidia drivers are very poorly optimised in MacOS especially when it comes to OpenCL. Am surprised that Metal outperformed Cuda in the OP but as @thetrystero hints in post #2 the performance of the Nvidia Web and Cuda drivers quite often fluctuate between versions.

Cheers
Jay
 
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