Threadripper or EPYC

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Justin Jackson

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Threadripper or EPYC

PostMon Sep 04, 2017 3:37 pm

Hey all,

I am looking to build a new rig in a few months mostly for editing/rendering purposes, maybe some gaming and running a VM or two as well.

My dilemma is for the money and what you get, it seems to me like EPYC with 32 cores/64 threads for $200 or so more than a Threadripper CPU would be the better bang for buck, not to mention 128 PCIe lanes. I realize it is a server cpu, but in the past I recall XEON being server cpus for a while, and at the time video workstations that pros used were often built with dual XEON cpus.

So I am wondering if anyone has done much research yet in to EPYC and if it would be a viable editing/rendering cpu, or if there are things that will prevent it from being an alternative. For example, will the motherboards/chipsets support Thunderbolt 3, and will high end GPUs (e.g. Titan, workstation GPUs, etc) work well with EPYC, or is this a CPU that is destined to be used in data centers to run large cloud/vm farms and nothing more?

If it is viable, is it worth the extra $$$ to get the dual cpu setup, even if I were to get one CPU now? The dual socket cpu is quite a bit more though, so it would only make sense if a dual CPU setup with say 3 or 4 GPUs would be usable by Resolve and Fusion.
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Derek Morrison

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Re: Threadripper or EPYC

PostMon Sep 04, 2017 4:04 pm

I have been going back and forth as well on this. Here's the main issue at the moment with Epyc. You can't purchase them yet. Theyre only available in the server configurations for enterprise at the moment.

I have been looking at using the 7401p. A single socket 24 core 48 thread workstation at 3ghz with 256gb ram, going with a liquid cool solution so that I can liquid cool the gfx cards for the sole purpose of making them single socket. Gigabyte has an Epyc Motherboard with 7 slots, 4 x16 and 3 x8 slots. I can add 6 gtx 1080ti's and a BM PCIe card to go to a Ultrastudio 3. It already has dual 10gb ports built in.

Thunderbolt won't be available on any other device than intel for at least another year/generation of cpu's.

I'm not convinced that the 32core at 2.2ghz will have the speed needed for some tasks even though they claim the boost will also go to 3ghz, but on how many cores? Also on resolve the gpu's do the heavy lifting in almost all cases.

I don't see how the dual cpu setup is worth it. 48threads is plenty of power to decode any codec. AMD has been marketing the hell out of single processor performance and savings by going that route. My current rig is dual xeon simply for the fact that I needed the core count and the pcie lanes. With AMD that's no longer the case. Where the real issue lies is power. How much power can I stick in a case, and will I need a special case or power supply with a workstation like that? Will Resolve handle all of the GPU power or cap it except on linux, i'm still unclear on whether they released the dual gpu cap.
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Cary Knoop

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Re: Threadripper or EPYC

PostMon Sep 04, 2017 4:09 pm

I'd say it's too early to tell.
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Peter Chamberlain

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Re: Threadripper or EPYC

PostMon Sep 04, 2017 4:15 pm

Derek, Resolve does not limit the GPUs on Mac or Windows Studio versions. Its an OS/bios issue. The app supports 8 GPUs.
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Derek Morrison

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Re: Threadripper or EPYC

PostMon Sep 04, 2017 5:15 pm

AH thanks Peter, I thought only Linux was unlocked for gpu's. That's great!
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Al Spaeth

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Re: Threadripper or EPYC

PostMon Sep 04, 2017 5:40 pm

Cary Knoop wrote:I'd say it's too early to tell.

+1
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Justin Jackson

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Re: Threadripper or EPYC

PostTue Sep 05, 2017 1:47 am

Odd.. I thought Intel a month or so ago indicated it would license TB3 to AMD? I cant imagine how they can block that if it is to be a standard across devices. I guess as long as USB 3.1 Gen 2 is available it should be fast enough for most transfers as would 10Gbe.. though my home network is only 1Gb anyway.

I thought the editing work other than FX was done by cpus and rendering was CPU bound?
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Derek Morrison

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Re: Threadripper or EPYC

PostTue Sep 05, 2017 12:36 pm

Your correct Justin, however it's going to take, a generation of computers I think to implement that into the boards. I'm not sure if anyone was expecting for intel do do that.
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Peter Chamberlain

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Re: Threadripper or EPYC

PostTue Sep 05, 2017 9:44 pm

Justin Jackson wrote:Odd.. I thought Intel a month or so ago indicated it would license TB3 to AMD? I cant imagine how they can block that if it is to be a standard across devices. I guess as long as USB 3.1 Gen 2 is available it should be fast enough for most transfers as would 10Gbe.. though my home network is only 1Gb anyway.

I thought the editing work other than FX was done by cpus and rendering was CPU bound?


If you are rendering DPX or EXR etc there is little CPU usage compared to rendeing a compressed format.
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Justin Jackson

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Re: Threadripper or EPYC

PostThu Sep 07, 2017 4:37 pm

So more cores/threads doesnt really help Resolve? Let me rephrase that.. I plan to work with DNxHR 4K video mostly as I now have the ability to record to that format. Sometimes I might have AVCHD/x264.. but typically I transcode to DNxHD or DNxHR (using ffmpeg or Convert V4 on windows). I have yet to figure out if the optimized media feature of Resolve works as well as when I convert to DNxHR/HD (does it)? So I have been doing that manually.

Anyway, so I assumed GPUs do all the heavy OpenFX timeline rendering as you edit. I dont know why but I always thought the final render was done using CPUs only? Is that GPU bound as well? I thought that because I assumed typical render farms might just be a pile of computers with ram/cpus, and not so much high end GPUs.

I am wondering now if its even worth getting a Threadripper or EPYC for video editing workstation? I guess the main thing is if Resolve (and Fusion for that matter) dont use more than one video card for rendering, then there isnt a big point in the larger PCIe lanes and running 3 or 4 GPUs. I throw Fusion in there because it is also a BM product so wasnt sure if the same sort of importance on CPU/GPU applies?

If cores/threads dont matter much to Resolve (and/or Fusion), then does that mean Resolve (fusion) could work with 8K and beyond no problem? I would have thought the higher resolution and bit depth of video would require more CPU, RAM and/or GPU to handle it?
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Andrew Kolakowski

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Re: Threadripper or EPYC

PostThu Sep 07, 2017 5:18 pm

This is what you want in every app:

https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/artic ... pper-1017/

almost linear scale with number of cores, but we can only dream about this in Resolve and other NLEs.

If you stay with intermediate codecs like DNxHR (which should work well in Resolve) then you should be able to use more cores better, so nothing stops you go for for AMD with 16 cores, specially when they are clocked quite high. This should match well e.g. GTX 1080 Ti. I don't think there is a need going dual CPU systems in this case.
If you were doing projects which pay good money and use RED etc then you would like to have dual or tipple GXT 1080 Ti with dual Xeons etc. For DNxHR 4K sources you should be fine with 12+ highly clocked cores AMD or Intel.
Last edited by Andrew Kolakowski on Thu Sep 07, 2017 5:23 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Derek Morrison

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Re: Threadripper or EPYC

PostThu Sep 07, 2017 5:22 pm

Justin, it all comes down to the codec. I have a workstation that can handle 8K R3D's at 9:1 min compression in realtime inside Resolve, but I'm using 100% CPU and GPU power to do that. If I had a 4GB/s+ storage drive I could debayer those r3d's out to 8K DPX or EXR and I'd end up using 5-10% CPU GPU power because all the heavy lifting is already done, the CPU just access's the data and the GPU displays the pixels, but that's where the read rate of storage becomes the bottleneck because to play back 10-bit DPX at 24fps you would need about 3.2GB/s transfer not to mention if you go up to 16-bit 8K DPX/EXR you need 5GB/s+, something that with Epyc, would be amazing. You could have 40TB of RAID0 SSDs as a work drive with a theoretical speed of 50GB/s with a dual GTX1080ti or TitanXPp using liquid cooling to drive the FX and GUI. But that is crazy talk, cause there's no 8K mainstream platform yet.

Apologies if none of this is new for you.

The more core/threads help with being able to do more in Resolve such as multi-track projects, massive amounts of audio/fx, most of the resolvefx are still cpu based. The manual I believe listed which were GPU based. It is definitely still worth getting Threadripper or Epyc system. All that transcoding still comes down to CPU in most cases, it's doing heavy lifting with a boost from the GPU. DNxHR is GPU Accelerated I believe, but DNxHD I don't think is, I could be wrong on both accounts, I couldn't find anything in my quick google search.

Resolve Studio as Peter said will utilize up to 8GPU's to accelerate encoding and FX. Depends on how heavy handed you color or effect your videos and if the codec supports gpu accelerated encoding.

I am always of the opinion when it comes to video editing, build the best system you can afford. If that's a 32core epyc or dual epyc and it doesn't squeeze your budget, go for it, it will allow you to keep it for a number of years and grow with your videos. Or maybe a 12 core threadripper is where your budget allows you to be right now, go with that and add a 1080ti or two. Right now I don't think you can go wrong with either choice, its a great time to be building a PC because AMD is back with a vengeance and has some great offers to choose from.

BTW I saw a site just put up pre-orders for Epyc chips so they should be available soon. YAY!

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Andrew Kolakowski

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Re: Threadripper or EPYC

PostThu Sep 07, 2017 5:32 pm

Derek Morrison wrote:DNxHR is GPU Accelerated I believe, but DNxHD I don't think is, I could be wrong on both accounts, I couldn't find anything in my quick google search.


Resolve Studio as Peter said will utilize up to 8GPU's to accelerate encoding and FX. Depends on how heavy handed you color or effect your videos and if the codec supports gpu accelerated encoding.



DNxHR is not GPU assisted in any way. None of the export codecs is and definitely none of the intermediate ones. The only codec out there which is modern design with GPU in mind is Daniel2 (https://www.daniel2.com) but this is yet another codec and bit to much "closed".

I would argue- for home use I would not go for dual CPU as this is costly. I rather had some system and replace it in 2 years then try to use dual Xeon for next 5 as it will get obsolete.

Look at this:

https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/artic ... pper-1012/

you end up paying 3x CPU price just to get 20% speed boost. I think this is way not enough. If you know software can use cores well (like Cinema 4D) then at least this is justified, but for most apps crazy cores number is not near guarantee for good speed. You first have to know your software to go and spend big money on dual CPU setup (just to gain 20% or even 50% for 4x the price sometimes).
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Jean Claude

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Re: Threadripper or EPYC

PostThu Sep 07, 2017 5:36 pm

Hi Derek,
Your 8K R3D's clip, can you tell us what the resolution of the timeline is? Is that 8K?

Thank you.
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Derek Morrison

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Re: Threadripper or EPYC

PostThu Sep 07, 2017 7:53 pm

Apologies, Correction I get 15fps playback on full decode. At half-good I can get 24fps. However this project didn't have any intensive nodes on it, each clip was corrected in 2-3 nodes without FX.

I'm curious what threadripper with a 3.8ghz clock on 32 threads could decode r3d's at.

Clip specs were:
R3D
8192x4320 16-bit

Timeline Specs:
4096x2160

I was not using the decklink to output a signal which helps on performance.

Link to desktop screenshots. Embed didn't work

https://imgur.com/5vblSaO
https://imgur.com/BsvqXlu
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Andrew Kolakowski

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Re: Threadripper or EPYC

PostThu Sep 07, 2017 8:07 pm

All this power goes basically to decode RED 8K files (which are JPEG2000 based and very decoding demanding). If you would convert those to eg. Cineform RAW your speed would most likely jump a lot and start be limited more by GPU than CPU.
I would love to see such a test, but it's unrealistic as old Cineform tool for conversion won't properly read 8K RED files.

Not sure why BM card would help on performance? It will only slow whole system as data has to go from GPU to BM card (also be scaled in case of resolution mismatch) which is another stress to the system.
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Derek Morrison

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Re: Threadripper or EPYC

PostThu Sep 07, 2017 8:26 pm

Exactly Andrew, what I was getting at is I disabled the BM card to gain that performance from the GPU.

Cineform was one of the options I had considered when assembling our current workstation. Our company, though small, has two features coming down the pipeline for color, one shot in 6K and the other will most likely be 8K. Right now the plan is to convert those down to 10-bit DPX 4K for color which eliminates the cpu and gpu bottleneck for the most part and we have the storage speed to accommodate that workflow.
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Andrew Kolakowski

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Re: Threadripper or EPYC

PostThu Sep 07, 2017 9:40 pm

Sorry, you said: not using deckling. Sometime I have problems with reading :D

Yes, this is one of the ways :) With 4K it's not that difficult these days. 8K can be also done, but it will be costly.
It only gets tricky with storage when you need multiple seats access.
Another possible issue (although can be minimised) is lack of access to RAW and those "more bits" if you normalise to DPX 10bit (can be avoided by per case/scene basis if needed).
Resolve supports 12bit DPX maybe this could be used together with Log (would not cost that much on storage and its needs) to almost remove the need to going back to RAW.

Some place use this approach also to eliminate problems with different RAW handling by different apps.
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Andrew Kolakowski

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Re: Threadripper or EPYC

PostThu Sep 07, 2017 10:27 pm

On the subject of GPUs/CPUs/debayering:

This is from Jeff Kilgore who is RED guy as far as I understand:

http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread ... ost1710928
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Derek Morrison

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Re: Threadripper or EPYC

PostThu Sep 07, 2017 10:54 pm

I have spoken with Jeff before about this same subject, it was a while ago though. He is one very smart workflow guy.

12bit 4K DPX though puts me just over my bandwidth from our RAID. I've worked with RED footage for about 7yrs now. 10-bit DPX so long as all the footage is in LOG3g10 which is the new method from RED will get me all the Dynamic range and detail in the DPX format. And yea you can always go back to the r3d if necessary.
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Andrew Kolakowski

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Re: Threadripper or EPYC

PostThu Sep 07, 2017 11:28 pm

Ok, looks like your RAID is getting old :)
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Derek Morrison

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Re: Threadripper or EPYC

PostFri Sep 08, 2017 12:22 am

A little, its about 4yrs old now. We have a 45drives server budgeted for next year. Won't be long and this WS will be 40gb/s connected. 8K DPX won't be a problem next year haha
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Justin Jackson

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Re: Threadripper or EPYC

PostFri Sep 08, 2017 1:54 am

Wow..how do you do a 40gbps network? Is that 4 10gb ports on each device and some software that combines network data?
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Re: Threadripper or EPYC

PostFri Sep 08, 2017 2:33 am

QSFP+ is the most common interface, which can be used with twinax copper cables, or with fiber cables.
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Andrew Kolakowski

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Re: Threadripper or EPYC

PostFri Sep 08, 2017 9:21 am

Justin Jackson wrote:Wow..how do you do a 40gbps network? Is that 4 10gb ports on each device and some software that combines network data?


This is a standard, not many 10gbit ports. You can have 100gbit and 200gbit showed up also.
I would prefer Infiniband though as this has lower latency and it's even faster.
Last edited by Andrew Kolakowski on Fri Sep 08, 2017 3:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Dan Sherman

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Re: Threadripper or EPYC

PostFri Sep 08, 2017 12:48 pm

Justin Jackson wrote:Wow..how do you do a 40gbps network? Is that 4 10gb ports on each device and some software that combines network data?



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Justin Jackson

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Re: Threadripper or EPYC

PostMon Sep 11, 2017 8:11 pm

Sounds cool.. but for a home NAS, is there anything within a decent price range that offers this? I am guessing a 5 bay 2TBx5 SSD setup over Thunderbolt 3 is going to be a better option for working with 4K and 8K content than any sort of NAS setup via network. At least within the price range of operating a small business out of home doing this sort of stuff. It would be awesome to see the ability to store RAW 4K/8K content on a large NAS setup and be able to work with the video directly from the NAS over the network.. rather than copying down to local machine to work with. Would a 40Gps pipe even make that an option.. or is 4K and more so 8K content still too bandwidth hungry to consider pulling from NAS to work with? In that case, maybe using a proxy/otpimized media setup while pulling the source over network but local optimized media is possible? In fact, even now with my 1Gbps that would be interesting to work with if its possible?
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Andrew Kolakowski

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Re: Threadripper or EPYC

PostMon Sep 11, 2017 10:30 pm

4K 30p 10bit DPX is 1.06GBytes/sec, so if you have well working 10Gbit connection (which are not that expensive these days) it may work. It will be on the edge though, specially with image sequences. It has to be well setup connection and tweaked with jumbo frame etc. Still not sure if it will work with image sequences. Our 10Gbit connection will do 1GB/sec when copying big files. I don't know if Resolve has good image sequence reading engine with some RAM pre-caching etc. (like eg. RV).

Scaling beyond this starts to be problematic/expensive and in this case as you said you can have either local storage or some TB3 connected one. TB3 should easily do 2GBytes/sec+ (in theory even 3.5GBytes, but I would like to see this). Local storage depending how done can go pass 10GBytes/sec.

8K DPX at this time is going be expensive if you want a lot of storage. It's beyond TB3 speed.
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Derek Morrison

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Re: Threadripper or EPYC

PostTue Sep 12, 2017 5:51 am

Image sequences on NAS like from Synology or Drobo, I highly do not recommend. A friend used to shuttle me his BM Raw DNG sequences on Drobo and that had SO many issues. Super lengthy transfers, and had a few frames here or there just get lost in the transfer ether. Our Synology we used to use a few yrs ago had similar issues, we didn't lose any frames, but had super long transfers over dual gigabit bonded connections so 180MB/s or so. Definitely wasn't able to use for playback of image sequences in either case, the Drobo was thunderbolt 1 in most connections.

Not sure what NAS to recommend. QNAP I know has introduced a TB3 option and you can get one from Synology or QNAP with 10gb sfp+ or 10gbe, haven't ever heard about throughput on one though.

Justin, 10gbe is enough to work with most 4K files that aren't in an uncompressed format. Check out Ebay for retired 10gbe cards. I picked up four for next to nothing. They come from enterprise servers that have upgraded to 50-100gb connections in most cases. Just check Mellanox is good for Windows 10, and Chelsio is good for Mac, but Chelsio has compatibility issues after a certain retired model. SFP+ connectors can also be picked up cheap and same with fiber. I think total our network of 3 computers on 10Gb came to about $600.

Like Andrew said you just have to know how to configure it to achieve the 1GB/s speed. If your in the process of upgrading your setup, check out 45Drives' new 15 bay SAN its reasonable and you can expand, so you can start with 3-4 10TB or so in Z1 (Raid 5) and be able to expand that same storage array up to 150TB (100TB usable) with Raid 5 redundency. Or if you're looking at TB3 G-tech's Shuttle XL is a good start or Lacie 12Big will get you speed in a nice little package, however those are direct attach.

Back to Threadripper though. I'm seeing a lot more people are getting 3.9-4.0Ghz across all cores with Liquid Cooling. I personally haven't found definitive results as to which would be better for resolve, the cores or the frequency. If it's cores, Epyc is the winner.
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Andrew Kolakowski

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Re: Threadripper or EPYC

PostTue Sep 12, 2017 9:12 am

When we approach those big numbers I would not look anymore at brands like G-tech, Synology etc. Things get complicated and you after proper solutions like Mellanox, LSI etc.
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Andrew Kolakowski

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Re: Threadripper or EPYC

PostTue Sep 12, 2017 11:18 am

Maybe interesting for some:

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Robert James

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Re: Threadripper or EPYC

PostTue Sep 12, 2017 1:50 pm

I don't get it, Vega works better in Resolve then the optimized Nvidia.?
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Andrew Kolakowski

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Re: Threadripper or EPYC

PostTue Sep 12, 2017 1:57 pm

Optimised?
Bit of guess, but OpenCL as GPU technology seams to be more efficient than CUDA. I don't know how Resolve is coded for each, but I would not be so much surprised if VEGA is going perform well. Other than this VEGA seams to be very powerful in terms of computing power, so why so surprised. Because Nvidia says how powerful GTX is :)
Last point- this is sponsored video as far as I understand, so also take it with bit of caution.
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Robert James

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Re: Threadripper or EPYC

PostTue Sep 12, 2017 2:11 pm

Andrew Kolakowski wrote:Optimised?
Bit of guess, but OpenCL as GPU technology seams to be more efficient than CUDA. I don't know how Resolve is coded for each, but I would not be so much surprised if VEGA is going perform well. Other than this VEGA seams to be very powerful in terms of computing power, so why so surprised. Because Nvidia says how powerful GTX is :)
Last point- this is sponsored video as far as I understand, so also take it with bit of caution.


I'm surprised because in a ton of other computational tests that pit the Nvidia vs Vega, the results were extremely close.

I'm surprised because BMD specifically said 14 was only Optimized for Nvidia (h.264).

I'm surprised because given the two above, by all accounts NVidia should perform better in 14.

Perhaps this guys is trumping up his results in favor of AMD, OR the combination of ThreadRipper and Vega is the key that truly opens up Resolve's engine.

I have the system listed in my signature, and I've not seen much of an improvement in 14 with h.264 material (not that it matter in this discussion).
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Derek Morrison

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Re: Threadripper or EPYC

PostTue Sep 12, 2017 3:03 pm

I wish Max hadn't have used premiere for the 8K playback. Also he showed it was at 1/4 preview in premiere.
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Re: Threadripper or EPYC

PostTue Sep 12, 2017 3:16 pm

Which is total cheating with RED source. RED can be decoded and debayered at fractional resolutions, so playing 8K at 1/4 resolution is nothing special at all (it becomes HD!). This is what I said about those videos- you can manipulate them, specially when they are sponsored.
I can show you video were I can edit in realtime 4 layers with opacity of 4.6K Cineform files on dual i5 laptop in Premiere
...
...
(at 1/4 resolution) :D
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Andrew Kolakowski

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Re: Threadripper or EPYC

PostTue Sep 12, 2017 3:20 pm

Robert James wrote:
Andrew Kolakowski wrote:Optimised?
Bit of guess, but OpenCL as GPU technology seams to be more efficient than CUDA. I don't know how Resolve is coded for each, but I would not be so much surprised if VEGA is going perform well. Other than this VEGA seams to be very powerful in terms of computing power, so why so surprised. Because Nvidia says how powerful GTX is :)
Last point- this is sponsored video as far as I understand, so also take it with bit of caution.


I'm surprised because in a ton of other computational tests that pit the Nvidia vs Vega, the results were extremely close.

I'm surprised because BMD specifically said 14 was only Optimized for Nvidia (h.264).

I'm surprised because given the two above, by all accounts NVidia should perform better in 14.

Perhaps this guys is trumping up his results in favor of AMD, OR the combination of ThreadRipper and Vega is the key that truly opens up Resolve's engine.

I have the system listed in my signature, and I've not seen much of an improvement in 14 with h.264 material (not that it matter in this discussion).


H264 GPU decoding is yet again- very specific case. BM supports it only on CUDA, but this has not much to do with actual GPU performance as it's done on dedicated unit on GPU. Same can be done on AMD or even Intel. I don't know how good are Vega cards, but I would not be sooooo surprise if they perform well in Resolve (outside GPU h264 decoding).
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Re: Threadripper or EPYC

PostTue Sep 12, 2017 3:48 pm

Robert James wrote:I'm surprised because in a ton of other computational tests that pit the Nvidia vs Vega, the results were extremely close.


Max is using a Frontier edition card. It's in a completely different class than the 56 & 64, that everyone is benchmarking. it's more like a Quadro.

https://pro.radeon.com/en-us/product/ra ... r-edition/
Last edited by Dan Sherman on Tue Sep 12, 2017 4:59 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Andrew Kolakowski

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Re: Threadripper or EPYC

PostTue Sep 12, 2017 4:01 pm

It's 1K£ in UK for 16GB VRAM. Not bad.
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Robert James

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Re: Threadripper or EPYC

PostTue Sep 12, 2017 4:03 pm

Andrew Kolakowski wrote:Which is total cheating with RED source. RED can be decoded and debayered at fractional resolutions, so playing 8K at 1/4 resolution is nothing special at all (it becomes HD!). This is what I said about those videos- you can manipulate them, specially when they are sponsored.
I can show you video were I can edit in realtime 4 layers with opacity of 4.6K Cineform files on dual i5 laptop in Premiere
...
...
(at 1/4 resolution) :D


Not defending him, but I think he was just making a system comparison with Linus experience. There is no doubt these "reviews" and such can be quite the art of deception.
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Robert James

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Re: Threadripper or EPYC

PostTue Sep 12, 2017 4:05 pm

Andrew Kolakowski wrote:
Robert James wrote:
Andrew Kolakowski wrote:Optimised?
Bit of guess, but OpenCL as GPU technology seams to be more efficient than CUDA. I don't know how Resolve is coded for each, but I would not be so much surprised if VEGA is going perform well. Other than this VEGA seams to be very powerful in terms of computing power, so why so surprised. Because Nvidia says how powerful GTX is :)
Last point- this is sponsored video as far as I understand, so also take it with bit of caution.


I'm surprised because in a ton of other computational tests that pit the Nvidia vs Vega, the results were extremely close.

I'm surprised because BMD specifically said 14 was only Optimized for Nvidia (h.264).

I'm surprised because given the two above, by all accounts NVidia should perform better in 14.

Perhaps this guys is trumping up his results in favor of AMD, OR the combination of ThreadRipper and Vega is the key that truly opens up Resolve's engine.

I have the system listed in my signature, and I've not seen much of an improvement in 14 with h.264 material (not that it matter in this discussion).


H264 GPU decoding is yet again- very specific case. BM supports it only on CUDA, but this has not much to do with actual GPU performance as it's done on dedicated unit on GPU. Same can be done on AMD or even Intel. I don't know how good are Vega cards, but I would not be sooooo surprise if they perform well in Resolve (outside GPU h264 decoding).


I could be mistaken but I'm pretture sure he ran a few h.264 tests. I don't understand what you mean by "BM supports it only on CUDA, but this has not much to do with actual GPU performance as it's done on dedicated unit on GPU."
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Robert James

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Re: Threadripper or EPYC

PostTue Sep 12, 2017 4:06 pm

Dan Sherman wrote:
Robert James wrote:I'm surprised because in a ton of other computational tests that pit the Nvidia vs Vega, the results were extremely close.


Max is using the a Frontier edition card. It's in a completely different class than the 56 & 64, that everyone is benchmarking. it's more like a Quadro.

https://pro.radeon.com/en-us/product/ra ... r-edition/


Is the Frontier edition stronger then the 1080 TI?
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Andrew Kolakowski

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Re: Threadripper or EPYC

PostTue Sep 12, 2017 4:13 pm

Robert James wrote:I could be mistaken but I'm pretture sure he ran a few h.264 tests. I don't understand what you mean by "BM supports it only on CUDA, but this has not much to do with actual GPU performance as it's done on dedicated unit on GPU."


Problem with h264 is decoding. You can do it on CPU (which is what Resolve typically does) or you can use special part of GPU which is made for this tasks. All GPUs have it now, but Resolve can use only one on Nvidia.
This takes whole decoding load from CPU to GPU. There are limitations though- only 8bit 4:2:0 h264 file are supported, so things like GH5 10bit 4:2:2 I only files will fall back to CPU anyway. You also need Resolve Studio. Well you work a lot with h264 you should get Studio anyway as it has different h264 decoder which is much better than the one in Resolve.
With fast CPU (specially highly clocked) you should be also fine and this what Max was saying. Note that many low clocked cores not necessarily will give you required power to decode UHD h264 as it's complex format and hard to optimised for many ( I mean many many not e.g. 4) cores.
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Re: Threadripper or EPYC

PostTue Sep 12, 2017 4:59 pm

Robert James wrote:Is the Frontier edition stronger then the 1080 TI?


From what I have seen yes, because its optimized for doing work, not playing games.

for example check this review.
https://www.pcworld.com/article/3202659 ... an-xp.html
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Re: Threadripper or EPYC

PostWed Sep 13, 2017 6:39 am

Andrew Kolakowski wrote:
Problem with h264 is decoding. You can do it on CPU (which is what Resolve typically does) or you can use special part of GPU which is made for this tasks. All GPUs have it now, but Resolve can use only one on Nvidia.
This takes whole decoding load from CPU to GPU. There are limitations though- only 8bit 4:2:0 h264 file are supported, so things like GH5 10bit 4:2:2 I only files will fall back to CPU anyway. You also need Resolve Studio. Well you work a lot with h264 you should get Studio anyway as it has different h264 decoder which is much better than the one in Resolve.
With fast CPU (specially highly clocked) you should be also fine and this what Max was saying. Note that many low clocked cores not necessarily will give you required power to decode UHD h264 as it's complex format and hard to optimised for many ( I mean many many not e.g. 4) cores.


Note - Intel Iris GPU can decode multiple streams of H.264/265 4K with 10 bit color - which should be adequate for timeline playback/edit. See Kaby Lake info below.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/10959/intel-launches-7th-generation-kaby-lake-i7-7700k-i5-7600k-i3-7350k/6
"The major feature change in the Kaby Lake-U/Y media engine is the availability of full hardware acceleration for encode and decode of 4K HEVC Main10 profile videos."
"Intel claims that Kaby Lake-U/Y can handle up to eight 4Kp30 AVC and HEVC decodes simultaneously. HEVC decode support is rated at 4Kp60 up to 120 Mbps"
"The Video Quality Engine also receives some tweaks for HDR and Wide Color Gamut (Rec.2020) support. Skylake's VQE brought in RAW image processing support with a 16-bit image pipeline for selected filters."
Other NLEs are supporting Intel GPU including Magix, Edius, and Vegas.
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Re: Threadripper or EPYC

PostWed Sep 13, 2017 11:35 am

10bit is only for h265. And both h264 and h265 are strictly 4:2:0 only.
Also this "up to 8x 4K 30p" heavily depends on bitrate. QS will choke on high bitrates.
As you can see 4K 60p HEVC can be decoded in realtime only up to 120Mbit/s (which is not that high).
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Re: Threadripper or EPYC

PostWed Sep 13, 2017 2:35 pm

Thanks Andrew - but 4:2:0 8-10bit is OK for some of us. What are the NVIDIA hardware decoding limitations?
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Re: Threadripper or EPYC

PostWed Sep 13, 2017 2:38 pm

Andrew Kolakowski wrote:Also this "up to 8x 4K 30p" heavily depends on bitrate. QS will choke on high bitrates.
As you can see 4K 60p HEVC can be decoded in realtime only up to 120Mbit/s (which is not that high).

Isn't that odd?
I mean why would less compressed H.265 video be harder to decode than heavy compressed H.265 video?
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Andrew Kolakowski

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Re: Threadripper or EPYC

PostWed Sep 13, 2017 2:51 pm

No, higher bitrate=more difficult to decode. It's still the same decoding engine (same rules for low and high bitrate) but more data to process. It's also probably related to things like memory size, buffers etc. in actual decoding chip.
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Andrew Kolakowski

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Re: Threadripper or EPYC

PostWed Sep 13, 2017 2:52 pm

Al Spaeth wrote:Thanks Andrew - but 4:2:0 8-10bit is OK for some of us. What are the NVIDIA hardware decoding limitations?


They are very similar if not the same.
Yes, many files are 4:2:0 8bit, so they will benefit.
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