Blackmagic Forum

What is the lowest end video card that I need to view 2k resolution images as HD?

Thanks

I have been using EVGA GT640 2 GB on a Window 7 pc with Resolve Lite. Works fair enough. Gives 12fps for BMCC 2.5k played in HD.

I'm also using the evga gt640 2gb dd5 and getting about 12-14 fps playback with 2.5k raw dng's in resolve. Does anyone know what the minimum card set-up would be to get realtime 24fps playback in resolve? Do I need a second card or a faster card?

I'm hesitant to buy a faster card because in adobe premiere pro the difference between the highest and lowest speed CUDA cards make barely any difference in render times but the difference between CUDA and non CUDA cards is huge.

Is there a bigger difference between CUDA cards in Resolve? I have an i5-2500k @ 4.1ghz 16gb's ram. Anyone with similar specs able to get real time playback with a faster card?

I have 2 EVGA GTX670 FTW 4GB in my Hackintosh which happily runs in real time and renders at around 60fps.

For your set-up I would just add a GTX670 2GB. Leave your monitor connected to the other card (if you have full Resolve. Resolve lite wont see 2 cards). That would leave the card dedicated to rendering in Resolve.

Also make sure your drives are fast enough. Ideally you need a RAID and should be rendering to a different drive from the one that has your footage on.

Thx for the advice Adam. I'll have to check and see if my motherboard has a second graphics card slot. Also, my friend has a gtx580 1.5gb card do you know if that's enough ram to be helpful if I added that to my gt640 2gb?

The GTX580 with 1.5GB would be good for HD work.

Make sure it's in the fastest slot on the motherboard (x16). Keep the othe card for your display.

desiclad wrote:I have been using EVGA GT640 2 GB on a Window 7 pc with Resolve Lite. Works fair enough. Gives 12fps for BMCC 2.5k played in HD.

In the preferences menu, under Video I/O & GPU....there is a checkbox for "use display GPU for compute". Do you have that checked?

I'm currently running an Asus 560Ti with 1GB ram and when I check this box I get realtime playback of 2.5K RAW footage from my BMCC. Without it checked, I only get 12 or 13 fps.

sean mclennan wrote:

desiclad wrote:I have been using EVGA GT640 2 GB on a Window 7 pc with Resolve Lite. Works fair enough. Gives 12fps for BMCC 2.5k played in HD.

In the preferences menu, under Video I/O & GPU....there is a checkbox for "use display GPU for compute". Do you have that checked?

I'm currently running an Asus 560Ti with 1GB ram and when I check this box I get realtime playback of 2.5K RAW footage from my BMCC. Without it checked, I only get 12 or 13 fps.

Thanks for tip Mr Sean . But I couldn't find aforesaid option. This might be due to Lite version of resolve.
I haven't installed full version yet. I am afraid without a second better card, which is not installed yet, full version won't work.

I do have doubt too. Today I plugged my dongle for first time( although I have it for three months ). I couldn't see any difference. Do I need to uninstall the Lite and install a fresh copy of resolve?

Warm Regards
Anurag

You don't need to uninstall Lite, but you do need to install the full version, which you should download from the BMD Support area. The full version will replace the Lite version.

Full version will work the same as the Lite version, as far as the card you have installed.

Dwaine Maggart wrote:You don't need to uninstall Lite, but you do need to install the full version, which you should download from the BMD Support area. The full version will replace the Lite version.

Full version will work the same as the Lite version, as far as the card you have installed.

So that means I don't need to bother myself about version until I get new better card?

Well, probably. I'm a bit confused by Sean's comments about having the "use display GPU for compute" helping his performance. That should only have an effect if you have more than one graphics card in the system. If you only have one card, it does that anyway. But Sean only mentioned a single card, thus my confusion. If you want to try what he suggested, you'll need the full version to get the "use display GPU for compute" option. But I don't think that will make any difference in a single card system.

Well, sure enough, that is exactly right. I have a single Asus GTX 560 Ti card w/1GB. Running Resolve 9.1.5, playing back footage from my BMCC I was getting 12-13 fps. Going through the preferences menu, in the Video I/O tab, I found that option, which I had never seen before. So I clicked it on. Rebooted Resolve and presto, I then got full speed playback.

If it's not supposed to work that way, then I won't be upgrading Resolve anytime soon because I'm enjoying the performance!

That's very interesting Sean. What could make that sort of performance improvement on a single card system is if you enabled the Project Settings / Master Project Settings / Video Monitoring "Use optimized display mode during playback" option. Is it possible that maybe you turned that on at the same time?

I'll test this more on a single card system here, and see what happens. Thanks for the feedback.

I'll double check tonight when I'm home exactly which options I've got on...

You are correct Dwaine. It seems like I opened two different projects when I made my change and one of them did not have the project setting to "use optimized display mode".

well, that answers that.

I'm still get 24fps with a 560 Ti playback RAW BMCC files. I would think a 640 should be able to do the same...

Dwaine Maggart wrote:That's very interesting Sean. What could make that sort of performance improvement on a single card system is if you enabled the Project Settings / Master Project Settings / Video Monitoring "Use optimized display mode during playback" option. Is it possible that maybe you turned that on at the same time?

I'll test this more on a single card system here, and see what happens. Thanks for the feedback.

Hey Mr Dwaine, that setting indeed slow down frame rate to 3/4 FPS. Also every time I restart Resolve Lite, the previous setting of above said feature is gone and I need to enable it again for every session. I think resolve is not liking this change .

sean mclennan wrote:I'm still get 24fps with a 560 Ti playback RAW BMCC files. I would think a 640 should be able to do the same...

I am yet to see it happen Pal , still Thanks for your advice

well, that setting is a Project setting, so you'll need to save the project and reopen it to have it remain checked on...

sean mclennan wrote:well, that setting is a Project setting, so you'll need to save the project and reopen it to have it remain checked on...

Yes I checked it and it does work, Thanks again

Just a heads up—the newest manual (May 2013 p99) does not reflect the change to the pref panel regarding Video I/O and GPU.

sean mclennan wrote:I'm still get 24fps with a 560 Ti playback RAW BMCC files. I would think a 640 should be able to do the same...

That is amazing.. What are your other specs?

i7 990X
24GB 1600Mhz RAM
Asus Rampage III mobo
Asus GTX 560 ti 1GB video card
Sandisk Extreme 240GB - OS disk
2 WD 1TB 7200 RPM drives in RAID 0 - working files
OCZ Vertex 3 120 - Cache/preview files

sean mclennan wrote:i7 990X
24GB 1600Mhz RAM
Asus Rampage III mobo
Asus GTX 560 ti 1GB video card
Sandisk Extreme 240GB - OS disk
2 WD 1TB 7200 RPM drives in RAID 0 - working files
OCZ Vertex 3 120 - Cache/preview files

A powerfull processor in there... Thanks.