GPU 4GB vs 2GB , the advantages

I was wondering how or when a 4GB Gpu card would be advantageous to have, doing what type of work.

I heard is better when working at 4K resolutions, but is there any other benefit if you are working in just 2K or HD?

now you can get 2 and 4 GB gtx 680's, if at the moment you are not working in 4K, are there other benefits to the 4GB vs the 2GB? if yes how


thanks

[Dwaine Maggart]

The only benefit is to support higher timeline resolutions. If you are working in HD, there is no benefit to using the 4GB card over the 2GB card.

[Peter Chamberlain]

While Dwaine is correct, with v10 there are more processes that use GPU ram and if you think you will handle footage with higher than HD res this GPU RAM is even more beneficial than before.

2GB will be listed as the minimum recommended in the new config guides with minor exceptions, e.g. for rMBP where you cant order 2GB.

Peter

Thanks for that insight, that was very useful. So for future editing of BMCC's 2.5k RAW footage, 4gb would be preferable to 2gb?

thanks Peter for the information

another question would be, for OFX and the new noise reduction using more GPU ram, if you are using multiple GPU's, let's say 4 with 2 GB ram each, does that mean you have a total of 8 GB ram? or will a single GTX Titan 6GB be the same or better than 3 x gtx 680 with 2 GB each.


in the case of the gtx 690, is a card noted as 4GB, containing 2 x 2 GB 680's inside, would this card be good for the near future and resolve 10? or is this card limited by the 2 GB per GPU


thank you

[Peter Chamberlain]

The 690 is really two GPUs packaged with one pcie connector, thus each GPU has 2GB. It's still a very good card.

The GPU ram is not shared with other GPUs so 4x 2GB GPU cards is still just 2GB per card. When the rams full on one card its full on the others too as we manage the data across cards.

OpenFX plugins (and temporal proc) are optimized for single GPU and so it's better to have one fast GPU with 4GB ram rather than two 2GB cards. Even adding a second 4GB card won't double plugin performance. This is a limit of the OpenFx standard and the GPU structure, it's not a Resolve limit.

Hey. Don't think 2GB cards are useless. All our NAB demo systems used 680 or 690 or iMac 2GB cards, I'm just giving everyone background on why 4GB of GPU ram will become common in the future as resolution and temporal/plugin demands request more from the GPUs.
Peter

will GTX 760 2gb or gtx760 4gb ? which works perfectly for 2.5k work flow raw and prores (bmcc mft)? and also plz throw light on GPU Cores nd its importance?

OpenFX plugins (and temporal proc) are optimized for single GPU and so it's better to have one fast GPU with 4GB ram rather than two 2GB cards. Even adding a second 4GB card won't double plugin performance. This is a limit of the OpenFx standard and the GPU structure, it's not a Resolve limit.

Could this "..one fast GPU with 4GB ram.." card also be the GUI card, or does it need to be a dedicated processing card?

I currently have 2 x 4GB 690s for processing and a 1.25GB GTX570 for GUI. If I was to beef up the GUI card (eg Titan/GTX780) would its capabilities be available for OpenFX etc, or does Resolve only look to the processing cards to work its magic?

Are CUDA cores on the GUI card added to the processing pool?

Cheers.

Nic

will GTX 760 2gb or gtx760 4gb ? which works perfectly for 2.5k work flow raw and prores (bmcc mft)? and also plz throw light on GPU Cores nd its importance?

You will find that as a general rule, the more CUDA cores that are present in the system, the better/faster performance will be. However, a flagship card compared to an entry/mid tier card has a lot of other variables aside from the number and speed of its CUDA cores that factor in to overall performance.

The 2GB vs 4GB debate is going to be very subjective but at the end of the day 4GB version are more future-proof than 2GB, and any workflow above standard HD will likely see some benefit from the extra VRAM. The 4GB version will likely let you use the card for longer (as opposed to be forced into a premature upgrade at some point in the next 18-24 months) in addition to the added versatility. I would heed Peter's advice and think ahead.

OpenFX plugins (and temporal proc) are optimized for single GPU and so it's better to have one fast GPU with 4GB ram rather than two 2GB cards. Even adding a second 4GB card won't double plugin performance. This is a limit of the OpenFx standard and the GPU structure, it's not a Resolve limit.

Could this "..one fast GPU with 4GB ram.." card also be the GUI card, or does it need to be a dedicated processing card?

I currently have 2 x 4GB 690s for processing and a 1.25GB GTX570 for GUI. If I was to beef up the GUI card (eg Titan/GTX780) would its capabilities be available for OpenFX etc, or does Resolve only look to the processing cards to work its magic?

Are CUDA cores on the GUI card added to the processing pool?

Cheers.

Nic

You can toggle the display GPU to be used as a compute resource in the settings. I'd imagine you'd see a pretty decent boost just from the additional cores and memory, though how much is difficult to quantify. I have done a lot of testing with multiple GPU configurations but unfortunately due to limited resources, I was unable to run these tests with different display GPUs so I can't offer any numbers but from what I understand, upgrading from 570 to 780/Titan would result in net gain.

As usual, for both of your scenarios, YMMV.