Hi m326

You have a decent system already, but 4k editing is going to push all your hardware to the max. The GTX 960 is going to make a big difference if you produce to H.265 or if you use any GPU-enabled effects, and it should be noticeably faster with H.264 as well.

I did a test a while back and found that the GTX 960 was essentially identical to my GTX 780Ti as far as producing times went on identical projects, even though the gaming benchmarks are quite *different*

From a gaming performance standpoint, you wouldn't gain very much by getting a GTX 960, but we're not looking at gaming.

Now this is an unusual interpretation and I'm sure some members will disagree (or hopefully have a better metric) - but basically I think that the actual increase in video editing performance going from your GTX 580 to a GTX 960 will be more like the game performance increase shown in the graphic between your 580 and a 780Ti. Does that make sense?

In other words, I think you'll see smoother editing and faster producing times with a GTX 960 - enough to make the upgrade worthwhile.

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Quote: The GTX 960 is going to make a big difference if you produce to H.265 or if you use any GPU-enabled effects, and it should be noticeably faster with H.264 as well.

The GTX960 will make NO difference if you produce to the H.265 as far as PD13 is concerned. Currently only CPU encoding supported with PD13, the big difference you will see is zero difference.

Jeff

Guess I should have said "big difference once Cyberlink utilizes the GTX 960's H.265 hardware encoder."

YouTube/optodata

DS365 | Win11 Pro | Ryzen 9 3950X | RTX 4070 Ti | 32GB RAM | 10TB SSDs | 5K+4K HDR monitors

Canon Vixia GX10 (4K 60p) | HF G30 (HD 60p) | Yi Action+ 4K | 360Fly 4K 360°

Thanks for the replies.

I haven't taken up H.265 yet - so for now that's not an issue but as we're on the subject, any indication when it might be coming to PD?

As for H.264 encoding... it takes as long as it takes, faster is nicer but at least you can set it going and walk away.
My biggest concern is getting a smoother editing experience which it seems I am likely to get. Can anyone else with a similar setup as mine and with a 960 add anything to this conversation?

The 970 would seem a much better upgrade from mine but I'm unsure what effect the memory issue has for video editing, I read earlier that for gaming it equates to a 5% decrease on how it 'should' perform.

Cheers! Asus P8Z68-V PRO/GEN3, i7-2700k, 32GB RAM, GTX-580, SSD's 7200 HDD's, Titanium HD sound, Win8.1 Pro. Pd13Ultra, GH4, Tascam DR-07

Most 580's only have 2GB of VRAM compared to 4GB used by most 960's. Depending on what size screen or if you have more than one screen, 2GB of VRAM may not be enough for 4K editing and certainly not enough if you have more than one screen. Also the GTX580 are Fermi architecture while the 960's are Kepler. Asus X79-Deluxe, Intel i7-4930K, EVGA GTX 980ti, G.Skill memory 16GB, Corsair HX1000 PSU, OCZ Vertex4 SSD, OCZ Vector180 480GB, (2)Western Digital Black 1TB(RAID0), Western Digital 2TB, LG Blue Ray Burner, Lite-on DVD Burner, Logitech G19 keyboard, Window

Quote: Most 580's only have 2GB of VRAM compared to 4GB used by most 960's. Depending on what size screen or if you have more than one screen, 2GB of VRAM may not be enough for 4K editing and certainly not enough if you have more than one screen. Also the GTX580 are Fermi architecture while the 960's are Kepler.

The Nvidia 900 series are all Maxwell microarchitecture, nothing Kepler about them.

Jeff

Quote: Thanks for the replies.

I haven't taken up H.265 yet - so for now that's not an issue but as we're on the subject, any indication when it might be coming to PD?

As for H.264 encoding... it takes as long as it takes, faster is nicer but at least you can set it going and walk away.
My biggest concern is getting a smoother editing experience which it seems I am likely to get. Can anyone else with a similar setup as mine and with a 960 add anything to this conversation?

The 970 would seem a much better upgrade from mine but I'm unsure what effect the memory issue has for video editing, I read earlier that for gaming it equates to a 5% decrease on how it 'should' perform.

Cheers!

A couple other things to consider. While you're not looking at H.265 now, the 960 is the ONLY card that has and H.265 encoder and decoder in the hardware. The 970 and 980 are better gaming machines but they only have H.265 decoders. Great for watching but not for editing or producing. Whenever PD 13 (or maybe 14) is programmed to access the HW, the 960 will leave every other card in the dust when producing to H.265 with HW acceleration.

There's more discussion on this *thread* especially regarding the mobile version (GTX 960M) which is NOT based on the 960!

YouTube/optodata

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Canon Vixia GX10 (4K 60p) | HF G30 (HD 60p) | Yi Action+ 4K | 360Fly 4K 360°

Quote:

Quote: ... Also the GTX580 are Fermi architecture while the 960's are Kepler.

The Nvidia 900 series are all Maxwell microarchitecture, nothing Kepler about them.
Jeff

That's true, and I think it makes skibum's point even more valid. OP would be jumping 2 generations, not just one

YouTube/optodata

DS365 | Win11 Pro | Ryzen 9 3950X | RTX 4070 Ti | 32GB RAM | 10TB SSDs | 5K+4K HDR monitors

Canon Vixia GX10 (4K 60p) | HF G30 (HD 60p) | Yi Action+ 4K | 360Fly 4K 360°

Quote: ... In other words, I think you'll see smoother editing and faster producing times with a GTX 960 - enough to make the upgrade worthwhile.

JL_JL considering the Fermi to Maxwell differences in architecture between OP's GTX 580 and a GTX 9xx and ignoring the situation with H.265, would you agree that any HW accelerated projects would show a noticeable improvement in producing times and reduced lag when editing?

YouTube/optodata

DS365 | Win11 Pro | Ryzen 9 3950X | RTX 4070 Ti | 32GB RAM | 10TB SSDs | 5K+4K HDR monitors

Canon Vixia GX10 (4K 60p) | HF G30 (HD 60p) | Yi Action+ 4K | 360Fly 4K 360°

Quote:

Quote: Thanks for the replies.

I haven't taken up H.265 yet - so for now that's not an issue but as we're on the subject, any indication when it might be coming to PD?

As for H.264 encoding... it takes as long as it takes, faster is nicer but at least you can set it going and walk away.
My biggest concern is getting a smoother editing experience which it seems I am likely to get. Can anyone else with a similar setup as mine and with a 960 add anything to this conversation?

The 970 would seem a much better upgrade from mine but I'm unsure what effect the memory issue has for video editing, I read earlier that for gaming it equates to a 5% decrease on how it 'should' perform.

Cheers!

A couple other things to consider. While you're not looking at H.265 now, the 960 is the ONLY card that has and H.265 encoder and decoder in the hardware. The 970 and 980 are better gaming machines but they only have H.265 decoders. Great for watching but not for editing or producing. Whenever PD 13 (or maybe 14) is programmed to access the HW, the 960 will leave every other card in the dust when producing to H.265 with HW acceleration.

There's more discussion on this *thread* especially regarding the mobile version (GTX 960M) which is NOT based on the 960!

That's odd, my GTX9xx does H.265 HA encoding with a alternate encoder just fine. Covered here by Nvidia: https://developer.nvidia.com/nvidia-video-codec-sdk

Yes it was unoffically anounced in the forums several months ago to look for H.265 HA support in PD14, CL only recently added the 2+ year old H.264 encoder support in a patch to PD13.

The GTX960 added support full hardware decoding, until that release, decoding was a GPU/CPU hybrid concept. So the GTX960 has a niche for home entertainment setups, that capability reallly does not apply directly to editing, except for those that use the editing platform as the home media system.

Jeff

Quote: Yes it was unoffically anounced in the forums several months ago to look for H.265 HA support in PD14, CL only recently added the 2+ year old H.264 encoder support in a patch to PD13.

The GTX960 added support full hardware decoding, until that release, decoding was a GPU/CPU hybrid concept. So the GTX960 has a niche for home entertainment setups, that capability reallly does not apply directly to editing, except for those that use the editing platform as the home media system.

Jeff

At least with GTX960 we can hope that CL will switch sooner to the new sdk and thus enable better video processing. Better means quality too, since Maxwell 2 adds some extra quality settings to the list. It's a good card for 4K editing and for 1080 gaming.



But... CL software inefficiency might trump any possible gains. I am pretty disapointed with the level of utilization of hardware resources in almost every NLE on the market today. Maybe Windows 10 will alleviate this issue with it's WDDM 2.0 but it still requires that software vendor make use of those new capabilities.

Last Night !!! I work t on my 400 4k 3840 GoPro Clips from our Trip to Zambia ....my very good Machine started sweating and me ( in Winter )!!!
I am waiting for PD 13 to solve some Speed Problems and work with NVIDIA and other Supplier together !!! Pauls PC
X399 AORUS Extreme/AMD Ryzen2970WX/1xQuatro 4000 Driver:Geforce 419.67Skill V DDR4 64GB/3200MHz/Win10 prox64
Intel SSD 750/400 / Intel SSD 750/1.2Tb 1x4TB SSHD /1xSeagate 10TB pro
1xSamsung UA28D590 4k LUMIX GH5 1xLG HDR

Skibum, not even 2GB of VRAM...



(Bus Interface 2.0 under load)

I do have another program that will output H.265, so for now that base is covered.

It looks like for me, a 960 willl be the way to go. Asus P8Z68-V PRO/GEN3, i7-2700k, 32GB RAM, GTX-580, SSD's 7200 HDD's, Titanium HD sound, Win8.1 Pro. Pd13Ultra, GH4, Tascam DR-07

Quote:

Quote: Most 580's only have 2GB of VRAM compared to 4GB used by most 960's. Depending on what size screen or if you have more than one screen, 2GB of VRAM may not be enough for 4K editing and certainly not enough if you have more than one screen. Also the GTX580 are Fermi architecture while the 960's are Kepler.

The Nvidia 900 series are all Maxwell microarchitecture, nothing Kepler about them.

Jeff

I meant Maxwell. Don't know why I said Kepler. I have a 980ti.

My bad. Asus X79-Deluxe, Intel i7-4930K, EVGA GTX 980ti, G.Skill memory 16GB, Corsair HX1000 PSU, OCZ Vertex4 SSD, OCZ Vector180 480GB, (2)Western Digital Black 1TB(RAID0), Western Digital 2TB, LG Blue Ray Burner, Lite-on DVD Burner, Logitech G19 keyboard, Window

Quote:

Quote: ... In other words, I think you'll see smoother editing and faster producing times with a GTX 960 - enough to make the upgrade worthwhile.

JL_JL considering the Fermi to Maxwell differences in architecture between OP's GTX 580 and a GTX 9xx and ignoring the situation with H.265, would you agree that any HW accelerated projects would show a noticeable improvement in producing times and reduced lag when editing?

Optodata, maybe a long answer to your question, but here is my experience.

Ok, as you request:
Ignoring the misstatement on H.265 situation and PD13
Ignoring the misstatement on GPU architecture
Ignoring the misstatement on what cards can actually encode H.265 with proper encoding software
Ignoring the misstatement that the 960 will leave every other card in the dust when producing to H.265 with HW acceleration

The OP asked a question if the GTX960 would be "better 4K editing experience", from my PD experience I’d answer, very little.

To me, better editing experience might be evaluated along the lines of:
1) Does the timeline scrubber move fluently with complex timelines during playback, no scrubber stops, skips, jumps to end of clip, out of sync…..etc
2) Does Multi Cam function smooth, how many and what bitrate of videos can I add to MC before playback skip starts occurring making editing tough without proxy files
3) Does the timeline scrubber move fluently with multiple added Fx during playback, no scrubber stops, skips, jumps to end of clip, out of sync…..etc

I've evaluated a GTX580, GTX650, GTX970, GTX980 (and others), and basically they all function about the same from these 3 aspects of judging editing experience within PD13. I run into about the exact same skips or jump break points… with a given timeline complexity for each GPU. You can pull the stats on the cards from your favorite site and see on any scale of performance there is a vast difference represented here. I see nothing like that performance spread transleted to PD13 editing experience. Possible explanation is this occurs with the current PD13 architecture as these editing functions and playback are highly CPU dominated tasks. No, these GPU’s were not evaluated on a week platform, the platform was a E5-2670 v3 2.3Ghz, SSD, Win7, 16GB RAM, pretty stout by any measuring stick.

However, YES, they do behave significantly different for "Producing" a video to a format supporting HA encoding of the GPU, which I did not interpret was the OP question. No comment at all on producing a video in the OP question, just editing. Everyone’s unique but I think most would easily accept longer encode times for a significantly improved timeline performance and playback during editing functions of high def video without waiting for PD13 to create shadow files.

Is anything wrong with the GTX960, absolutely not, I never indicated nor implied there was. It fits an excellent niche pocket for those that need or want it's capabilities, at an excellent price point to boot. Is a $US200 GTX960 going to kick a $US500 GTX980, no, the market wouldn't hold, period.

Jeff

Jeff, we know that you possess great knowledge about computers. Everyone's experience with computers can be different. In this post: http://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/25/42898.page , Eldor had problems with using the multicam editor with 4 cameras. He replaced a nVidia 550ti with a gtx960 and it solved his problem. He said it works smootly now and without using the shadow files.

I don't use 4 video cameras, only 2 at the most and find syncing by a change in brighness like a flash is more accurate than with a clap or sound. I don't use HA but find that svrt can can produce a lot faster. If for some reason, I produce video the way most people here say they do it then I would probably buy that gtx 960 and use mc and HA. There does not seem to be any bad reviews on that card.

Quote: Jeff, we know that you possess great knowledge about computers. Everyone's experience with computers can be different. In this post: http://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/25/42898.page , Eldor had problems with using the multicam editor with 4 cameras. He replaced a nVidia 550ti with a gtx960 and it solved his problem. He said it works smootly now and without using the shadow files.

I don't use 4 video cameras, only 2 at the most and find syncing by a change in brighness like a flash is more accurate than with a clap or sound. I don't use HA but find that svrt can can produce a lot faster. If for some reason, I produce video the way most people here say they do it then I would probably buy that gtx 960 and use mc and HA. There does not seem to be any bad reviews on that card.

Didn't mean for the response to possess great knowledge of computers, my apologies, it was simple hands on experience.

I followed and participated in that thread as well as optodata. tomasc, maybe your view is correct. What I see is his work computer performed much better than home. His home computer, a NVIDIA Quadro FX 1800. His work computer which worked much better was the 550ti. He replaced the home Quadro FX 1800 with the 960 and was happy, yes certainly, there is a low level cutoff or we'd all buy a sub US$50 card.

EDIT: as optodata pointed out in that thread, Eldor's office 550ti is about 4x better than Eldor's home FX 1800, the 580 in my testing above is about 3x better than the 550ti. We are talking a vastly different capability space of GPU's for like editing experience I quoted above. I didn't put my $19 GeForce 210 in my list of like behavior editing cards above as it's not, it's sub FX 1800 performance and it shows.

Jeff

Quote: I didn't put my $19 GeForce 210 in my list of like behavior editing cards above as it's not, it's sub FX 1800 performance and it shows.
Jeff

I am glad that you mentioned that because your first post might be interpreted by some as of "any video card will work the same":

Quote: I've evaluated a GTX580, GTX650, GTX970, GTX980 (and others), and basically they all function about the same from these 3 aspects of judging editing experience within PD13.Jeff

Quote: Hi folks, I have a GTX-580 and would like your opinion on whether an upgrade to a GTX-960 4GB would be worthwhile for a better 4K editing experience.

My current setup is Asus P8Z68-V PRO/GEN3, i7-2700k at stock, 32GB RAM, Windows 8.1, SSD's & 7200 HDD's

There's no doubt that PD is more dependent of the CPU than the GPU. M326 was asking if a GPU upgrade would make a better 4K editing experience. It seems his system should have no problem with editing 4K videos.

My point was that he very well may run out of VRAM if he uses the GTX580, so the upgrade would improve his 4K viewing experience. Asus X79-Deluxe, Intel i7-4930K, EVGA GTX 980ti, G.Skill memory 16GB, Corsair HX1000 PSU, OCZ Vertex4 SSD, OCZ Vector180 480GB, (2)Western Digital Black 1TB(RAID0), Western Digital 2TB, LG Blue Ray Burner, Lite-on DVD Burner, Logitech G19 keyboard, Window