What's the opinion of GPU acceleration

[drobo]

First, let me say I like DvdFab for the parts of it that work. I bought the lifetime license for two reasons, Blur Ray compression and GPU acceleration. Before purchase, I tested compression but not GPU acceleration. I should have. GPU acceleration should not be included in the stable release and not in the Beta release either. It does not recognize many common CUDA and DXVA supported graphics cards from nVidia and ATI. My nForce GTX 8800 is one of them. From reading the posts, when DvdFab does recognize the cards the performance increase is poor at best. With other vc-1 and .h264 encoding applications I get a 3 to 4 magnitude of performance increase, yes, one hour CPU encodes takes only 15 to 20 minutes with GPU encoding. Also, in many posts, when problems occur the first recommendation is to turn off GPU acceleration which sometimes fixes the problem, hint, hint. I do not need DvdFab to decrypt Blu Ray disks. There are free solutions to this. Where do Full disc compression and working GPU acceleration fit in with the future of DvdFab?

[Complication]

I think this is an area where improvement will be made as DVDFab works out the permutations.

The main reason we here recommend turning off GPU acceleration is because of the crappy drivers that a lot of people have installed (and it is the volunteers here that recommend it usually rather than a DVDFab employee). Video cards rarely come with a feature complete and stable release of the drivers in the box and the users rarely download the latest because the card works. By advising them to test with the feature turned off we can narrow the problem. I wouldn't read too much into it.

[IPopov50]

drobo:
allow me to throw in my couple of cents. I Have lifetime license for DVDFab BECAUSE OF CUDA! I had nVIDIA GTS250 when CUDA enabled Fab came out first, and result was impressive to day at least. Bluray to Bluray mode gave me impressive result - 3.5 hrs encoding time, plus 10 min MakeMKV, and I had backup copy for shelf and .mkv on my HDD for WD TV. 4 hrs total including ripping. I considering this as a result that worth the money.
A few days ago new DVDFab 7 came out with more CUDA codecs. Well, I upgraded to GTX295 and shave one more hr from the process. 3 hr from the moment when I had my arms around new disc till that disc goes back to the shelf with backup copy and file on HDD. If this is not good result for you, I'm not sure what are u really expecting.

Now, I have piece of advise for you. It's not a DVDFab but nVIDIA has some problems with their cards. It's growing pains period, and we all should be patient. I would recommend to go to nVIDIA website more often and check for new drivers.... do not rely on "update driver" button on your Device Manager. nVIDIA constantly chasing bugs, trying balance their hardware development with numerous software developers.

DVDFab is, by far, best piece of software in its class, with most advance features. Please give developers respect.

[drobo]

@IPopov50

Thanks for your comments. I do use the most recent nvidia driver which is 196.34 win7 64bit beta. My problem is DvdFab does not recognize my CUDA graphics card yet several other apps do and it screams in performance. Why is this? You do sound like you are getting some pop from your CUDA card. I have been so frustrated by this I think I have read most of the GPU related posts. Quite frankly you may be the only one who has actually provided performance benchmarks although you didn't mention the encoding times when not using GPU acceleration. Good job. You are one of the lucky ones.

[IPopov50]

drobo:
I will do some more tests and give you my stats. In a meanwhile, I'm encoding "Beyond a reasonable doubt" into BD9 using v.7.0.1.2 with both CUDA GPU acceleration for video decoding and encoding enabled, as we speak. Speed: 3.75 MB/s, Elapsed time - 00:23:56, Time left 01:29:54 - less than 3 hrs total

[Blurayfan]

Thanks for your comments. I do use the most recent nvidia driver which is 196.34 win7 64bit beta. My problem is DvdFab does not recognize my CUDA graphics card yet several other apps do and it screams in performance. Why is this? You do sound like you are getting some pop from your CUDA card. I have been so frustrated by this I think I have read most of the GPU related posts. Quite frankly you may be the only one who has actually provided performance benchmarks although you didn't mention the encoding times when not using GPU acceleration. Good job. You are one of the lucky ones.

Nvidia drivers 196.34 is not the current release Nvidia has a 64bit release 196.75. However Nividia has temporarily pulled it while they verify reports of fan speed issues.

[dmeerpa]

drobo:
I will do some more tests and give you my stats. In a meanwhile, I'm encoding "Beyond a reasonable doubt" into BD9 using v.7.0.1.2 with both CUDA GPU acceleration for video decoding and encoding enabled, as we speak. Speed: 3.75 MB/s, Elapsed time - 00:23:56, Time left 01:29:54 - less than 3 hrs total

You also didn't mension the CPU you used. I have about the same performance on my i7 920@3250 with a ATI Radion graphics card that does not support CUDA with version 6.

[IPopov50]

You also didn't mension the CPU you used. I have about the same performance on my i7 920@3250 with a ATI Radion graphics card that does not support CUDA with version 6.

Sorry about that:
Core2Duo E8500@3.16GHz
6Gb DDR3 RAM
Win7Home Premium
MSI GeForce GTX295 card

[W&B]

Just thought I'd mention there is a Beta driver released 197.13, I've been running it for about a week now and all seems good here, I upgraded my graphics card from a GT 9500 (the beta fixed the max fan speed issues with the Gt 9500) to a GTS 250.

[IPopov50]

You also didn't mension the CPU you used. I have about the same performance on my i7 920@3250 with a ATI Radion graphics card that does not support CUDA with version 6.

By the way, DVDFab 6 hardly used any GPU. According to my GPU monitor - only 1-3%, when v.7 uses 20-30%. Having program "CUDA-enabled" is not enough. If used codecs, and most importantly libraries are not CUDA, nothing will happened. That's why none of the freeware are "CUDA-enabled". Nobody wants to re-write libraries (at least for free). CUDA-enabled codecs are either sold (CoreAVC for instance) or internal in CUDA software.

[IPopov50]

Just thought I'd mention there is a Beta driver released 197.13

As usual, W&B you're right. I installed this driver too.... so far so good. Fan works properly @40% on idle (at least on my machine). I ran benchmark - seems everything works as it should...

[W&B]

I thought my GTS 250 didn't like it, fan was at 100% at idle but support said that card is designed to run at max. Seems odd to me but Nvidia said so...

[Bendit]

I am sort of confused here with this thread. I don't want to double post, but I must ask. All this stuff about CUDA and CoreAVC mentioned in this thread... So, is coreAVC a good buy when used via DVDFab? My GPU is a Quadro 2700 (mobile), will it make a good difference in encoding time?

I cannot get a good answer on this subject. Thanks for any info! Cheers!

[W&B]

I installed CoreAVC and I can't really tell any increase in speed if any, others may have different results.

[IPopov50]

I have CoreAVC, and I'm happy with it. Speed isn't it.... there are other parameters in performance - quality for instance. CoreAVC seems handle tweaks better, with greater precision. IMO.
And yes, W&B you're right again - speed is same with either CoreAVC or CUDA codec. Unfortunately, settings for any codec in v.7 isn't ideal, to say at least.