AMD 7950 or Nvidia 660 TI 3gb or 770 2gb
After using CO7 for the past several months, I've decided that I need to upgrade my graphics card to gain a boost in performance. Without OpenCL, CO7 is unprofessionally slow at processing RAW files. I could go back to LR4 and 5 and save $400 but frankly I like CO7's outputs over all of the other converters I use. I've been researching these 3 graphic cards and they are all within $100 of each other. My question is if I should buy a card with 3gb of ram on board or one with two. The AMD 7950 and the Nvidia 660TI comes with 3gb of ram but the 770 is faster in benchmark test with 2gb of ram. Which card will be the best solution for CO7? My primary purpose will be with CO7 and I would like to know which of the 3 will be best for CO7.
I have been running Nvidia cards for years and I find there drivers very stable, whereas, I never had great success with AMD/ATI drivers. I'm leaning towards the AMD 7950 but I have a long memory with ATI/AMD driver crashes.
Any help in this matter would be greatly appreciated.
Paul
I have been running Nvidia cards for years and I find there drivers very stable, whereas, I never had great success with AMD/ATI drivers. I'm leaning towards the AMD 7950 but I have a long memory with ATI/AMD driver crashes.
Any help in this matter would be greatly appreciated.
Paul
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Maybe I can help with what we have seen using the gtx680 and the 7950:
Looking at Internet-benchmarks it would look like the 680 has the edge, but actually in Capture One it seems that the 7950 is 50-60% faster than the 680. Quite surprising.
About the drivers, you're right. They don't to be as stable as their nvidia counterparts, and they also don't support the aero-desktop look in W8 out of the box.
We haven't had the change to test the 770 yet, so I can't say much about that one.0 -
Hi Christian,
Thanks for the info. I just ordered the AMD 7950 and should get it next week. I'm hoping that it will speed things up when processing RAW files. It took hours for 500 files to be processed compared to my other RAW processors.
Just out of curiosity, I use the highlight and shadow recovery tools a lot for wedding dresses and other object of white to recover detail that is sometimes blown out. Will that impact the processing of the RAW files even with the new card? That's an important issue before I pay for a new card if it doesn't work. From what I've read, the HDR tools don't use the OPENCL functions and revert back to the CPU. Overall, will I see a dramatic improvement from my current Quadros 4600 even with the the use of the HDR tools?
Thanks in advance.
Paul0 -
Paul,
May I ask what size your files are and what your output process (I assume you are talking about the time for the output process?) you are processing to.
I have a relatively powerful notebook (but not powerful compared to a desktop) and I can't imagine any sort of process, other than perhaps direct printing, that would take hours for 500 images based on my experiences so far.
The graphics card in this machine is a lowly Quadra 1000 for mobile, though for output that doesn't currently matter as it is not used for output anyway.
I use the "HDR" sliders on just about every shot. I probably shouldn't but I do. Most files will range between about 12Mb and 24Mb. Depends on the camera of course.
Perhaps there is some sort of transition point where processing times go exponentially longer for little difference in size?
If so I would like to know that for future reference. And hopefully avoidance!
Grant Perkins0 -
Hi Grant,
Yes, I was referring to the Output process for file rendering. I shoot D800 and the file sizes to be processed are typically range from 40-45 mb each. I have an i5, with a 16gb of ram and a 128 gb SSD boot drive with either an Nvidia 450 GTS card with 1gb of ram or a Quadros 4600 with 768 mb of ram. To process 500 D800 files it usually takes around 3 hours give or take. Yes the HDR feature is very good. Sometimes it's not as good as LR4's HR tool but very effective and I have to use it very often. LR4 can squeeze just a bit more highlight recovery than CO7 but the colors and noise are far superior in CO7.
I usually generate JPG's at either 75% or 100% depending on the need and I primarily use the Export function. I haven't really grasped the Output tab yet, but I might have to soon. I'm not sure why CO7 takes longer than LR to render output JPG's but it does. I'm sure that RAW file size does make a difference in processing time. I'm hoping that the new card will speed up the file processing because I don't need the card for anything else. I can't answer whether the HDR tool in CO7 will slow down the processing.
Corel After Shot (formally Bibble) is the king of output rendering speed without special hardware.
Hope this answers your questions.
Paul0 -
[quote="NNN635018233259472077" wrote:
Hi Christian,
Thanks for the info. I just ordered the AMD 7950 and should get it next week. I'm hoping that it will speed things up when processing RAW files. It took hours for 500 files to be processed compared to my other RAW processors.
Just out of curiosity, I use the highlight and shadow recovery tools a lot for wedding dresses and other object of white to recover detail that is sometimes blown out. Will that impact the processing of the RAW files even with the new card? That's an important issue before I pay for a new card if it doesn't work. From what I've read, the HDR tools don't use the OPENCL functions and revert back to the CPU. Overall, will I see a dramatic improvement from my current Quadros 4600 even with the the use of the HDR tools?
Thanks in advance.
Paul
From 7.1.1 hdr is supported by the OpenCL pipeline.
With the 7950 it will take 10-30 minutes, not hours. It will of course depend on how many adjustments you have applied to the pictures.0 -
[quote="NNN635018233259472077" wrote:
Hi Grant,
Yes, I was referring to the Output process for file rendering. I shoot D800 and the file sizes to be processed are typically range from 40-45 mb each. I have an i5, with a 16gb of ram and a 128 gb SSD boot drive with either an Nvidia 450 GTS card with 1gb of ram or a Quadros 4600 with 768 mb of ram. To process 500 D800 files it usually takes around 3 hours give or take. Yes the HDR feature is very good. Sometimes it's not as good as LR4's HR tool but very effective and I have to use it very often. LR4 can squeeze just a bit more highlight recovery than CO7 but the colors and noise are far superior in CO7.
I usually generate JPG's at either 75% or 100% depending on the need and I primarily use the Export function. I haven't really grasped the Output tab yet, but I might have to soon. I'm not sure why CO7 takes longer than LR to render output JPG's but it does. I'm sure that RAW file size does make a difference in processing time. I'm hoping that the new card will speed up the file processing because I don't need the card for anything else. I can't answer whether the HDR tool in CO7 will slow down the processing.
Corel After Shot (formally Bibble) is the king of output rendering speed without special hardware.
Hope this answers your questions.
Paul
Have you tried 7.1.2 ? We did some improvements to the way jpegs are written, which has improved the writing speed.0 -
Paul,
I'm still running 7.1.1 at the moment. I have a couple of large projects I want to ensure are finished (so far as I can tell) before moving to 7.1.2 since the advances available are non-reversible. That in itself is fine by me once the timing is right.
I would doubt that 7.1.2 would introduce slower processing so assume that 7.1.1 is a reasonable comparison for you.
I'm running a Dell Precision notebook, i7 processor, 24Gb RAM (though 8Gb was fine and the Extra RAM is really only useful for running multiple applications), 512GB SSD and the Lowly Quadra 1000 mobile graphics card. Windows 7 Pro.
Using Process (not Export) I can throw around 1400 Canon RAW files into the batch queue to produce 750px max width 60% jpgs AND 1024px width 70% jpgs concurrently and consistently expect that process to take between 45 and 47 minutes for actual file output. It takes a few minutes at the start for the process to sort out what seems to be some pre-planning work and the timing of that seems to depend on how many files are involved. The Original RAW file will be between 14 and 24MBs, typically. All will have a number of edit tools applied, most will have some degree of rotation, most will have HDR slider adjustments. Quite a few may have local adjustments.
You are likely producing higher resolution jpgs but I have to say that in one-off production the process times don't seem to vary much between sizes and resolutions so I would guess that producing 2 output files is more or less equivalent to producing higher resolution. Certainly producing some 2800 (approx) jgs in around 45-50 mins suggests to me that your 500 larger image process might be expected to take around the same time in the worst case.
The key to output seems to be the CPU. It works hard using Process and can use the multiple cores and Hyperthreading on the i7. I seem to recall reading that there is a big step in performance in those respects between the i5 and i7 CPUs - potentially greater still if the individual CPU specs are compared, though mine is probably only mid-range mobile i7 by current standards.
The SSD spec could also make a significant difference for the output task. Performance can vary a lot with SSDs depending on what their design intent was originally. In earlier times the trade-off seems to have been performance vs longevity. More recent releases have tended to narrow that performance difference but not eliminated it. In general the larger the SSD the higher the read/write speeds expected and actually delivered. All of the 512Gb (nominal) SSDs for which I have read the specs seem to perform at the upper end of the R/W performance levels according to manufacturer claims.
It would be interesting to run some comparative tests but I don't have an easy way to do that. However I strongly suspect that a series 3 i7 processor and large SSD (and of course the underlying motherboard technology to support them) are more far more important to production speed than we may assume. However with so many variables involved it's difficult to try to come up with numbers that might be meaningful.
HTH.
Grant Perkins0 -
I'm very curious to have your feedback on the 7950 as I have it also. What is your PC configuration ? 0 -
Hi Christian,
Yes, I'm on 7.1.2 and thanks for the update about the JPG rendering in 7.1.2.
As for my system, I'm quite sure that an i7 3rd gen processor would speed up things but I'm not really interested upgrading. I think my system is fast enough for me and I hope the new 7950 will improve the CO7 performance.
I will report my WOW! factor this week as I just shot a 1500 full res gig.
Thanks for all the info.
Paul0 -
CRASSSSSSSH! Well, I've been trying to WOW! myself with my new AMD 7950 and all I've been doing today is trying to understand why it takes 4 minutes and 32 seconds to process 10 files with OpenCL active and then watch it crash hard at 2 files as it reboots my system. It works when the OpenCl is deactivated and processes all 10 files in 3 minutes!
Thus far, I have re-installed C1, tried Catalyst 12.1, 13.1 but not 13.4 as there's a "bug" with it. So, I now have a very expensive graphics card that is as fast as my old ones. What am I missing here? I haven't seen that type of crash in a very long time.
i5, with 128 Samsung SSD, 16 gb of ram, win 7 Pro. This is a clean install on a 1 month SSD drive.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Paul0 -
[quote="NNN635018233259472077" wrote:
CRASSSSSSSH! Well, I've been trying to WOW! myself with my new AMD 7950 and all I've been doing today is trying to understand why it takes 4 minutes and 32 seconds to process 10 files with OpenCL active and then watch it crash hard at 2 files as it reboots my system. It works when the OpenCl is deactivated and processes all 10 files in 3 minutes!
Thus far, I have re-installed C1, tried Catalyst 12.1, 13.1 but not 13.4 as there's a "bug" with it. So, I now have a very expensive graphics card that is as fast as my old ones. What am I missing here? I haven't seen that type of crash in a very long time.
i5, with 128 Samsung SSD, 16 gb of ram, win 7 Pro. This is a clean install on a 1 month SSD drive.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Paul
Can you try on a completely reset picture? To me it sounds like it runs the CPU pipeline, and not on the GPU. That again means that you have a special image-format (like s-raw) or using non-gpu supported tools like spot-removal0 -
I'm processing Nikon D800 full res files with no adjustments applied. I was able to run around 15 of them and I watched the Performance monitor on the Catalyst Control Center and it took a while for the images to gather and then I could see the GPU meter activated as the files were being processed. It looked like all of the other parameters are file and then poof, the system shut down. I was never able to get 13.1 to work but 12.1 seems to work somewhat. By setting the processing to Never, the system is stable but the performance it zero.
I bought the Sapphire 7950 Over clocked. Is the over clocking an issue? I just turned it down and the system didn't crash. Could you give me the settings for the clock speeds for your test parameters?
Thanks in advance.
Paul0 -
[quote="NNN635018233259472077" wrote:
I'm processing Nikon D800 full res files with no adjustments applied. I was able to run around 15 of them and I watched the Performance monitor on the Catalyst Control Center and it took a while for the images to gather and then I could see the GPU meter activated as the files were being processed. It looked like all of the other parameters are file and then poof, the system shut down. I was never able to get 13.1 to work but 12.1 seems to work somewhat. By setting the processing to Never, the system is stable but the performance it zero.
I bought the Sapphire 7950 Over clocked. Is the over clocking an issue? I just turned it down and the system didn't crash. Could you give me the settings for the clock speeds for your test parameters?
Thanks in advance.
Paul
We have several people using the 7950 in-house with no issues (but no overclocking either).
Please try with the newest driver, before we proceed further: http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/w ... n8-64.aspx (13.4)0 -
Ok, I'll download 13.4 and see how it goes. As for overclocking, what's the native clock speed of the the card? When you get a chance, could you please communicate it to us. Also, several of the processed files were corrupt and couldn't be opened.
Thanks for the speedy help.
Paul0 -
[quote="NNN635018233259472077" wrote:
Ok, I'll download 13.4 and see how it goes. As for overclocking, what's the native clock speed of the the card? When you get a chance, could you please communicate it to us. Also, several of the processed files were corrupt and couldn't be opened.
Thanks for the speedy help.
Paul
Just to confirm, you are using CO 7.1.2, right ?
Here are the card-defaults: http://www.amd.com/uk/products/desktop/ ... 950.aspx#30 -
OK, 222 full res D800 files in under 13 minutes! Is that good? I think so! I adjusted the GPU clock speed to around 500 and the computer stopped crashing. I repeated the test several times and everything worked perfect! 13.4.
Thanks for the help.
Paul0 -
It looks like there is a nex 13.4 version. It is not called 13.5 I don't know why.
I have the 7950 and it doesn't crash C1 anymore with openCL activated. But the performances are not as expected. Almost no difference with the AMD V4900 that was considered as 6 times slower than the 7950.
I also have issues with colorefex from nik software, otherwise al my other openCL software areworking great with that vide card.
Nik software consider that as a software issue and not a videocard issue.
All those openCL issue (not as fast as expected, crashes, ...) tend to make me think that openCL has to be reviewed on C, that it is not optimized yet. I know I'll be answered that it is necessarily my system that is faulty but I think that C1 isn't fast enough to be very user friendly. I have i7 intel 6 core with MT, 32 Go RAM. Not a basic PC, and if this configuration isn't enough to have a fast C1 in editing preview and output, what would be the correct configuration ? A Cray computer, a Mac ?
I realy think that openCL has to be reviewed as speed issues are quite frequently met.0 -
[quote="NNN634863802867218057" wrote:
It looks like there is a nex 13.4 version. It is not called 13.5 I don't know why.
I have the 7950 and it doesn't crash C1 anymore with openCL activated. But the performances are not as expected. Almost no difference with the AMD V4900 that was considered as 6 times slower than the 7950.
I also have issues with colorefex from nik software, otherwise al my other openCL software areworking great with that vide card.
Nik software consider that as a software issue and not a videocard issue.
All those openCL issue (not as fast as expected, crashes, ...) tend to make me think that openCL has to be reviewed on C, that it is not optimized yet. I know I'll be answered that it is necessarily my system that is faulty but I think that C1 isn't fast enough to be very user friendly. I have i7 intel 6 core with MT, 32 Go RAM. Not a basic PC, and if this configuration isn't enough to have a fast C1 in editing preview and output, what would be the correct configuration ? A Cray computer, a Mac ?
I realy think that openCL has to be reviewed as speed issues are quite frequently met.
Are you sure that CO actually uses your GPU ?
Please try this:
- Set OpenCL to display to "Never"
- Choose a standard nikon/canon/phase one raw (not mraw, multiexposure etc)
- reset the image
- zoom in to 100%
- drag the contrast slider
- the image should pixelate while dragging as you are using the CPU pipeline
- Enable OpenCL again
- drag the slider again, this time it should not pixelate, as it is running the GPU pipeline.
- if it does pixelate, we would have to take a look into your logs to see why it is not enabling.
If it is using the GPU, please try to process files once again (reset images for testing), and time it.0 -
So I made the test with 4 reseted P65+ raw files, standard IIQ. 58sec to output them in tiff/zip 16 bits / layer, prophoto colorspace, full size. And 2min06s with both openCL deactivated. Obviously openCL works at least on outputting files.
Regarding the pixelization. At 100% zoom and opencl deactivated, with file reseted, same P65+ IIQ standard file, no pixelization, but some "steps" in the preview, not perfectly fluid. If I reactivated openCL it's smother for contrast slider moving. What I observed is that deactivating and reactivating openCL makes more fluid. If I just open C1 7.1.2 and do not touch the openCL choices, I have slow preview. And it seems that deactivating an reactivating restores some openCL power. To be verified.
Interesting, not optimal but a solution if openCL gets "saturated". It looks like openCL get kind of corrupted and needs to be activated and deactivated. I may be wrong.0 -
[quote="NNN634863802867218057" wrote:
So I made the test with 4 reseted P65+ raw files, standard IIQ. 58sec to output them in tiff/zip 16 bits / layer, prophoto colorspace, full size. And 2min06s with both openCL deactivated. Obviously openCL works at least on outputting files.
Regarding the pixelization. At 100% zoom and opencl deactivated, with file reseted, same P65+ IIQ standard file, no pixelization, but some "steps" in the preview, not perfectly fluid. If I reactivated openCL it's smother for contrast slider moving. What I observed is that deactivating and reactivating openCL makes more fluid. If I just open C1 7.1.2 and do not touch the openCL choices, I have slow preview. And it seems that deactivating an reactivating restores some openCL power. To be verified.
Interesting, not optimal but a solution if openCL gets "saturated". It looks like openCL get kind of corrupted and needs to be activated and deactivated. I may be wrong.
During start-up of Capture One, CO is compiling the OpenCL kernels. This takes 2-4 minutes, where CO will use the CPU pipeline instead.
The ATI drivers doesn't support saving this compilation (the Nvidia drivers can), so it has to be generated for each CO-startup.
Bottom-line is: Wait for 2-4 minutes before testing for OpenCL if you are using an ATI-based card.0 -
Thanks I'll try that 0 -
Yes!!! That explains everything. It makes complete sense now. When I opened CO and went to process my files for testing, the GPU monitor in the Catalyst Center would not do anything. Then all of a sudden, it started to work! That's the missing piece to the puzzle.
According to my computer guy, the 7950 is a power hungry thing. If the card is overclocked, it can cause the card to shutdown the computer because of insufficient power to the system. By reducing the overlooking, it doesn't tax the power supply. It was recommended that I upgrade the powersupply to use the card in super overclocked mode. Maybe this might address the crashing issue some might experience. I would have never thought that the crashing was caused by the card drawing too much power and crashing the system.
Hope this helps.
Paul0 -
Paul,
I think the question of power supply capability is often overlooked - especially if upgrading and using high end 'latest and greatest' cards.
It's not the 'typical' power draw figures that matter when considering power supply needs, it's the peak demand (and the cooling ability associated with it!)
My recent notebook purchase came with a very large brick power supply. It needs it. I have an large external universal battery pack that presents itself as a 'mains' supply when in use. This new machine rejects it as a power source when powered up indicating that it does not supply the required Wattage.
There are probably many situations where marginal power availability (at full working load) could be causing issues that seem to come and go, causing confusion.
Grant Perkins0 -
I was trying to process some files today and the system was crashing a lot again, and then for some strange reason it was okay. Just to be sure, is there a bug with the open CL and the AMD 13.4 drivers? I waited the required 4 minutes for the OpenCL kernel to spawn and it crashed hard. The computer works when Opne CL is set to Never. Anyone try the AMD Beta drivers on there site? Will getting a 1000 W power supply really solve my problem? I've learned that these beasts are power hungry.
Any help in this matter would be greatly appreciated. Any tips, suggestions etc, etc...
Paul0 -
[quote="NNN635018233259472077" wrote:
I was trying to process some files today and the system was crashing a lot again, and then for some strange reason it was okay. Just to be sure, is there a bug with the open CL and the AMD 13.4 drivers? I waited the required 4 minutes for the OpenCL kernel to spawn and it crashed hard. The computer works when Opne CL is set to Never. Anyone try the AMD Beta drivers on there site? Will getting a 1000 W power supply really solve my problem? I've learned that these beasts are power hungry.
Any help in this matter would be greatly appreciated. Any tips, suggestions etc, etc...
Paul
The best thing you can do right now is to go and buy a quality PSU that matches the power requirements.
If it, against the expectations, still crashes, please make a support-case.0 -
Now the latest 13.4 deivers work fine on my 7950. No crash and knowing the story about he kernel compilation is a good thing. I'm on win8 64 by the way.
So I have instant editing preview providing I do not add too many edits on the pile. And if I add 2 or thre layer, keystone correction, then the instant preview is less instant... But at least for basic editing (light/contrast, color temp or balance, croping, etc.) it is instant.
Thanks for the clues.
I think it is not a bad idea to add some other editing to the openCL pipe. Like dust removal for instance.0 -
Eureka! I finally have a system that will work with CO. I ended up installing a AMD 7950, and to run that beast I had to install a 1000 watts power supply. Anyways, it was a major investment to move from LR to CO. I processed 1100 files in less than an hour. Not bad.
So the only thing that's missing in CO is a real spotting tool. It would be great to have a cloning tool or a spotting that you can have a large diameter tool.
Thanks to everyone that helped.
Paul0 -
interesting thread..I was looking at the 7950 card..thanks for the follow up posts Paul.. 0 -
Quick test new gtx 770 2gb ram. Processing 11 canon 1dsII cr2 images (averaging 12mpixels some cropped, full size is 16.6mpixel) at 90%jpeg took 10 seconds. This is much faster than my gtx 560ti, maybe 3x. gtx 770 is tweaked gtx680 faster much cheaper. No problems with the specific 320.08 driver. 0
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