APU vs i7 as productivity platform of choice

[Shifty Geezer]

When I was looking at HD video editing a while back, the i7 was the recommended solution. However, are things gonna change (any time soon) with AMD APUs? Will compute handle HD video streams better, or more economically, than i7? And how does AMD GPGPU compare to nVidia GPGPU and i7 in high demand applications like HD video effects rendering or 3D modelling and rendering?

 

[Malo]

There isn't really much use for GPGPU as far as video encoding goes. For transcoding you get some benefit in part of the decoding sequence but it's primarily a CPU task. With features like Quick Sync, you'll probably be far better off with an i7 for video editing.

3D modelling and rendering is probably complete opposite though I assume, since you'll be dealing with GPU specific tasks and acceleration.

Anyone please correct me if I'm off the mark or not up-to-date with the encoding side.

 

[pcchen]

This also depends on what software you use. Basically, GPU helps on video decoding acceleration. This doesn't sound exciting, but it's still important, as it enables one to edit directly on H.264 data. GPU also helps on previewing editing, although this depends on whether your video editing software use GPU this way.

Note that for rendering, most software does not use GPU acceleration in the traditional way, in order to make sure the result is consistent. Some editing software now support OpenCL/CUDA for rendering though (however, you probably have to use a high end GPU to see significant difference in performance). Many software also support GPU assisted encoding, although quality may be an issue here, especially if you use hardware encoders such as QuickSync.

 

[swaaye]

I think Joker454 posted about loving CUDA encoding, partly because of accelerated editing and preview.

For the best quality encoding you want to use x264 though and that is purely CPU.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Accelerated low-quality previews are important as that's where most of the time goes. Rendering out a final copy can be done overnight if needs be, although of course faster is better! But I'm wondering if the APU is going to change any of this? That's broken down into two questions - 1) can the APU provide better overall performance than an i7 or a GPU (not both, obviously, but for a given budget does the APU have the potential to egg out. eg. An A10-5800k is £100, extremely affordable but with potentially far more grunt than an i7). 2) will anyone actually develop HSA software that makes use of an APU?

Putting it another way, if someone was to buy a machine tomorrow with a view to 3D rendering and video creation in 6-12 months time, should they stick to i7/nVidia or would a more economical purchase of an APU system deliver comparable performance for way less money?

What I don't know to answer this is what functions in editing and rendering are currently GPU accelerated, and what's tied to CPU. Okay, h.264 is CPU bound, but could that e solved via APU? And are GPUs used in offline rendering? The shader technology is ideally suited for offline rendering as it is realtime, so it'd seem a waste if it isn't used.

 

[pcchen]

There are a lot video editing workloads can be done on GPU. Transition effects, text/picture overlays, special video effects, composition, transformation, etc. are all very suited for GPU. It's even quite easy to use OpenGL or Direct3D to do most of these for preview. With OpenCL/CUDA, it's even easier and can be done with good precision (i.e. you get the same result as doing on a CPU).

Whether GPU is used in rendering, of course, depends on the software you use. But many professional video editing software do. AFAIK both Sony Vegas and Adobe Premiere supported GPU accelerated rendering for quite some time.

 

[swaaye]

I've had the impression that what makes x264 on CPU the best quality for final output are algorithms that make GPU performance fall apart and aren't included in hardwired things like Quicksync.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

There are a lot video editing workloads can be done on GPU. Transition effects, text/picture overlays, special video effects, composition, transformation, etc. are all very suited for GPU. It's even quite easy to use OpenGL or Direct3D to do most of these for preview. With OpenCL/CUDA, it's even easier and can be done with good precision (i.e. you get the same result as doing on a CPU).

Yes, but it when it comes to encoding the video, you still need a mighty CPU for fast performance, or at least what I've read about GPU rendering has favoured i7 over GPU. So you need both processors at the moment for best performance. Will an APU be able to solve the shortcoming of the GPU for video encoding

Whether GPU is used in rendering, of course, depends on the software you use. But many professional video editing software do. AFAIK both Sony Vegas and Adobe Premiere supported GPU accelerated rendering for quite some time.

By rendering I meant CGI; wrong term by me. Another area of productivity would be audio. I don't know of any GPGPU accelerated audio engines in any DAW. Is there any chance of the APU being targeted by the likes of SONAR and Cubase? I'm thinking it'll take Apple to launch an APU based computer and develop associated apps for the idea to pick up. The next-gen consoles going APU will be good for realtime rendering advancements, but I'm not sure where the impetus to develop HSA productivity apps on PC is going to come from.

 

[pcchen]

Yes, but it when it comes to encoding the video, you still need a mighty CPU for fast performance, or at least what I've read about GPU rendering has favoured i7 over GPU. So you need both processors at the moment for best performance. Will an APU be able to solve the shortcoming of the GPU for video encoding

Personally I think the best bet for video encoding is still CPU based solutions. APU may help a little as the close integration between CPU and GPU allows more computation to be done on GPU (such as motion vector estimation), but I don't think that's going to change the overall picture much as, like swaaye said, quite a lot workloads in a good encoder are not suitable for GPU acceleration.

By rendering I meant CGI; wrong term by me. Another area of productivity would be audio. I don't know of any GPGPU accelerated audio engines in any DAW. Is there any chance of the APU being targeted by the likes of SONAR and Cubase? I'm thinking it'll take Apple to launch an APU based computer and develop associated apps for the idea to pick up. The next-gen consoles going APU will be good for realtime rendering advancements, but I'm not sure where the impetus to develop HSA productivity apps on PC is going to come from.

I see. AFAIK 3D rendering are not much GPU accelerated as video rendering. Audio, on the other hand, should be much easier, but in many case audio process require very low latency, and transferring data between CPU and GPU introduces additional latency and thus not ideal. APU could help, but as you said it may take some time for this idea to fly.

 

[Blazkowicz]

By rendering I meant CGI; wrong term by me. Another area of productivity would be audio. I don't know of any GPGPU accelerated audio engines in any DAW. Is there any chance of the APU being targeted by the likes of SONAR and Cubase? I'm thinking it'll take Apple to launch an APU based computer and develop associated apps for the idea to pick up. The next-gen consoles going APU will be good for realtime rendering advancements, but I'm not sure where the impetus to develop HSA productivity apps on PC is going to come from.

GPU audio is emerging in academia, here as an instance of simulating a physical impact to generate artificial sound instead of just mucking with samples to get a desired result.
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/13/05/10/1819224/realtime-gpu-audio

The trouble is academia is massively using CUDA (it's got more of everything : features, freshness and matching the GPU used, HPC and linux support, software environment etc.)
So the current situation is you'd better have a nvidia board, so as to not be limited to some OpenCL 1.x applications rather than both OpenCL and CUDA.
The consoles may be a powerful drive to develop AMD oriented code, but if you want to bet on a glorious HSA future then you really have to wait for a Kaveri APU.

About the i7, it's just overpriced, maybe better value is to get the cheapest i5 (i5 3330 or 3350P) and a H61 (two memory slots) or B75 (four slots) motherboard.
AMD has FX 6300, 8320 and 8350 which are especially suited performance wise for video and 3D rendering stuff (I'd tend to pair one with a nvidia GPU, such as a GT610 or GTX650)
One killer app for a GTX650 is Adobe's Mercury Playback Engine, I think.

 

[KKRT]

For Encoding future Nvidia GPUs should be very good as long as software will support NVENC. Unfortunately You cant use it with normal GPUs [only Tesla, Quadro and GRID]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJ05Xed0XsI&feature=player_detailpage#t=1036s

 

[Blazkowicz]

I assume it's used on a geforce when you stream from a consumer PC to a nvidia Shield mobile console (and any other supported client hardware with a Tegra 4). Licensing restrictions ensue (one user, no gaming or possibly no desktop use at all on the PC that streams the game). Not yet released but that supports all Kepler GPUs presumably.