Graphics card as software accelerator

A few years ago still enjoyed software programs “exotic status”, which could significantly benefit from the graphics card acceleration.


Image processing


Pioneers were systems under a Linux operating system such as Autodesk Flame or DaVinci Resolve, which, supported by the operating system, were able to control numerous graphics cards (GPUs) and use them for particularly complex calculations. The basic advantage of the GPU support is the much higher number of available data cores: while a fast CPU like the i7-3930K has just six data cores, the Quadro 4000 provides 256 data cores

3D visualization


One of the first Windows programs with integrated GPU support is the Liquid program developed by Fast Multimedia. Liquid uses the GPU help for background rendering as well as for the calculation of the (GPU) effects provided for it.


Data conversion


With the latest Windows and Mac OS operating systems, GPU-accelerated software programs have long been standard in important, particularly computer-intensive areas. Also the GPU support of web browsers is now a good sound. Since version 1.1 the popular VLC Player uses GPU support during playback. And the most recent WinZip can help to encode compressed ZIP files from the graphics card.


Videocut


With Nvidia's CUDA, AMD's favored OpenCL and Microsoft's DirectCompute, there are now standardized APIs for the use of GPUs as a coprocessor, making programming easier. GPUs can shine especially with tasks that can be parallelized. In our tests with the Quadro 600 and 4000 workstation GPUs as well as the fast graphics cards GTX 560 Ti and HD 7970, it turned out that in reality GPU support does not always help.


Whether a GPU acceleration in the field of image processing makes much sense, is at the manufacturers controversial. Adobe, it is important to note that a lot of emphasis has been placed on hardware acceleration. This is particularly noticeable when calculating complex effects. A prime example of this are the blur filters. With the new generation of AMD graphics cards, the computation time of these complex filters should be shortened by one-tenth compared to software acceleration using OpenCL.


A variety of features are available in Photoshop Extended prior to CS6 only when the user is using a suitable graphics card. This applies in particular to the simple 3D functions which have been increasingly developed in some program generations. CS6 notes which GPU is suitable for hardware acceleration, but apparently also benefits from the appropriate GPU when the hardware acceleration is disabled.


Competitor Corel, on the other hand, argues that outsourcing of computing operations to the graphics card - as with the drawing programs - makes little sense. Therefore, Corel does not use GPU acceleration for programs such as Paint Shop Pro, Photo-Paint, or CorelDraw.


For the calculation of 3D models the graphics card support is required at the latest when working with elaborate textures and even more with photorealistic lighting. The use of non-certified graphics cards can lead to annoying texturing errors - which are not supported by the 3D software vendors.


On our test configurations, all renderings with 3ds 2013 were very fast. The 3D models can also be rotated with real textures and sophisticated lighting in real time. The quality of the presentation by the Quadro graphics cards convinced most subjectively the most. For our tests, we used the scenes supplied by the manufacturer as well as a complex 3D scene, which the Hannover company 3D-Artifex had kindly provided us.


In the 3D area, workstation graphics cards such as the Nvidia Quadro series or the ATI FirePro are announced. However, ATI's Windows 7, 64-bit certified graphics cards show that the cards certified for the editorial board are taken from the years 2010/2011.


Autodesk employees confirmed to the PC magazine that "because of the better driver support" due to the Quadro graphics cards they are the better choice.


Converting videos and music clips to other formats can take an enormous amount of time. In practice, the option is to output a video (as high-quality as possible) for different destinations, such as web playback in Youtube, the smartphone or the presentation on the beamer in different resolutions.


Grading and Compositing


There are a number of converters that do this comfortably. We used the MainConcept Reference for our calculations, which contains a lot of exact setting options and (after disconnection) even output as an MXF container for cinema broadcasts. It was noticeable that we could not find any relevant differences with all the graphics cards used.


CyberLink Media Espresso is also a technologically exciting alternative. The program runs the fastest with Intel's Quick Sync video, a specialized encoding engine built into the Intel GPU. With it, the program hangs even fast GeForce GPUs, where this work is done by the shaders called Cuda-Cores.


In our tests, we have, among other things, converted 38 AVCHD streams to H264-HD format. The Quadro 4000 and the GeForce GTX 560 Ti delivered practically identical results, the Quadro 600 takes about twice as long. Strange behaves the HD 7970: The first three streams converted the AMD-GPU rapidly into the desired file format, then counted only the seconds of processing. However, this did not happen in reality. After about half an hour of waiting, we finally broke the (repeatedly repeated) attempt.


Games


Nvidia uses the GPU in games designed not only for the graphics presentation, but also by means of PhysX as coprocessor for demanding partying effects or the realistic representation of moving clothes. PhysX can also run on the CPU, but much slower.


The real-time display of the video data in final quality is decisive in the video section. At the same time, the output of the final film has to be done in different formats quickly and in adjustable quality.


Some vendors optionally provide the files to a special conversion program, the Avid Media Composer uses the supplied Sørensen squeeze, Adobe uses the Media Encoder.


In order to meet the diverse requirements of playback quality with different hardware, most manufacturers offer the option to reduce the preview quality to ensure a smooth flow. With slightly reduced preview quality, it is often easier to live with jerky images. Leading video editing software vendors are taking different paths to meet the very different requirements.


Grass Valley, which offers an extremely powerful program with Edius, owes its speed to its optimized codecs. For the standard tasks, it does not matter which graphics card you are working on - a fast GPU is, of course, noticeable by a brighter graphic design.


This also applies to the image set-up for Adobe Premiere Pro from CS5. Especially during rendering, the waiting time with GPU support can be significantly reduced - this becomes problematic if you only use a non-optimized effect. With the playback quality of high-resolution RedOne material, the Quadro cards shone. They showed the image very smoothly and without the otherwise occasional display errors.


Avid requires Quadro cards for some applications on Windows. For this, high-resolution raw data can be played smoothly to very good quality - even with older Quadro cards like the FX 3700.


Magix is ​​primarily aimed at the mass market. The American manufacturer is not only using OpenCL and CUDA for its current products of the Video deluxe MX series as well as MAGIX Video easy 4 HD on the hardware acceleration via Direct3D, which use all modern graphics cards. For example, all effects from the "Motion Effects" area, all effects from the "Brightness / Contrast" and "Color" areas except the Auto functions, RGB controls and red eyes, and the standard mixing functions (Stamp, Mix) Accelerated.


This also applies to some external plug-ins, currently only from ProDAD (Vitascene), dazzling / transitions, deinterlacing, color conversion, and output functions such as image scaling and stereoscopic output functions

Grading programs like DaVinci Resolve or SpeedGrade can practically not be used without a suitable GPU. SpeedGrade crashed in seconds when attempting to process 4K material with GeForce or AMD Radeon GPUs. These programs want for the calculations at least a fast quadro-GPU as an accelerator. Compositing programs like After Effects benefit from multiple GPUs in the system.