NVIDIA Maximus and Premiere Pro CS5.52
With the advent of version 5.52 of Premiere Pro, Adobe offered support for what NVIDIA calls Maximus on the PC platform. Maximus in essence is a Quadro card combined with a Tesla card. Okay, what’s a Tesla card? Basically, it’s a Quadro card without the display outputs – essentially, a headless GPU processing powerhouse.
I wanted to take what I had done with the NVIDIA Quadro card comparison and apply the same tests to the Maximus card set I have. Read on, to learn the results.
My previous blog entry is here – give it a read if you haven’t gone through it yet. To review, I have a HP Z800 that is a couple of years old but still pretty solid all the way around. For my Maximus test, I took the comparatively lowly Quadro 2000 and matched it up with the Tesla C2075.
If you’ve looked at the Tesla C2075, you’ll notice that it seems like the Quadro 6000. Well, that’s because it is. 448 cores and 6GB of memory, meow! There are however, two downsides as I see it. First is price: While prices on this delicious card are dropping, it is still going to cost you something north of $2,000 as of this writing. In my opinion, that precludes a lot of potential Premiere Pro customers. You need to either have a lot of expendable cash or have a real need for it (more on that in a bit).
The second problem is a little more basic. You need to have a big computer power supply to drive this card. I wanted to try the Quadro 4000 + C2075, but I didn’t have two separate molex adapters to hook up both of them. Even if I did, I wasn’t entirely sure that the power supply in the Z800 would be entirely happy with me if I did. If you’re considering a Maximus configuration, be sure to know what your computer’s power supply is capable of.
The idea of how Premiere Pro uses the Quadro 2000 + C2075 is pretty nifty. It puts all of the display duties (drawing the screen, the Premiere Pro UI, etc) to the Quadro 2000 and assigns all of the Mercury Playback acceleration to the beefy Tesla C2075.
Okay, enough with the downsides – playing with this GPU combination is just flat out fun. In addition, the advantages of this card were clear and make sense for a particular type of Premiere Pro user.
Take a look at the spreadsheet graphic here:
* The areas highlighted yellow are data points that show a significant change.
There is no denying that this card offers top performance and offered at least one significant improvement in the area of scrubbing AVCHD. When you think that AVCHD is H.264 and that so many cameras and devices are going that way, the scrubbing becomes a REAL advantage. I went from awful to awesome in one shot and that was the biggest surprise of these tests for me.
And while the numbers don’t support it, I feel that the RED workflow was just a bit snappier as well. RED workflows are really enhanced by CPUs (not a typo), but having the GPU for FX to keep the CPU free is another clear advantage. Certainly the scrubbing on the RED was better, though it is not as dramatic as AVCHD. I also really liked the feeling of confidence in that I had a card doing the screen display and another dedicated card fueling Premiere Pro.
Comparing a Maximus to anything other than a Quadro 5000 just isn’t fair. The Maximus laughs at the Quadro 2000 and 4000.
Where I can see this really being useful is high-end production, specifically with things like RED and other big or temporal type codecs. If you’re looking at these kinds of workflows and can afford the coin, there’s nothing like it.
Clearly though, this solution is not for everyone. It’s expensive and if you don’t have a solid P/S, it’s going to set you back even more. What I’d like to see is NVIDIA and Adobe working together to certify other Maximus combinations that are more affordable to a broad set of Premiere Pro users. Give me a Quadro 4000 + C2050 or something similar. I’d love for Adobe users to have a $800 investment in a NVIDIA card and then be able to double it and get a significant boost in performance. I’m all about being able to take incremental steps in my investments. Right now, the Quadro 2000 + Tesla C2075 will set you back $2500. When you consider that I can buy a whole desktop PC for the same or less, I think a lot of Premiere Pro users will pass on this very powerful GPU option…and I understand.
There’s also the longstanding idea of using SLI or multiple Quadro or GeForce cards together and multiply your GPU processing power. That’s something that we’d like to do, but haven’t so far. I see supporting Maximus as a step in the right direction.
In addition, I’d love to see the Maximus combination be extended out to Mac users though a lot of that depends on the Apple. Heck, I’d like to see more NVIDIA options for the Mac period, but I believe the Quadro 4000 is the right card to have and I’m very happy to see it available for Mac users.
Next up on the docket for me is to test a GeForce card – as soon as I get one, I will try to put it through its paces as I have received several requests to do so.
Comments and discussion are always welcome – post below if you’ve got something to say.
I agree with you when you say this isn’t for everyone. I don’t work with RED footage, but I do work with AVCHD every day. It would be a dream come true to have that kind of power driving my edits, but of course the money isn’t justifiable for my business right now. But it absolutely IS a step in the right direction! The natural evolution of computing has gone from single processors to multiple processors to multiple cores to multiple processors with multiple cores. The GPU utilization is the same way and I’m glad to see Adobe putting this into development with Premiere Pro. If the high end production facilities have success with Maximus configurations, it can mean nothing but good things in the long term for those of us that are further down the food chain. Thanks!
Posted by: Christian | December 14, 2011 4:54 PM
hi there, same thing here: editing miles of avchd stuff everyday, already running cs5 / mercury with a hacked geforce gtx 460 (or is it 480?) and was wondering if i would benefit from a lesser tesla (c1060 or SH886A Tesla 2070, much cheaper) and if you might have made any tests along those lines, or if you know where to find more info on a similar set up. Thanks a lot and keep up the excellent work. b.
Posted by: bastien francois | January 14, 2012 2:19 PM
I am building a system with a Quadro 4000 and a Tesla C1060 but I can’t get the Mercury Engine to work in Premiere Pro 5.5.2.
When I use the Quadro 4000 alone then i get the Mercury Engine. Is there a compatibility isue with this configuration?
My system:
An ASUS P6T7 WS Supercomputer Motherboard
Intel Core i7 CPU 960 @ 3.20GHz
24 RAM, DirectX 11
Windows 7 64-bits Professional
[DR - chances are Jose that you're using the stock Windows 7 NVIDIA drivers which do not include the right parts for CUDA. If you go to the NVIDIA website and download the latest drivers for your card, I'm positive that you'll be able to turn on the hardware acceleration inside of Premiere Pro.]
Posted by: Jose Jolguera | February 07, 2012 4:11 AM
Thanks DR.
I already downloaded and installed drivers from
Nvidia and I get the same results, only with the Quadro I get the Mercury engine to work
I even download a CUDA program from Studio one with no result .
I am about to return the card, but I want to make sure that the
Problem is not the C1060, maybe The 20 series are the ones that work with Premiere Pro?
[DR - sounds like you have an unapproved card. Currently, only the Tesla C2075 is approved as a Maximus configuration.]
Posted by: Jose Jolguera | February 08, 2012 2:29 PM
Hey Dennis: Great tutorials on the CS Platform. We at Monmouth County NJ government love the Premiere workflow.
Use it not only for governmentals, but for corporates
and broadcast. We’re currently edging up to full HD and
this will be our next move. The tutorial sessions are extremely helpful. Thanks!
Posted by: Rick Brancadora/WIBG AM&FM | February 11, 2012 11:49 PM
Hey Dennis: The CS series tutorials are extremely helpful.With so much short forms being produced here
in Monmouth County NJ government, we’re finding that the
Premiere Pro series has provided us with maximum flexibility
and quick turnarounds. The NVIDIA interface and the tricks
you share on the Adobe family series have convinced us to
evolve to HD and beyond. Thanks again!
Posted by: Rick Brancadora/WIBG AM&FM | February 11, 2012 11:53 PM
Hii Dennis
Does Maximus means for Adobe Premiere CS 5.5.2,
)))) Thanks
quadro+ tesla c 2075.
would quadro + tesla c 2050 or 2070 also work fine without any hacking.
I haven’t seen yet any quadro +tesla 2075 vs quadro+tesla 2050 benchmarks in internet.
(nvidia web site gives benchs with tesla c2075 so i got confiused
[DR - At this time, only the C2075 is officially supported.]
Posted by: turgut | February 14, 2012 1:51 AM
When will you support Nvidia’s next-gen Kepler GPUs launching in March/April? Quadro only isn’t acceptable, support the GeForce GPUs also.
Posted by: Nvidia Kepler GK104 | February 14, 2012 9:51 PM
Greeting
Thanks for the answer of the Feb. posting
This time the question is, Can I SLI 2 Quadro 4000? and if the answer is no, What benefit are using 2 Quadro 4000.
Posted by: Jose Jolguera | March 07, 2012 9:01 PM
http://www.nvidia.com/object/maximus-second-generation.html
http://www.nvidia.com/object/quadro-k5000.html
When will Adobe support Nvidia Quadro K5000 and Nvidia Tesla K20 Kepler GPUs and Maximus Second Generation in Premiere Pro?
[DR - As soon as we can.
]
Posted by: Kepler | August 14, 2012 7:11 AM
http://www.nvidia.com/object/tesla-servers.html
Tesla K20 and K20X officially launched by Nvidia and still no news about Premiere Pro 6.0 support for the new Nvidia Maximus Second Generation configs.
Posted by: Kepler | November 12, 2012 4:15 PM
Love the article and was wondering if there has been any update as we move into 2013.
[DR - Actually, yes! I am in the process of creating a new baseline machine and a new round up of cards including the maximus configuration. GPU continues to be a hot topic and I'm looking forward to writing up a few blog entries soon. Look on my blog over the next month for some new posts. Thanks!]
Posted by: Tom | February 21, 2013 2:04 PM
http://nvidianews.nvidia.com/Releases/NVIDIA-Sets-New-Standard-for-Workstation-Performance-and-Reliability-93c.aspx
http://www.nvidia.com/object/quadro-desktop-gpus.html
Please add support for the new Quadro K4000, K2000, K2000D and K600 workstation graphics card in Premiere Pro and After Effects.
Posted by: Kepler | March 05, 2013 3:18 PM
Don’t buy a tesla card of any model for anything creative. I purchased a tesla c2075 to go alongside my Quadro 6000. I read all the exciting infor,action like everyone else and believed I would be able to view real-time simulations in Maya like it said on the Nvidia site. They even have (and won’t remove) a maya case study on their website.
After a few weeks of trying to get help from support , I was told (by nvidia) that Maximus does not work for Maya or any other 3d app without a special plug-in that is not available to the public and is not supported in anyway. The only help offered was “sorry”. They are a bunch of liars and the false advertising is deliberate. Nobody would buy an over priced Tesla if they knew the truth about how llimited support really is. Please double check about your apps before buying. Almost all the info on the Nvidia site is a lie. The expectation is that you know how to program C++ and will write your own plug-ins without any help or support.
I found it hard to even find an application to test that the Tesla was working. THe impact on after effects compared to my quadro 6000 was so small, the only way I could tell was the Maximus configuration utility which showed gpu activity on the Tesla instead of the quadro during a render. If was not noticeably faster and I still couldn’t use another app during the render as promised. Worts $2000 I ever spent. You have been warned.spend the $2000 on an upgrade to a quadro k5000 and pretend you never heard the word Tesla. Oh and don’t bother trying to sli your existing quadro. Hardly any pro apps can take advantage. The only exception is if you are building a video wall and need to driver more displays. Plus, regular sli capable motherboards don’t work for quadro sli…. Hopefully my mistake will save someone else…
R t
[DR - Thanks for your comment Rob. While GPUs are great for Adobe Premiere Pro and Adobe video products in general, that doesn't necessarily hold true for all products like Maya. Even amongst Adobe, the GPU support is different because there are different applications to using the technology.]
Posted by: Rob | March 08, 2013 1:44 AM
Forgot to say, you may also want to consider a used quadro 6000 from eBay. They are a bargain these days. I got one for less than $1000 and they never sell for more than $1500 on there these days.
I have both. The keplar Quadro cards have all the strengths and weaknesses as the consumer cards – great viewport, poor compute. If you have a compute requirement too, you may be better off with a fermi generation card for some apps. I have seen some maya benchmarks actually show a quadro 5000 beating a quadro k5000. I have also seen the reverse in other benchmarks to be fair. This just means it is more important than ever to buy a card specifically for your most commonly used apps instead of for the numbers on the box. The zillions of cuda cores or stream processors on the latest generation of cards means nothing and seems to not correlate to performance benchmarks in anyway, even allowing for the differences between a ferni and keplar processor
All the advances in hardware are pointless. Software support makes 90% of the difference. That’s why the latest generation can’t even match 2-3 year old cards without it. It has been proven multiple times. We would be able to easily achieve quadro k5000 numbers on a quadro 5000 or even 4000 with the right focus on software support. Ofcourse better performance doesn’t make money and selling overpriced new hardware with no support does. The idea that more people would upgrade if the new cards delivered anything close to the performance gains the advertised specs suggest. I mean, 5 times as many cuda cores and I can’t even get more than a 5-10fps improvement. Nore is it comparable with my old tesla and there is nothing I can do on it that I can’t do right now almost as fast if not faster without spending anything.
Can anyone tell NvidiA annoyed me today?? The lack of credible competition in this market is really killing innovation. Needing 2 cards to render and compute where I used to need one seems like we’re going backwards instead of forwards. And they call it an innovation…. How about creating an app that I can import content into from all the major software for renDering and realtime visulization that doesn’t depend on 3rd parties changing their software every time you bring out a new card. Package it for free with all quadro and tesla cards and people have a reason to buy your cards again…
[DR - Again, you're commenting on Maya and not Premiere Pro. In the case of Premiere, there are some definite advantages to newer cards and the performance improvements that they offer.]
Posted by: Rob | March 08, 2013 2:13 AM
Can I use the new quadro K series (k4000) with Tesla C2075
As Maximus?
If not what’s better a K4000 or 4000+C2075?
The software I am using is After Effects Premiere and 3d studio max
Thanks
[DR - K4000 is not an approved card with CS6 nor does Premiere Pro CS6 support multiple GPUs, so I would choose either to wait for future support, do the text file modification that everyone knows about or go to a Quadro 2000 + C2075 for a certified maximus configuration. Hope this helps.]
Posted by: Nikits | March 14, 2013 4:16 PM