@CubeAce

Hi Ray

New time with GTX 1650 Super is 13:33.

While not huge that is significant.

As I asked in another thread - is that with the Nvidia set in the Program settings>Display>Preview in the arranger>Video mode?

Setting the Intel GPU to High Performance resulted in MEP refusing to open at all.

Can you explain this a little more or is that a typo and you mean "MEP is set to Hi Performance" in Windows? The Hi Perf GPU is the Nvidia.

Peter

@Scenestealer

Hi Peter.

The settings are identical to the settings I used to use with the old card for the project. So yes to your first question. Top box shows Intel and the bottom box shows the GTX 1650.

Sorry, yes. If I set the setting to high performance in Windows, then MEP refuses to even open.

There seems no way in that setting to set the Intel GPU to high performance. It always shows as in Power Saving Mode.

That dialogue box never showed that option with the GT 1030.

I have since found a monitoring program for the GTX 1650 Super on the Gigabyte site. They do hide these things well.

At rest or just viewing a video the power consumption of the card rarely uses more than 10% of it's total power capacity. When in use on export that jumps to a maximum of 75%. Doesn't rise above that but even then the GPU temperature rises up to 88c. Normal fan speed when not doing much keeps the temp down to around 33c with a fan speed of 1555 but the fan speed has a max of 3000rpm.

Nice to know the card power consumption is normally only a small percentage of what it could use and that the normal temperature is similar to my other components.

Ray.

@Scenestealer

Hi Peter.

What I should add is exports now seem smoother but sharper. For instance I'm not getting colour banding in a clear blue sky and little noise but ground seems to show better defined stones and grass, leaves etc. I don't know if it's my imagination of not. I will render an old project and see if I can do a frame comparison but I'm pretty sure it looks better. I am sometimes getting this reported error when shutting down but nothing seems astray when I next open the project.

Ray.

@CubeAce

There seems no way in that setting to set the Intel GPU to high performance. It always shows as in Power Saving Mode.

Sorry Ray but we need to be clear on this - You can not set either GPU to an alternative power setting! you can only set a program (MEP) to favour the Intel - which Windows considers is the "Power Saving GPU" - or, MEP to favour the Nvidia GPU - which Windows considers ( 9 times out of 10) to be the "Hi Performance GPU". This is because most discreet (standalone) cards are higher performance in graphics processing terms than the integrated GPU's on the Intel CPU's.

That dialogue box never showed that option with the GT 1030.

I can only imagine this might have been because Windows had decided that the GT1030 is the same or lower performance than the HD630.....or something??

Sorry, yes. If I set the setting to high performance in Windows, then MEP refuses to even open.

Very very odd! Maybe that message box has got something to do with it??

I have since found a monitoring program for the GTX 1650 Super on the Gigabyte site. They do hide these things well.

GPU-Z utility should give you that information - it works with my Gigabyte GTX1060.

Peter

@Scenestealer

Hi Peter.

Sorry if I misunderstood the purpose of the Windows dialogue box. Of course, thinking about it your explanation makes more sense. Either way selecting High Performance in the dialogue box resulted in MEP refusing to Open. Selecting either of the other two made no difference to export times. I have not yet explored if either of the other two selections makes any difference to using the editor.

I have tried each stage to alter one thing at a time and no more, so fairly confident of the observation down to which monitor MEP is displayed on, which remains for now being on the nvidia powered monitor as before and not spreading components of MEP across two monitors when exporting.

I too can only guess at why the GT1030 never showed in that power setting box but you could well be correct about the Intel GPU being more powerful although when MEP runs neither seem to be doing the same thing at the same time and the nvidia card never shows it doing any video decoding. Just mainly 3D rendering, something called 'copy' (hadn't noticed that on my old card either) and occasional very low level CUDA activity.

The GPU-Z app (I did see it on the Gigabyte website) as far as I can tell is only for Gigabyte motherboards. My program for the card is called the Aorus Engine. .

It seems capable of scanning and altering performance on the fly as well as saving presets. Something to look into later perhaps. For the tests I have left it in default mode since downloading.

Ray.

@CubeAce

Hi Ray

. . . . as far as I can tell is only for Gigabyte motherboards . . . .

GPU-Z works with almost all GPU's and is from an independent company, however it does not pick up the fans speed for my RTX 2060 unless I set the values to monitor to Average.

John EB

@Scenestealer @johnebaker

Hi Peter, John.

The App I'm using gives a lot of control although I assume there are dangers involved or I could accidentally limit the card from it's potential if not careful. Mainly I use these programs just to monitor initially to see if I'm happy with things like power consumption and operating temperatures. The app is on the Gigabyte site in the utilities section.

I can find a direct link. Here.

It monitors GPU clock. Memory clock. GPU voltage. Fan speed. GPU temperature. Power consumption. GPU usage. Memory usage.

You can adjust GPU clock. Memory clock. GPU voltage. Fan speed setup curves. Power targets and temperature targets as well as it's own learning capacity.

I think you can check a cards' compatibility Here.

Ray.

@CubeAce

Hi Ray

See the correction I have made to my post above.

John EB

@johnebaker@johnebaker

Hi John. Noted.

Earlier I said I had noticed an improvement in the rendered file quality but wasn't sure. I've checked earlier finished files and they are the same. What has improved is the playback quality of the files on the nvidia power monitor. If I move the file across to the Intel powered monitor I'm seeing some slight banding in colour graduations and more blockiness in some larger amounts of solid areas of colour. Also sharpness has improved without introducing addition grain into the images. Both monitors are very close to each other for contrast and colour but seemingly less detailed. I don't want to stretch the nvidia output across both screens as the differences are not that great and I tend to put the important stuff on the nvidia monitor anyway as my keyboards are directly underneath but at least I know which monitor to check results on now.

Ray.

I have the same card. (If he has the "Windforce" version.)

I sent Ray a PM about silencing the fans. Mine do not come on until a custom set point.

I have been able to switch back and forth between the Intel GPU and the Nvidia in Windows' Graphics Settings, and MEP does not crash.

I am wondering if Ray is having problems with the old driver and the new?

There is a Utility on the web called Display Driver Uninstaller. It does what it says. I totally removes traces of Nvidia drivers.

https://www.guru3d.com/files-details/display-driver-uninstaller-download.html

The usual warnings - make a Backup before trying.

Also, I am using the latest Nvidia Studio Driver (as opposed to a Game Ready Driver) and a standard one at that.

https://www.nvidia.com/Download/Find.aspx

@pmikep

Hi Mike.

I have never downloaded game drivers. My Current driver for the nvidia card is 26.21.14.4292

There is no trace of my previous driver from my old card. I never said MEP crashed but got an error message on one older project on exiting. The project always opened fine afterwards with no associated bak. file warning. I exported that project to a different drive and have not had that warning since.

Which settings are you switching back and forth on with no trouble? Screen shot please. I am not talking about any internal MEP settings. As discussed with Peter above, it is not possible to alter the alter the Intel from Power Saving mode. I thought I could but was mistaken a Peter pointed out.

The settings within MEP for the nvidia card deal only with playback within MEP, they have no impact on exporting.

The only export setting that seems to make a difference is whether that 'Calculate video effects on GPU' gets ticked or not and is slower with it ticked, as it was with my last nvidia card.

Left unticked, the improvement in export time is as reported earlier.

I prefer to have my fans running. Yes it is slightly louder than my old card but that is noticeable because my room is acoustically treated. If this was my lounge or kitchen I doubt I'd hear it. In my recording room though I can hear myself breath or rub my fingers together, so any noise is loud enough to hear. 😉

Listening to the various fans spin up to various speeds from boot up to Windows loading fully gives me an idea of well the components are performing (or not). I can still hear a mechanical hard drive start to fail before it goes dead. They start ticking well before they die most times. It probably doesn't help that my PC is on my Desk to my right less than to feet away from my right ear 😁.

Anyway, I hope things are getting better at your end. Still dull as dishwater at this end but relatively quiet. Just beginning to get a bit of cabin fever now.

Ray.

Because of John EB's advice I have always gone into Windows 10's settings / display / Grahics settings and added MAGIX Video delux to make the Intel UHD Graphics 630 go to the power saving mode.

This time and not with the GT 1030, the GTX 1650 Super also showed.

So as part of this experiment I also altered the settings there but the results are quick to report.

Setting the Intel GPU to High Performance resulted in MEP refusing to open at all.

This is the setting I was talking about. I can set it for the High Performance GPU (Nvidia), and MEP starts fine. (I misread "refusing to open at all" as a crash. I assumed that MEP started but then hung/crashed.)

@pmikep

Hi Mike.

Yes, that's the one I meant as well.

With the image above. Try just selecting the High performance setting in that box and see if MEP will open on your system. I tried it and MEP just refused to open. That's all I meant. 😇.

Ray.

@CubeAce @johnebaker @pmikep @emmrecs

Ray you just said:-

The settings within MEP for the nvidia card deal only with playback within MEP, they have no impact on exporting.

But in part one you said, after my comment where I said "are you saying your exporting times dropped - when setting the Nvidia for "Display in the Arranger" - or when you tick "Calculate VFX on the GPU"? :-

Both were in use when I got the lowest export times. I've no idea why but with one or the other not ticked the export times were slower.

I was of the understanding from the tests the others did that setting the discreet (Nvidia, etc.) card in the "Program settings> Video Mode for Display in the arranger" lead to noticeably faster times than with the Intel GPU set. It certainly does in all my tests (up to 35% faster) including with your Tech Talk project, so can you and the others please just recap your findings and confirm this?

Thanks.

Peter

Tried it (again). Yep, MEP starts fine with the Nvidia selected. Although I suddenly remembered that the whole reason I bought this used Dell desktop was because it has an Intel iGPU in it, and MEP needs an Intel iGPU to work best. So I had been setting Graphics Settings to "Low Power" to ensure that MEP uses it. So kind of moot that MEP won't start with the Nvidia selected, since there's no advantage to doing this. Still, an anomaly.

@Scenestealer@Scenestealer @johnebaker

Hi Peter.

First, can I say that yet again you memory is much better than mine and has reminded me that my best times were then found using MEP in the monitor powered by the Intel GPU. Something I had totally forgotten or checked for, so all my finding above were performed having MEP displayed on the nvidia monitor. So the setting you refer to is not an option for me when using the nvidia powered monitor.

So. I did all the tests again using the Intel powered monitor and guess what? All exports took longer at the various settings than when using the nvidia powered monitor to display MEP, so now there appears to be two differences with using the new card.

Hi Mike.

I tried again and MEP still refused to open at all with the Windows option of setting MEP to High Performance. There must be some hardware differences somewhere I guess. Did you check we are using the same nvidia drivers?

It's odd, but there you go. That's PCs for you.

Ray.

Yep, we're using the same driver. That's why I was wondering if you used that utility to completely remove traces of your old Nvidia driver... which might have had stuff like CUDA in it.

@pmikep

Hi Mike.

I use the Windows administrator Command Prompts to keep a system healthy. Search for broken links, delete unused files etc.

Ray.

@CubeAce @johnebaker @pmikep

Today I tried setting to Hi Performance GPU in Windows with 3 x programs - after seeing John's screenshot in another post where he had VPX set to Performance GPU. In my case both MEP2020 and VPX11 will not start, and MEP2016 starts but there is no preview in the monitor and no thumbnails in the timeline. VPX had previously worked with that setting a year or two ago, but back then I found I was not getting any HWA on export even though the mixdown window said it was hardware encoding!

It is as though something has changed in Windows or perhaps the drivers....puzzling!

Peter

@Scenestealer, @CubeAce, @pmikep

Hi

Same here, neither will start with High Performance set as GPU - the only changes I can remember since that was working are a NVidia Studio drivers update to 442.92 and one Windows microcode patch for the CPU.

I have rolled back the NV drivers to the previous version and removed the micro code patch and neither of these fixed the issue.

More investigation needed later and this may also be related to a couple of issues other users have with MEP.

John EB

@Scenestealer @johnebaker @pmikep

Hi guys.

Glad to be a nuisance 😁.

Is this a potentially serious problem then?

I've been trying to use both the Borris effects Titler and the New Blue Pro Titler and they are glacial in their performance. Possibly nothing to do with this problem but a two minute title sequence is taking 2 1/2 hours to render with Borris and 1 1/2 hours to do a 10 second Title with New Blue Pro 6. They are both quite graphic intensive and only the Intel GPU seems to be used in both cases.

I may post them up later as examples. I'm beginning to think New Blue Titler has limitations on it as I don't seem to be able to lengthen some sequences.

Ray.

@pmikep

Hi Mike.

Out of interest in case it is a Windows update causing this, What version and build of Windows are you on?

I am on Windows 10 Enterprise 1909 build 18363.836

Ray.