{"id":39,"date":"2009-02-04T00:59:43","date_gmt":"2009-02-04T07:59:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/2009\/02\/04\/the-nvidia-quadro-cx-with-adobes-cs4-suite\/"},"modified":"2010-08-03T11:48:07","modified_gmt":"2010-08-03T18:48:07","slug":"the-nvidia-quadro-cx-with-adobes-cs4-suite","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/2009\/02\/04\/the-nvidia-quadro-cx-with-adobes-cs4-suite\/","title":{"rendered":"The NVIDIA Quadro CX with Adobe’s CS4 Suite"},"content":{"rendered":"

So over the last few weeks I have had the opportunity to test the NVIDIA Quadro \u00c2\u00ae CX<\/a>,\u00c2\u00a0a\u00c2\u00a0new high-end workstation class graphics card.\u00c2\u00a0 This is basically the next generation successor to the Quadro FX 4600, with double the memory at 1.5GB, and the addition of 10bit capable DisplayPort<\/a> outputs.\u00c2\u00a0 The primary marketing buzz surrounding the new Quadro CX is its support for hardware acceleration of the Adobe Creative Suite\u00c2\u00ae 4<\/a> line of\u00c2\u00a0applications.\u00c2\u00a0 There are many different aspects that I will be covering between NVIDIA’s new hardware and Adobe’s new software, so this will be the first in a series of three related posts.\u00c2\u00a0 Stay tuned over the next couple weeks for the rest of the information.<\/p>\n

The CS4\u00c2\u00a0applications that will see significant performance gains from hardware acceleration, are After Effects<\/a>, Photoshop<\/a>, and Premiere Pro<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 The improvements in After Effects and Photoshop\u00c2\u00a0will also be evident with any other previous generation high end GPU, while the new hardware accelerated H264 encoding support for Premiere Pro is specifically tied to the new Quadro CX card.\u00c2\u00a0 NVidia has also recently announced the Quadro FX 4800<\/a>, with basically identical hardware specifications to the Quadro CX, and which retails for about $200 cheaper.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0The extra cost is buying you access to the CUDA<\/a> based RapiHD<\/a> H.264<\/a> encoder, that is available in no other form besides in conjunction with the Quadro CX card.\u00c2\u00a0 If you have no need for accelerated H.264 encoding, you could consider saving $200 with the FX 4800<\/a>, but I envision the possibility of NVIDIA releasing more CX-only tools for creative professionals, since that card is targeted towards that specific market.\u00c2\u00a0 Not to be overlooked, NVIDIA has also released the Quadro FX 5800<\/a>, with an incredible 4GB of memory, but that should only be\u00c2\u00a0needed by applications with\u00c2\u00a0the most intense processing requirements, and is a class above NVIDIA’s previous Quadro products.\u00c2\u00a0 The Quadro CX is compatible with the same HD-SDI output daughter card\u00c2\u00a0that the\u00c2\u00a0previous Quadro FX 4600 and 5600 cards used, for broadcast and post-production applications.\u00c2\u00a0 Hopefully\u00c2\u00a0we will see more software applications directly supporting that interface card\u00c2\u00a0in the near future.\u00c2\u00a0 The Quadro CX is based on the same core architecture as the new GTX 200 series of consumer cards, while the Quadro FX 4600 was based on the same technology as the GeForce 8800GTX, which is now two generations out of date.\u00c2\u00a0 It is to be expected, that there is an all around performance increase with the new cards in almost any application, but Adobe has been specifically adapting their software to leverage the power of these graphics processors.<\/p>\n


\nOf the many applications in Adobe’s new CS4 Suite<\/a>, After Effects is the one that\u00c2\u00a0most fully and effectively integrates\u00c2\u00a0the power of GPU acceleration to increase processing power and application responsiveness.\u00c2\u00a0 Many of these features are not new, but by nature of the way they are designed, grow more powerful as GPU performance increases.\u00c2\u00a0 OpenGL allows most of the 3D processing required for advance compositing to be offloaded to the GPU for dramatic increases in performance and responsiveness.\u00c2\u00a0 There are also many plug-ins and effects that specifically take advantage of GPU power.\u00c2\u00a0 Synthetic image generation like noise and fractals, as well as artificial 3D blurring are some of the best fits for effective GPU acceleration in AE.\u00c2\u00a0 Many of these improvements are only implemented for faster previews unless the user specifically selects OpenGL exporting, due to a possible loss in quality based on the lack of precision of OpenGL, but certain effects such as the new “Cartoon” vectorizing filter, that experiences dramatic (30x) rendering improvements with GPU processing, utilize GPU acceleration both for rapid previews and for accelerating the final export render.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0In most of the synthetic object\u00c2\u00a0(Noise, fractals,\u00c2\u00a0shapes, blurs, etc.) previewing\u00c2\u00a0tests I did\u00c2\u00a0in AE, OpenGL acceleration\u00c2\u00a0with the Quadro CX provided a ten fold increase in performance over CPU based rendering.\u00c2\u00a0 This is the difference between an interactive experience, and a plan-next-move-while-rendering workflow.\u00c2\u00a0 While any graphics card with OpenGL support can accelerate processing in After Effects, as compositions and projects become larger and more complex, the benefits of the Quadro CX’s increased memory and processing power will come into play.\u00c2\u00a0 Complex projects will experience a greater increase in performance than simpler ones, when upgrading to a higher end GPU.<\/p>\n

The\u00c2\u00a0next program in the CS4 suite to experience major performance improvements through GPU acceleration is Photoshop CS4.\u00c2\u00a0 Most of these improvements come from newly added implementation of OpenGL processing, and therefore, like After Effects, they\u00c2\u00a0are not specifically tied to the new Quadro CX.\u00c2\u00a0 But\u00c2\u00a0the power of the\u00c2\u00a0new Quadro CX\u00c2\u00a0makes the benefits of these improvements more dramatically obvious, especially on larger images.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0These improvements in Photoshop are fairly extensive, and I will review them in detail in the next posting in this series.\u00c2\u00a0 As far as the Quadro CX is concerned, with its large 1.5GB cache of onboard memory, it is more than capable of handling the largest and most complex operations that almost anyone would attempt in Photoshop.<\/p>\n

Adobe’s Premiere Pro CS4 also takes advantage of the GPU in\u00c2\u00a0a few less significant ways, for basic effects.\u00c2\u00a0 The one totally new\u00c2\u00a0aspect that the Quadro CX brings to the table is accelerated encoding, specifically encoding to H.264 with the new RapiHD encoder from Elemental Technologies<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 This is the primary marketing piece specific to the CX card, and my third and final post in this series on the Quadro CX\u00c2\u00a0will be about CUDA and its implementation in this new encoder.<\/p>\n

After all of the Adobe tests, I had two other programs that utilize the GPU that I wanted to try on this new high end card.\u00c2\u00a0 The first was Iridas SpeedgradeDI<\/a>, which is specifically programmed to run on NVidia’s Quadro cards.\u00c2\u00a0 The base version running with DVI or 8bit DisplayPort\u00c2\u00a0attached monitors worked great, and nothing I could do with my limited knowledge of the program could even get it to drop a frame.\u00c2\u00a0 The real test for that application would involve connecting the optional SDI daughter card for true 10bit output.\u00c2\u00a0 Hopefully the 10bit color depth supported by the DisplayPort will eventually allow that level of monitoring without the high priced SDI daughter board.\u00c2\u00a0 The highest-end customers will still require an SDI output in order to use SDI interfaced external waveform and vectorscope tools, or live broadcast outputs.<\/p>\n

Lastly, I ran my favorite program, Battlefield 2 to test out the card’s 3D rendering capabilities.\u00c2\u00a0 BF2 was released over three years ago, and therefore is not a cutting edge test, but it is my most recent high performance game.\u00c2\u00a0 With all of the settings maxed out, at maximum resolution on my 30″ LCD, I was able to get 99.9 FPS about 90% of the time, with the occasional dip into the low nineties for complex scenes.\u00c2\u00a0 Anyhow, the Quadro CX should be more than up to the task for those late night “stress relief” sessions with any modern 3D “application” if desired.<\/p>\n

Once I had thoroughly tested the Quadro CX’s acceleration capabilities, I endeavored to\u00c2\u00a0verify the capabilities of it’s newly supported output interface.\u00c2\u00a0 I hooked my HP Dreamcolor LCD<\/a> to the card via the new DisplayPort interface, hoping to get some taste of 10bit color output.\u00c2\u00a0 Unfortunately, currently none of the\u00c2\u00a0major applications I currently have installed are programmed to take advantage of this capability.\u00c2\u00a0 I do have a small utility from NVidia that displays 16bit TIFF files in 10bit color depth, and I can confirm that yes, there is a difference, and yes, the combination of the Quadro CX and\u00c2\u00a0the HP Dreamcolor\u00c2\u00a0<\/a>does give you full hardware\u00c2\u00a0support for\u00c2\u00a010bit color display.\u00c2\u00a0 Hopefully in the future we will see updates and plug-ins that will unlock this feature in useful ways.\u00c2\u00a0 There is a 10bit capable SDI plug-in that NVidia released for After Effects 7<\/a> quite a while back, as a simple demonstration of their new SDI capability, and I am hoping to see an equivalent DisplayPort version for both After Effects and Photoshop, especially since NVidia and Adobe seem to be working together more closely these days.<\/p>\n

Anyhow, if you are in the market for a new high end GPU, the Quadro CX has all of the processing power that most people could\u00c2\u00a0possibly need.\u00c2\u00a0 At its currently available price of about $1800, it has directly replaced the Quadro FX 4600, and no question is a superior product.\u00c2\u00a0 Now if you already have a 4600, the jump to the CX is not immediately necessary unless you are currently pushing your system to the limits, or you\u00c2\u00a0encode a lot of footage to H264.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0The Photoshop and After Effects GPU support in CS4 will work nearly as well with a 4600, but there is a difference.\u00c2\u00a0 With any other previous generation card, you should see a significant all around performance increase with any application that leverages GPU processing power.<\/p>\n

That information should give\u00c2\u00a0you a good general idea of what the new Quadro CX\u00c2\u00a0card is capable of, and I will be detailing the improvements in Photoshop CS4\u00c2\u00a0and the RapiHD encoder in my upcoming posts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So over the last few weeks I have had the opportunity to test the NVIDIA Quadro \u00c2\u00ae CX,\u00c2\u00a0a\u00c2\u00a0new high-end workstation class graphics card.\u00c2\u00a0 This is basically the next generation successor to the Quadro FX 4600, with double the memory at 1.5GB, and the addition of 10bit capable DisplayPort outputs.\u00c2\u00a0 The primary marketing buzz surrounding the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[16,43,37,35,7,27],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":144,"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39\/revisions\/144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}