3 Slow GPUs running 5 Screens

[gradek]

I'm in need of some advice for my current Resolume setup.
I am running Resolume 4 on a Fast Mac Pro tower.

The system has a raid, lots of ram and fast CPU.

I'm using the system to power 5 monitors. 1 control monitor + 4 external 640x480 NTSC video screens via VGA.

The current setup is using 3 very old Nvidia Geforce 7600 to control all the displays.

Since Resolume is so GPU heavy the system plays clips very slow at just 8-12 fps when external monitors are on, and about 17fps when output is disabled. (3 layers running no FX)

My questions is will I get a performance boost if I replace just one of the GPU to something more modern? I'm not sure if Resolume is using the GPU of each card, or trying to use the primary graphics card to decode all the video.

Or do I have to replace 2 or 3 cards to get 30+ fps I need? For example two fast cards to power the external monitors and the slow card for the control monitor.

I guess I don't know what GPU resolume is using to process the videos. Does it depends on monitor a signal is outputted too? Because even with output disable preference drops significantly when I turn on more then 1 layer. I need 3 layers running at the same time. That leads me to believe that maybe the primary GPU does most of the heavy lifting, and the other GPUs are less important.


I'm not running any Effects. Clips are currently in DXV codec, and Photo-JPEG created a 2-4 fps drop in performance.

Any advice greatly appreciated.

[zealobin]

I have to be a test:
Two graphics cards 3 screen output
And then use GPU-Z to view the status of the two graphics
GPU-Z confirmed control screen where the graphics card Load is heavy , other graphics cards almost no load.


If a balanced load, should be more fluid.

[Stickygreen]

Resolume will only use the GPU of the main video card, the one that your Control display is output from, so that should be your Best card.

But the Nvidia 7600 isn't that bad of a card.. 512MB's RAM correct?

4 screens of 480 x 3 layers.. I'd think you can get better performance out of that.

what codec are you running?

also can you describe your RAID config? where does resolume sit and where do your video clips sit? different HD's or same one?

[HerrNieDa]

i got an 7800gt and got poor performane, not better than my macbook pro with 8600gt...
so... for multiscreening and higher resolutions i suggest a newer graphic card... nvidia 9800/ati 3650 or better!

[Joris]

In general, we always *always* always recommend running on a single GPU as much as possible. Even though sharing the load between multiple cards may sound good on paper, it's actually heavier in practice. It's a bigger load to share the textures, than it is to have a single card calculate the whole thing.

So in this case upgrading to a single Ati Eyefinity card would be a definite improvement.

[gradek]

Thanks Everyone for the advice.

I think I misspoke. The cards are Geforce 7300 GT with only 256mb ram. They are the old cards they had in 2006 era Mac Pros.

An 5 or 6 Eyefinity card would be awesome. However this is a MAC. So most PC cards don't work.

However I have read that the new PC graphics ATI 6870 cards are working in Mac Pros.

I have a hackintosh with that card installed, so I'm going to try to move it to the real Mac Pro and see if its stable. I just ordered the special PCIe 6-pin power cables need to power the card. I'll have an update in a week or so.

Check out this how-to video using a PC graphics cards in a MAC.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cC-Rzl_bRhU

[gradek]

4 screens of 480 x 3 layers.. I'd think you can get better performance out of that.

what codec are you running?

also can you describe your RAID config? where does resolume sit and where do your video clips sit? different HD's or same one?

I'm running DVX. I tried Photo-JPEG, but that was a performance hit of 2-3fps. All files are on a RAID 0.

[Stickygreen]

nowt hat you've corrected your vid card spec, and the 256mb's of V RAM, this low FPS is not so unusual. 256RAM isn't that much, especially for multi screen

[gradek]

Drats!

The XFX 6870 card works almost perfectly in the Mac Pro. I've heard a few apps crash with this card. Alas Resolume seems to be one of them. Both R3, and R4 crash on startup! So much for that idea. I'll see if that changes with OSX lion. Currently running 10.6.8

[gradek]

Quick Update,

I found a fix for the 6870 crashing in OSX. There is a driver & kext solution found on the groths.org website:
http://www.groths.org/?p=431 Good thing too, since I read lion is no better for driver support, and Mac Pro 1,1 don't work with lion due to the 64bit EFI bootloader needed to run Lion.

Now DVD player and resolume run fine. However the FPS are not as great as I thought.

Only 3 or 4 ports work on the 6870 card with the driver fix. So 2 out of the 4 displays are running the main card via MDP-VGA active adapters for an average of about 14-18fps. a marginal improvement. If only I could run all 5 monitors on the same card. Too bad I have to convert the signal to VGA. I'm going to see if I can get 4 out of the 5 monitors running on the same car and see if that helps.

I'm gong to see how the setup runs on Windows 7 to see if I can get some better performance.