Problem with Resolve abd e-GPU

[Amazeballs]

I just purchased an external 1070 e-GPU (Gigabyte Aorus) to properly work in Resolve on my Notebook. 

To my surprise it works awfully just unusable. H264 24 fps clip are played back quite fine on my internal 1050 card, but 1070.. shows around 16 fps average! What the hell is going on? I actually have both GPUs enabled, I tried to use 1070 only - same result, but if use 1050 only - it works just fine. 

My setup:

Lenovo Yoga 720 15 inch Laptop
Windows 10
Resolve 15.1 Studio
16GB RAM
7700HQ
internal 1050 2gb + 1070 8gb Aorus e-GPU
fast ssd (around 2.5k read speeds)
H264 4k files shoot on GH5

Also my notebook has only 2 lanes thunderbolt port but I doubt that's the problem, should still be much faster than my castrated 2gb 1050. Games run fine btw.

I also tried to playback some GH5 4k60fps files just through the file system - they run perfectly smooth on 1070, and on 1050 they are very choppy. So the GPU defiantly works and it seems to be purely Resolve problem. There should be no reason why it shows only 17 fps in Resolve in 4k24p GH5 files. I even tried watching 8k30p on Youtube and it works with no visible lag.

I posted it on BM forum but they are very slow at responding so if anybody could help me out here that would be great!

[Shirozina]

In the Preferences in Resolve have you got the 'use display GPU for compute ticked' as this will slow it down. You can also here force the resolve to use your eGPU. Also what is the usage in the windows task manager for the eGPU vs internal. (the internal GPU should be inactive.) Also make sure all drivers are up to date for the Nvidia card and the USB-C controler.

[Amazeballs]

1 hour ago, Shirozina said:

In the Preferences in Resolve have you got the 'use display GPU for compute ticked' as this will slow it down. You can also here force the resolve to use your eGPU. Also what is the usage in the windows task manager for the eGPU vs internal. (the internal GPU should be inactive.) Also make sure all drivers are up to date for the Nvidia card and the USB-C controler.

Updated Nvidia and TB drivers, and here is my screenshot from Resolve attached, noup that doesnt help

I can disable 1050 and it doesnt effect anything, same as "Auto", only if I choose 1050 manually and disable 1070 completely (or just pull out the plug from it) it works. 

Didn't find any "use display GPU for compute" box though

So Resolve does use my 1070 and does see it perfectly it just doesn't work as it should. Thats the bummer.

Now the interesting thing - I did test the GPU usage and my 1070 shows 70-80% usage when I try to play a simple 4k24p clip in resolve. Which it cannot play smoothly anyway. Now when I playback a 4k60p file in windows directly, I get around 40-50% GPU usage from my 1070. And when I try to playback 4k24p file in Resolve with 1050 only it shows 13% GPU usage for 1050 and 70% usage for Intel HD 630 which I though doesnt participate in any kind of decoding in Resolve at all. Very wired.  For 4k60p in Resolve 1050 gets around 30% usage, CPU spikes to 90-100% and intel HD 630 is still around 70% and the fps is around 45fps. 

In windows if I use CUDA player to play video my 1050 can actually handle 4k60p with no problem getting around 35% load and 22% CPU with 60% HD630 load. Wow. I previously was using HD630 trying to play it and it could not, but 1050 does it with only 35 load. So how my 1070 gets 50% load at the same task? Haha) 

[Shirozina]

The use display GPU for compute is greyed out - is this resolve studio?

Are you using optimised media and Render cache or just playing media as it is. I can't get GH5 10bit 4.2.2 400mbps  media to play smooth ( the 150mbps is unplayable) without optimised media and Render Cache ( DNxHR HQX works best for me). I also think 16gb of RAM is probably not enough for Resolve. 

 

[Amazeballs]

11 minutes ago, Shirozina said:

The use display GPU for compute is greyed out - is this resolve studio?

Are you using optimised media and Render cache or just playing media as it is. I can't get GH5 10bit 4.2.2 400mbps  media to play smooth ( the 150mbps is unplayable) without optimised media and Render Cache ( DNxHR HQX works best for me). I also think 16gb of RAM is probably not enough for Resolve. 

 

It is a Studio. I found a way to turn GPU compute off - you need to set GPU choice to Auto. Didnt help though. No the media is not optimized, well 1070 should handle it fine this way, I've seen tests, that is the reason I bought in the first place. Even 1050 handles 4k30p without optimized media. Dont think its about my RAM or other specs. I think it has something to do with a driver. I will test Premiere 2018 soon. 

Its defiantly not RAM, as Resolve uses 2.2GB of my RAM when do those tests. 

[Shirozina]

5 minutes ago, Amazeballs said:

It is a Studio. I found a way to turn GPU compute off - you need to set GPU choice to Auto. Didnt help though. No the media is not optimized, well 1070 should handle it fine this way, I've seen tests, that is the reason I bought in the first place. Even 1050 handles 4k30p without optimized media. Dont think its about my RAM or other specs. I think it has something to do with a driver. I will test Premiere 2018 soon. 

I've got the same CPU, 32gb of RAM, separate SSD for media cache and optimised media and a 1080ti in an eGPU and it won't play smooth without optimised media and Render Cache.

Premier doesn't use the GPU as much and can't therefore exploit an eGPU but YMMV.

[Amazeballs]

15 hours ago, Shirozina said:

I've got the same CPU, 32gb of RAM, separate SSD for media cache and optimised media and a 1080ti in an eGPU and it won't play smooth without optimised media and Render Cache.

Premier doesn't use the GPU as much and can't therefore exploit an eGPU but YMMV.

Dude, Resolve playback should work perfectly without optimized media on such a monster card as 1080ti, there is something very wrong if it doesnt. As I sad my built-in 1050 plays back 4k30 inside Davinici and can actually handle 4k60p on its own but not in Resolve (for some fucked up reason). RAM is sufficient. I am asking BM but they did not respond yet. Right now Final Cut seems to be the only program that does this right. 

Tested in Premiere. Its plays 4k30 but 4k60 is choppy. 

I am actually amazed that none of major software video editing companies except Apple solved that thing with smooth playback of freaking video files. Do I need to buy a damn Macbook now? Shit. 

[Shirozina]

33 minutes ago, Amazeballs said:

Dude, Resolve playback should work perfectly without optimized media on such a monster card as 1080ti, there is something very wrong if it doesnt. As I sad my built-in 1050 plays back 4k30 inside Davinici and can actually handle 4k60p on its own but not in Resolve (for some fucked up reason). RAM is sufficient. I am asking BM but they did not respond yet. Right now Final Cut seems to be the only program that does this right. 

Tested in Premiere. Its plays 4k30 but 4k60 is choppy. 

I am actually amazed that none of major software video editing companies except Apple solved that thing with smooth playback of freaking video files. Do I need to buy a damn Macbook now? Shit. 

Is playback done with the GPU though? - AFAIK it's used for the main processing tasks which include rendering difficult compressed codecs to ones that the CPU can playback more easily and this is where I get the major benefit as just using the internal GTX1050 causes the laptop to  throttle down to a crawl after a few minutes of intense work due to heat buildup. With the eGPU rendering cache takes a few mins and I can edit with ease and the laptop stays cool and the CPU will run at 100% all day long.

[Shirozina]

Also with H.264 and similarly highly compressed codecs the CPU does the decompression and not the GPU so your CPU is the limitation and not the GPU. If you want to have smooth playback you need to render optimised media and enable the render cache which will be done by the eGPU but then the resulting media is much easier for the CPU to playback.

[shooter]

https://forum.blackmagicdesign.com/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=82567

https://forum.blackmagicdesign.com/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=82460&p=457643#p457643

I found these threads. I think same OP. So problem is only because of 2 lanes?

On 11/24/2018 at 12:10 PM, Amazeballs said:

I posted it on BM forum but they are very slow at responding so if anybody could help me out here that would be great!

 

[Shirozina]

Have you tried using optimised media and Render cache yet? as I doubt you will get smooth 4k editing without it. I spent a long time setting up my laptop based setup and this was the only solution. Even my 10 core overclocked workstation with 1080ti struggles with smooth playback on some media (esp in Premier).