Can OpenGL And OpenCL Overhaul Your Photo Editing Experience?

[Guest]

In our continuing look at the heterogeneous computing ecosystem, it's time to turn our attention to the photo editing apps currently able to exploit OpenCL- and OpenGL-capable hardware. We interview experts, run benchmarks, and draw some conclusions.

Can OpenGL And OpenCL Overhaul Your Photo Editing Experience? : Read more

 

[ilysaml]

Now Adobe uses both CUDA and OpenCL that's superb.

 

[alphaalphaalpha1]

Tahiti is pretty darned fast for compute, especially for the price of the 7900 cards, and if too many applications get proper OpenCL support, then Nvidia might be left behind for a lot of professional GPGPU work if they don't offer similar performance at a similar price point or some other incentive.

With the 7970 meeting or beating much of the far more expensive Quadro line, Nvidia will have to step up. Maybe a GK114 or a cut-down GK110 will be put into use to counter 7900. I've already seen several forum threads talking about the 7970 being incredible in Maya and some other programs, but since I'm not a GPGPU compute expert, I guess I'm not in the best position to consider this topic on a very advanced level. Would anyone care to comment (or correct me if I made a mistake) about this?

 

[A Bad Day]

How many CPUs would it take to match the tested GPUs?

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]A Bad Day[/nom]How many CPUs would it take to match the tested GPUs?[/citation]

That would depend on the CPU.

 

[esrever]

Would be interesting to compare the i7 ivybridge against trinity in openCL

 

[mayankleoboy1]

why no nvidia cards here?

 

[mayankleoboy1]

any CUDA vs OpenCL benchmarks?

 

[de5_Roy]

can you test like these combos:
core i5 + 7970
core i5 hd4000
trinity + 7970
trinity apu
core i7 + 7970
and core i7 hd 4000, and compare against fx8150 (or piledriver) + 7970.
it seemed to me as if the apu bottlenecks the 7970 and the 7970 could work better with an intel i5/i7 cpu on the graphical processing workloads.

 

[vitornob]

Nvidia cards test please. People needs to know if it's better/faster to go OpenCL or CUDA.

 

[bgaimur]

[citation][nom]vitornob[/nom]Nvidia cards test please. People needs to know if it's better/faster to go OpenCL or CUDA.[/citation]

http://www.streamcomputing.eu/blog/2011-06-22/opencl-vs-cuda-misconceptions/

CUDA is a dying breed.

 

[Guest]

no intel or nvidia because for professional editing you need hardware capable of more than gaming...

 

[A Bad Day]

[citation][nom]blazorthon[/nom]That would depend on the CPU.[/citation]

2687W: 2P server CPU, 8 core (16 threads), 3.1 GHz (3.8 GHz turbo), and 20 MB of L3 cache.

Cost per CPU: $1885

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]nousername[/nom]no intel or nvidia because for professional editing you need hardware capable of more than gaming...[/citation]

Quadro, Tesla... These are graphics cards that are also capable of more than gaming, even if like alpha said above, many of them aren't always the very fastest such cards for compute performance anymore and most definitely aren't the fastest compute cards for the money.

[citation][nom]A Bad Day[/nom]2687W: 2P server CPU, 8 core (16 threads), 3.1 GHz (3.8 GHz turbo), and 20 MB of L3 cache.Cost per CPU: $1885[/citation]

I'll have a look and see if I can find benchmarks to compare with those done in this article.

 

[annymmo]

I'm hoping that OpenCL will make it possible to implement high demanding video codecs for smartphone GPU's.

This would allow software vendors to implement their video format of choice everywhere while making it able to play fluently everywhere where it matters!

 

[annymmo]

And being able to play video's fluently on computers with weak CPU's.

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]annymmo[/nom]And being able to play video's fluently on computers with weak CPU's.[/citation]

What semi-modern computer has a CPU so weak that it can't play video? Even a single core Atom CPU can play video without trouble. I'd be more worried about old GPUs (such as older Atom netbook GPUs and other weak GPUs) not always being able to play modern video very well, not CPUs. Heck, even my almost ten year old laptop with an old P4 is GPU limited in video, not CPU limited.

 

[-Fran-]

[citation][nom]blazorthon[/nom]What semi-modern computer has a CPU so weak that it can't play video? Even a single core Atom CPU can play video without trouble. I'd be more worried about old GPUs (such as older Atom netbook GPUs and other weak GPUs) not always being able to play modern video very well, not CPUs. Heck, even my almost ten year old laptop with an old P4 is GPU limited in video, not CPU limited.[/citation]

Prior to the HD3k, Intel wasn't able to play videos decently; only blocky and badly rendered pictures of something moving on the screen. Period.

And no, unless the Atoms are on the ION platform, they can't play any video in more than SD format. Let alone apply filters for re-size.

And to directly answer your question. Core2 Duos on laptops were not able to play videos decently and nothing before that was able to, where any iGPU from nVidia or AMD was able to prior to the C2D's in notebooks. I'm pretty sure in desktop was not that much different.

Cheers!

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]Yuka[/nom]Prior to the HD3k, Intel wasn't able to play videos decently; only blocky and badly rendered pictures of something moving on the screen. Period.And no, unless the Atoms are on the ION platform, they can't play any video in more than SD format. Let alone apply filters for re-size.And to directly answer your question. Core2 Duos on laptops were not able to play videos decently and nothing before that was able to, where any iGPU from nVidia or AMD was able to prior to the C2D's in notebooks. I'm pretty sure in desktop was not that much different.Cheers![/citation]

My GMA 950 IGP of my 2GHz Pentium-Dual Core computer (on-board IGP) from 2007 or so would disagree with you. It handles 720p excellently and 1080p well and even my Pentium 4 630 from my 2004 desktop can handle 1080p excellently once I gave it a Radeon 5450. It's CPU is only a 3GHz P4. My old Dell 2.4GHz P4 laptop with an Intel IGP (I'd have to check to make sure which one it is) can't handle 720p very well, but the CPU has not trouble with it, just the GPU. Heck, my Atom netbook (1.6GHz single core from around two years ago, I'd have to check the model to be sure of it's GPU and CPU model number) can play 480p just fine and 720p/1080p also don't tax the CPU much, just the GPU.

My whole point is that weak CPUs have no trouble with video, only weak GPUs have trouble with video. You'd have to find an extremely slow CPU to be unable to watch video on it so long as the rest of the computer, such as the graphics, are good enough. Even low-end GPUs like my GMA 950 can handle video playback decently, so having a GPU should not be much of a problem except with extremely weak systems such as some Intel netbooks or a very old notebook/desktop without a decent video card.

 

[wiyosaya]

[citation][nom]bgaimur[/nom]http://www.streamcomputing.eu/blog [...] nceptions/CUDA is a dying breed.[/citation]
Maybe so, howerver, nVidia is supporting openCL with 301.42 drivers. IMHO, having nVidia cards benchmarked would be of interest to those of us who own nVidia cards.

 

[nebun]

[citation][nom]bgaimur[/nom]http://www.streamcomputing.eu/blog [...] nceptions/CUDA is a dying breed.[/citation]
that's why there are more CUDA apps out there....you are very wrong my friend....CUDA is and will be the better engine

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]nebun[/nom]that's why there are more CUDA apps out there....you are very wrong my friend....CUDA is and will be the better engine[/citation]

That's why CUDA is being replaced with OpenCl and such more and more, isn't it? Whether or not it is better isn't even what bgaimur said, only that OpenCL and such are taking over CUDA's market. The industry can't have only one company's graphics cards compatible with their software, especially with how AMD offers the Radeon 7950 and 7970, consumer cards that rivals and even exceeds most Quadro cards, at much lower prices than Nvidia has been asking for their Quadros. Heck, 7900 can probably beat some even more expensive Tesla cards.

Many of the modern CUDA apps are moving towards OpenCL, even if not restricted to OpenCL, to at least being capable of being completely run on OpenCL. Besides, do you have proof for your claims about CUDA's superiority? CUDA's main advantage, as I recall, was that it was easier to use than largely undocumented or poorly documented OpenCL. That's been improving (among other improvements) and so has the incentive to use a language that is compatible with more than just Nvidia GPUs.

 

[teddymines]

Rather than pack all this power into a single machine, why not upload work units to the cloud, and let several hundred "idle" computers do the work? I'd like to acquire points for sharing my CPU, and then sell those points to others for cash. I'm sure a lot of people in the video and photo business would pay to have access to banks of computers for their rendering.

 

[A Bad Day]

[citation][nom]teddymines[/nom]Rather than pack all this power into a single machine, why not upload work units to the cloud, and let several hundred "idle" computers do the work? I'd like to acquire points for sharing my CPU, and then sell those points to others for cash. I'm sure a lot of people in the video and photo business would pay to have access to banks of computers for their rendering.[/citation]

Easier said than done. It would require extensive campaigning to let the general public know, and they're still going to be very skeptical of participating in the cloud program.

 

[assafbt]

[citation][nom]De5_roy[/nom]can you test like these combos:core i5 + 7970core i5 hd4000trinity + 7970trinity apucore i7 + 7970and core i7 hd 4000, and compare against fx8150 (or piledriver) + 7970.it seemed to me as if the apu bottlenecks the 7970 and the 7970 could work better with an intel i5/i7 cpu on the graphical processing workloads.[/citation]

I second that, especially when the 4000 is OpenCL compliant, and that you did encounter CPU bottlenecks in this reviews' benchmarks.

Thanks