Can OpenGL And OpenCL Overhaul Your Photo Editing Experience?

[-Fran-]

[citation][nom]blazorthon[/nom]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.[/citation]

While I agree on the bottom line that CPUs aren't needed to play videos nowadays, I really don't trust the GMA thing you say. I tried to play videos, on several notebooks with Intel up-to-date drivers and MPC, VLC and even Youtube with horrible quality. From Celerons from 2002 to Core 2 Duos and even i5's first gen with the video on package, the videos were a lot cause.

I'm sure Intel has advanced somewhat offloading things to the CPU, but "play" a video is not enough. You have to play it smoothly and get decent quality resize (I've only seen blocky from Intel regardless of algorithm). Adding filters is another world, though. And trust me, that 5450 won't be enough for a full Hi8P plus filters in 1080p.

Atom on ION platform: http://www.anandtech.com/show/2688/2
About the 5450: http://www.anandtech.com/show/4263/amds-radeon-hd-6450-uvd3-meets-htpc

Cheers!

 

[dftsa]

Agree Yuka, playing 1080p60 makes my i7 with a 5870 cringe. Interestingly though on my Hackintosh same spec it's smooth until I install CS5, then stutters like a pig.

Remember 1080 is 30 or 60 2MP images / second. With zero frame loss even a NV430 doesn't cut it. The AMD cards do handle video playback much better though.

I ran some 1080p60@25MBs footage on a 3820 at 40% cpu. So a dual core I seriously doubt it.

 

[dftsa]

[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] Have you seen the size of RAW 1080p video footage? It would take longer to upload than to render. Same for RAW files. This would be the new york / sandwich example all over again

 

[wiinippongamer]

"Who gives a rat's ass about OpenCL??!" they said, well look at you now NVidia.

 

[c0d1f1ed]

[citation][nom]A Bad Day[/nom]How many CPUs would it take to match the tested GPUs?[/citation]
Just one Haswell CPU. The AVX2 instruction set brings the same vector instructions you'll find in the GPU, to the CPU. In particular the gather operation, for parallel memory accesses, replaces 18 legacy instructions! Furthermore, AVX2 won't suffer from the heterogeneous computing bottlenecks. It really combines the best of both worlds.

 

[Jennyt]

Accelerated with GPU, that's the reason why Musemage has faster processing speed. I really wanna have a try about Musemage batch.

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]dftsa[/nom]Agree Yuka, playing 1080p60 makes my i7 with a 5870 cringe. Interestingly though on my Hackintosh same spec it's smooth until I install CS5, then stutters like a pig.Remember 1080 is 30 or 60 2MP images / second. With zero frame loss even a NV430 doesn't cut it. The AMD cards do handle video playback much better though.I ran some 1080p60@25MBs footage on a 3820 at 40% cpu. So a dual core I seriously doubt it.[/citation]

... Video playback is FAR less demanding than gaming and video playback is not 60FPS either.

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]Yuka[/nom]While I agree on the bottom line that CPUs aren't needed to play videos nowadays, I really don't trust the GMA thing you say. I tried to play videos, on several notebooks with Intel up-to-date drivers and MPC, VLC and even Youtube with horrible quality. From Celerons from 2002 to Core 2 Duos and even i5's first gen with the video on package, the videos were a lot cause.I'm sure Intel has advanced somewhat offloading things to the CPU, but "play" a video is not enough. You have to play it smoothly and get decent quality resize (I've only seen blocky from Intel regardless of algorithm). Adding filters is another world, though. And trust me, that 5450 won't be enough for a full Hi8P plus filters in 1080p.Atom on ION platform: http://www.anandtech.com/show/2688/2About the 5450: http://www.anandtech.com/show/4263 [...] meets-htpcCheers![/citation]

The GMA 950 is capable of 720p very smooth and it's not blocky at all. It plays 720p video from youtube without problems, but 1080p causes hiccups where the screen freezes and pixelates for a few seconds while the audio goes on like nothing went wrong and the video soon catches up to the audio until another such event. It usually happened with things like explosions and such most often, but I haven't tried it in a while because I fail to see the point of watching it in a way that it struggles with.The 5450 is capable of 1080p video playback without problems.

The 5450 plays 1080p video from youtube and more smoothly and without any quality problems. I have a friend with a 3D display and the 5450 wasn't good enough for 1080p in 3D, but it has no trouble with 1080p 2D video in youtube and a few other sites. Both work in VLC at 720p very well and the 5450 works in VLC at 1080p very well. Heck, even the integrated Radeon 1070M in my Gateway M-1624 laptop can play 1080p, although unlike the 5450, it's not always completely smooth it's better than the GMA 950 at 1080p).

 

[Jennyt]

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.



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

From the Musemage's test data, the APU is quite impressive. I'll have a look of Musemage benchmark.

 

[annymmo]

[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]
Tablets, cheap minicomputers and smartphones.

 

[cp8086]

C6 shouldn't use CUDA, according to Adobe Photoshop CS6 FAQ : What features use the GPU and how do I troubleshoot GPU issues?

 

[cp8086]

Indeed: "The Mercury Graphics Engine (MGE) represents features that use video card, or GPU, acceleration.
MGE is new to Photoshop CS6, and uses both the OpenGL and OpenCL frameworks. It does not use the proprietary CUDA framework from nVidia." (Is it possible to modify/append a review's comment?)

 

[cp8086]

I think that would be interesting to check simultaneous CPU & GPU usage (and instantaneous/average frequencies!) for the examined scenarios, for example with Sysinternals Process Explorer.

Please read my post on false claims about GP-GPU:
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/357179-15-opencl-faster-compression

 

[ashinms]

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2012/02/08/gpgpu-performance-boost/1

Just thought this might be interesting to anyone interested in this article.

 

[ashinms]

[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]

'Autodesk 123D catch' already does something like that. You upload a series of pictures taken from different angles of the same object, builds a 3d model in the cloud, and returns it to your computer. It's basically the same concept of M$'s Photosynth, except the models are much better, and you can store them on your local computer. Problem is, if you think PCI is a bottleneck, you should see what broadband does for your computational times! It would be much faster if I could do the processing on my computer, rather than uploading it to some supercomputer somewhere and letting it do the processing for me... at least until this becomes reality: http://www.maximumpc.com/article/ne...rking_long-distance_quantum_network_prototype

 

[Guest]

You should've tried the 2.9 "Goat Invasion" GIMP. That has much more substantial GEGL integration (nearly complete, as determined by functions).

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]annymmo[/nom]Tablets, cheap minicomputers and smartphones.[/citation]

Those aren't full computers. I was talking about desktops, laptops, and such. I'd say that this is obvious given that I've only been talking about desktop and laptop graphics and CPUs. Also, even in those cases... The CPU is still generally not the limiting factor and that has been my point. Even my old low end Droid (Samsung Transform running Android 2.2.2) with a CPU slower than the Raspberry Pi can do video just fine so long as I don't try to use video with a resolution that its GPU and display can't handle well. It works so well with its Youtube app that I'd call it a far more than powerful enough CPU for video playback. New smartphones with dual and even quad core CPUs with each of their cores being at least two or three times faster than my CPU should have no trouble at all with their CPU performance in video playback.

 

[Guest]

You mention "Russell Williams". You must mean Russell Brown. This mistake detracts from the credibility of your article.

 

[Guest]

Ok Russell Williams is the chief architect at Adobe Photoshop. Russell Brown is the senior Creative Director. Sorry for the confusion over the Russells in my previous post. Please delete the previous post.

 

[benjamin pearcy]

how to Enable GPU Acceleration in Gimp 2.8? what is the command line? how?

 

[annymmo]

[citation][nom]blazorthon[/nom]Those aren't full computers. I was talking about desktops, laptops, and such. I'd say that this is obvious given that I've only been talking about desktop and laptop graphics and CPUs. Also, even in those cases... The CPU is still generally not the limiting factor and that has been my point. Even my old low end Droid (Samsung Transform running Android 2.2.2) with a CPU slower than the Raspberry Pi can do video just fine so long as I don't try to use video with a resolution that its GPU and display can't handle well. It works so well with its Youtube app that I'd call it a far more than powerful enough CPU for video playback. New smartphones with dual and even quad core CPUs with each of their cores being at least two or three times faster than my CPU should have no trouble at all with their CPU performance in video playback.[/citation]

Things you say are not very correct.

With a question such as what CPU is not good enough for video. I'm not going to limit myself to your predefined category. Because in the grand scheme of consumer computers, this does not matter enough.

Smartphones currently have fixed function hardware for a few very much used video formats. These will be phased out and we will have a big problem on our hands. So has the Raspberri phi.

This again takes place on the die and has to be made.
So I rather trade that in for a GPU that can do OpenCL. So I can have all kinds of video formats implemented in software with OpenCL and have it run fluently.

So the raspberri phi needs a special application for youtube? Kind of a fail. And the CPU does not do a big part of the video playback the fixed function hardware does. Smartphones don't have trouble with using the fixed function video decoder hardware for most video playback.

All the non desktop/laptop examples that you mentioned don't have fluent video playback because of the CPU but additional hardware anyway.

 

[Guest]

cuda is sort of dying, its getting an overhaul in the maxwell series thats coming.

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]annymmo[/nom]Things you say are not very correct.With a question such as what CPU is not good enough for video. I'm not going to limit myself to your predefined category. Because in the grand scheme of consumer computers, this does not matter enough.Smartphones currently have fixed function hardware for a few very much used video formats. These will be phased out and we will have a big problem on our hands. So has the Raspberri phi.This again takes place on the die and has to be made.So I rather trade that in for a GPU that can do OpenCL. So I can have all kinds of video formats implemented in software with OpenCL and have it run fluently.So the raspberri phi needs a special application for youtube? Kind of a fail. And the CPU does not do a big part of the video playback the fixed function hardware does. Smartphones don't have trouble with using the fixed function video decoder hardware for most video playback.All the non desktop/laptop examples that you mentioned don't have fluent video playback because of the CPU but additional hardware anyway.[/citation]

The application is needed because Adobe dropped flash support. Before that happened, I used the youtube sit to watch youtube videos, but that is no longer a practical option. You gorget that again, even old and very slow P4s are more than enough for video playback... A CPU does not need to be fast at all to let you watch smooth video playback. My old P4 laptop has hardware to let it play Flash beyond it's CPU and GPU? Really now, what hardware does my Insprion 1100 have that lets it run video playback because its CPU is too slow?

 

[annymmo]

You gorget that again, even old and very slow P4s are more than enough for video playback... A CPU does not need to be fast at all to let you watch smooth video playback. My old P4 laptop has hardware to let it play Flash beyond it's CPU and GPU? Really now, what hardware does my Insprion 1100 have that lets it run video playback because its CPU is too slow?

Interesting. Good example. But on my computer with a core 2 duo a lot of video's don't run smoothly.
By using OpenCL I'm hoping video decoding becomes pretty light for most computers.
What resolutions and properties (format) are the videos that it can play? For making a good judgement I actually need more information details. What video format and compression options are used. What CPU and GPU are in your Insprion 1100? ...

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]annymmo[/nom]Interesting. Good example. But on my computer with a core 2 duo a lot of video's don't run smoothly. By using OpenCL I'm hoping video decoding becomes pretty light for most computers.What resolutions and properties (format) are the videos that it can play? For making a good judgement I actually need more information details. What video format and compression options are used. What CPU and GPU are in your Insprion 1100? ...[/citation]

My desktop with a GMA 950 IGP has a Pentium Dual-core E1280 (2.00GHz dual core CPU) which is a cut-down version of Core 2 Allandale CPU. It has no trouble running video playback smoothly so long as I don't push its GMA 950 too far with the resolution.

I'll look up the exact parts in my Inspiron 1100, but I remember that the CPU is a 2.4GHz P4 and it uses DDR (not DDR2). It has 256MB, the amount that I got it with, spread on two 128MB SODIMMs. It has a 40GB hard drive. It does not have integrated WiFi support, but I put in an adapter. It does okay with Youtube Flash videos, but the resolution needs to be kept pretty low.