danlasvegasnv:

no Rivatuner-fish-foolem-ersatz-Quadro garbage!

It's not garbage at all.

If you have the right card (equivalent to a Quadro) which can be softmoded every application sees the Geforce as Quadro.

I have the optimization of a 3000 card for only 150 euros.

And I have tested the performance increase which is up to 20% when the card is used like a Qadro softmoded

with what you call carbage and it is riva tuner.

Today I loaded the newest Quadro 64bit driver for my 3.1.3.2 64bit installation and it works like a dream without touching anything else than softmoding the Geforce.

Just a quickie thanks. For saving my ass and my sanity. You ( and the guys who did the work) rock.

Many thanks for the info on Threaded Optimization - worked like a charm for me!

If you have any problems getting the 'OFF' setting to stick or be rembered by the Nvidia control panel on a per program basis, in the Program Settings tab, (it woldn't work at all for me at first) you have to run 'nvcplui.exe' (the Nvidia control panel exe file) as Administrator - right click the file and choose Run as Administrator.

(file is located in C:\Program Files\NVIDIA Corporation\Control Panel client\ )

cheers

neil

I'm glad to see that this thread is still helping people.

Just to update this with my own experience; as reported by others, I did not need the "Threaded Optimization" fix with MC5.0.3 on Win7 64bit and a Geforce GTX 460.  Everything worked fine for me with the default settings on this setup.  At this point, the evidence seems to indicate that the issues with Geforce cards and Avid were related to Win XP, and are fixed with Windows 7 (at least with 64bit.)

Larry

@ lalittle

Thanks very much for starting this thread, invaluable advice.

hate to burst your bubble but my advice above regarding 'threaded optimization' was on a new build machine - Win 7 64 bit and a Nvidia GTS 450???

AMC 3.0 wouldn't run at all, after your advice it fired up no probs.

I suppose your are right though with the newer versions of AMC

Thanks once again -

happy editing ;-)

neileprcy:

@ lalittle

Thanks very much for starting this thread, invaluable advice.

hate to burst your bubble but my advice above regarding 'threaded optimization' was on a new build machine - Win 7 64 bit and a Nvidia GTS 450???

AMC 3.0 wouldn't run at all, after your advice it fired up no probs.

I suppose your are right though with the newer versions of AMC

Thanks once again -

 

happy editing ;-)

 

You're quite welcome.

It's interesting to hear that this was still an issue for you on Win7 64bit.  There apparently are still some combinations of Geforce cards, drivers, and Avid versions that continue to cause this issue even on Win7 64bit, and that the Threaded Optimization fix is still needed in at least some cases.  Are you using the latest Nvidia drivers?  This can sometimes fix issues even if avid hasn't officially certified them.  Was this with the latest version of MC3 (3.1.3.2 I believe)?

I remember reading about some people using MC3 and either Vista or Win7 64bit that did not end up needing the Threaded Op fix for their Geforce cards, so the issue is either a software combination, or a hardware specific issue that only effects certain flavors of Geforce cards.

My best guess at this point is that if you used MC5, the fix would no longer be needed.

Larry

Any real improvement like speed on anything after the 460 installation?

sverkalo:

Any real improvement like speed on anything after the 460 installation?

Since I upgraded everything at the same time (i.e. motherboard/CPU, graphics card, Windows XP to 7, and MC 3 to 5) it's difficult to tell exactly how much difference the graphics card itself made.  Also, even though I can confidently say that the 460 is a substantially faster card then the Geforce 8800 I previously had (there are a LOT of benchmarks and reviews to prove this), I'm honestly not sure how much graphics processing power Avid MC actually utilizes, so it's really hard to say how much difference the graphics card makes vs a faster CPU when it comes to using Avid.

The newer versions of Avid tend to utilize the graphics card more and more these days, so I'm sure that it does make some difference, but I'm not sure if Avid really pushes the graphics card all that hard in most situations, so my gut feeling is that the CPU itself makes a more substantial overall difference in this particular application.  I do notice that with an i7, I can do a LOT more things simultaneously without a noticeable impact on the system, which I assume is due to the quad core vs my previous dual core.

Larry

I do also thing the same about the CPU playing the master role.

But apart the VGA, MC isn't using the CPU in all power for many of the tasks.

For that I am hoping to the 64bit version of MC when it comes.

Even with my old CPU (which is a Quad Core) I can have MC running and After FX

and Photoshop at the same time without slowing down except for the rendering parts.

And the 8G of RAM helps too.

The 460 is a lot faster than 8800 in general but the 460 needs two power pins.

I just picked up a new geforce gtx460/1g (mainly because Sorenson Sq7 does utilitze GPU acceleration w/ "Cuda" cards)...seems to be working fine on XP w/ the latest Nvidia driver from their site. I Havn't gotten the Squeeze update yet...wanted to make sure avid was happy w/ the card, and I figured I'd wait and see if Squeeze 7 would be coming w/ the next Avid MC update.

Which drivers are you guys using w/ the 460?

powerfreak:

Which drivers are you guys using w/ the 460?

I'm currently on the 260.99 drivers, but I plan to update to the 266.58 drivers now that they've been out for over a little while (over a month now.)  This is of course a "use at your own risk" situation, and the official recommendation is to use the certified drivers, but in my personal experience, new Nvidia drivers fix bugs and offer minor performance increases in certain situations without causing any negative impact in Avid.  In fact, not only have i never personally witnessed any issues with using newer Nvidia drivers in Avid, I've actually seen newer, non-certified drivers FIX issues in Avid.

Just to clarify, I'm neither "recommending" nor "not recommending" the latest drivers.  I'm simply stating my own experiences, and saying that I always update to the latest drivers once they've been out for a few weeks.  I can always roll back drivers if I run into problems, but in about 10 years of using Avid with Geforce cards, I've never had to do this.

Note that I ALWAYS use the reference drivers directly from Nvidia (as opposed to getting them from my card manufacturer.)  I currently use an MSI GTX460 1GB Cyclone OC.

Larry

NVIDIA GTS 250, using driver v258.96
Win 7 Professional
MC 5.0.3.8

[1]
After reading this thread, I changed Threaded Optimization from "Off" to "Auto"--just to test the theory.
MC5 "Fatal Error"ed on startup.
Went back and restored Threaded Optimization to "Off", and MC5 started up just fine.

[2]
Established a custom setting for Media Composer on the "Program Settings" tab...set Threaded Optimization to "Off".  Turned Threaded Optimization to "Auto" on the "Global Settings" tab.
MC5 started up just fine.

dfwhokie:

NVIDIA GTS 250, using driver v258.96
Win 7 Professional
MC 5.0.3.8

[1]
After reading this thread, I changed Threaded Optimization from "Off" to "Auto"--just to test the theory.
MC5 "Fatal Error"ed on startup.
Went back and restored Threaded Optimization to "Off", and MC5 started up just fine.

[2]
Established a custom setting for Media Composer on the "Program Settings" tab...set Threaded Optimization to "Off".  Turned Threaded Optimization to "Auto" on the "Global Settings" tab.
MC5 started up just fine.

Interesting.  On my system, I confirmed that Threaded Optimization is still set to "Auto" and Avid MC5 runs fine.  I'm using Win7 Pro 64bit with a Geforce GTX 460 and the 260.99 nvidia reference drivers.  I'm still using MC 5.0.3.7r, so I'll report back when I update to 5.0.3.8, and when I update the nvidia drivers to 266.58.

Perhaps the issue only shows up with earlier Geforce cards (since you're using a GTS 250, while I'm using a GTX 460.)

Larry

lalittle:

Interesting.  On my system, I confirmed that Threaded Optimization is still set to "Auto" and Avid MC5 runs fine.  I'm using Win7 Pro 64bit with a Geforce GTX 460 and the 260.99 nvidia reference drivers.  I'm still using MC 5.0.3.7r, so I'll report back when I update to 5.0.3.8, and when I update the nvidia drivers to 266.58.

Perhaps the issue only shows up with earlier Geforce cards (since you're using a GTS 250, while I'm using a GTX 460.)

Larry

I'm eager to hear the results. 

It could also be that I'm using an older driver (July 2010, I think).  I was having playback problems with HD video files (high bit rate *.mts files and blu-ray discs), and rolling back to that driver was the only thing that would fix them.

I'm always looking for a good excuse to upgrade hardware.

Update:

This thread and some other issues with my system were all pointing to a bad video card.
So, I bought a new one.

GTS 450 with the latest NVIDIA drivers.
Threaded Optimization set to "Auto".

I'm happy to report that MC5 loads just fine.