Topic: Dedicated GPU Encoder

Is there a way to force my GPU to handle all the computational load freeing up my CPU to do what it needs to do?

I run a 24/7 twitch stream which requires my CPU to handle the x264 encoding. Whenever I try to play video files on MPCHC using SVP, my system hangs and becomes very laggy. I have a AMD Phenom II X4 CPU w. a Radeon R9 290X GPU. I know my CPU is the bottleneck but it's what I currently have. I'm already in the process of upgrading my hardware but for the time being I would like to know if it's at all possible to force my Radeon to handle the SVP encoding?

2 Reply by Nintendo Maniac 64 (edited by Nintendo Maniac 64 08-12-2015 08:29:46)

Re: Dedicated GPU Encoder

jayeeyee wrote:

Is there a way to force my GPU to handle all the computational load freeing up my CPU to do what it needs to do?

No.

GPUs and CPUs are inherently different (GPU is parallel, CPU is serial); if you made the GPU do all the work it would be very inefficiant and you'd need way more GPU power than any sane person would want to deal with.

Really, the level of multi-tasking that you're doing is one of the few cases where a 4-thread CPU really is not enough.

Re: Dedicated GPU Encoder

Nintendo Maniac 64 wrote:

No.

GPUs and CPUs are inherently different (GPU is parallel, CPU is serial); if you made the GPU do all the work it would be very inefficiant and you'd need way more GPU power than any sane person would want to deal with.

Really, the level of multi-tasking that you're doing is one of the few cases where a 4-thread CPU really is not enough.

Thank you for the prompt response. I had an idea that wasn't going to be the case. I was just wondering if SVP had a feature that would prioritize GPU rendering over CPU therefore freeing up the workload. I had this feature available to me on OBS (a streaming application for Twitch) where I can use CUDA drivers to encode in using the NVENC codec freeing up my CPU for other task. But now that I have a Radeon card, I can no longer monopolize on that feature. Anywho, I'm just ranting on now. I guess I'll just have to make due with what I have for the time being.

Thanks once again Nintendo Maniac 64

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Re: Dedicated GPU Encoder

jayeeyee
You can use VCE 2.0 with your Radeon R9 290X GPU to encode video.
Try to use OBS branch with AMD VCE support