The 16GB of HBM2 on the Radeon VII Is Needed for Real World 4K Video Production

[cageymaru]

Digital Foundry's Richard Leadbetter brought to light an important real-world use case for the 16GB of HBM2 on the AMD Radeon VII. 4K video editing in Adobe Premiere Pro needs lots of GPU memory to export video when mixing several 4K streams and using taxing transitions. He said that Digital Foundry had upgraded all of their 6GB and 8GB GPUs to 12GB cards in the past as video cards like the RTX 2080, RTX 2080 Ti, GTX 1080 Ti, etc, lack the amount of GPU memory necessary to export 4K video in their everyday workflow. He documented an example of this at the 5:00 mark of the video below.

In this real-world use case, the 12GB NVIDIA Titan X Pascal would crash during the export phase of head-to-head 4K video production when mixing six 4K video clips on a timeline and using 3 taxing transitions. This "Accelerated Renderer Error" was 100% due to a lack of GPU memory according to Mr. Leadbetter. But when the exact same task was presented to the AMD Radeon VII; there were no problems. The pro-level, 16GB of HBM2 video memory on the AMD Radeon VII powered through the task without breaking a sweat! These GPU related "out of memory" crashes have dogged his production team in the past and has even made some of their content late. He goes on to explain that producing 1080p video with 4K assets will cause the same crashing issue if the production team tries to use too many fancy transitions. Special thanks to Jason Evangelho of Forbes.

But for those of you producing hi-res video now or entertaining it in the near future, AMD may be onto something here -- like opening more doors for amateur producers on a budget. I also suspect that certain compute workloads may see considerable benefit from the hefty amount of HBM2 and the corresponding 1TB/second of memory bandwidth.

 

[Grimlaking]

See I have been tinkering with the idea of doing video streaming or youtube video. Just trying to work out funding. Would it qualify as a small business? Could I get a grant. But video cards like this do make the bottom line cheaper!

 

[Donald Bell]

Shhhh, don't tell the fanboys that this isn't a pure gaming card. They won't understand because it doesn't have ray trace invaders.

 

[rtangwai]

This kind of reminds me of the first Titan video cards - they had uncrippled FP64 performance that would crush other consumer cards but at a lower price than the high-end Quadro workstation cards.

NVidia realized they were cannibalizing their own workstation GPU sales so successor Titans chopped down the FP64. I am expecting the Radeon VII to be a similar one-off from AMD unless they have something up their sleeve to make a truly monsterous FireGL.

 

[Revdarian]

Well, once this is more widely known semi professional production teams will buy them en mass, so, kudos to AMD? The driver is broken for overclocking but it doesn't matter one iota to video producers I bet.

 

[Krenum]

This kind of reminds me of the first Titan video cards - they had uncrippled FP64 performance that would crush other consumer cards but at a lower price than the high-end Quadro workstation cards.

NVidia realized they were cannibalizing their own workstation GPU sales so successor Titans chopped down the FP64. I am expecting the Radeon VII to be a similar one-off from AMD unless they have something up their sleeve to make a truly monsterous FireGL.

Huh, hadn't thought of that, I think you're right! This is the AMD Titan.

 

[Anarchist4000]

This kind of reminds me of the first Titan video cards - they had uncrippled FP64 performance that would crush other consumer cards but at a lower price than the high-end Quadro workstation cards.

NVidia realized they were cannibalizing their own workstation GPU sales so successor Titans chopped down the FP64. I am expecting the Radeon VII to be a similar one-off from AMD unless they have something up their sleeve to make a truly monsterous FireGL.

It's not as fast as the pro card or comes with the support though. Pro should have PCIe4 which would be significant in those markets. The 1/4 rate FP64 is fast, but not too fast for a large deployment. As a prosumer/gaming product with HBCC they picked a nice spot. Haven't checked lately if AMD has made any improvements to ffmpeg or encoding/filtering hardware acceleration.

 

[Stoly]

And they didn't get quadro cards because...

 

[ChadD]

And they didn't get quadro cards because...

Running out of memory is running out of memory.

A Quadro RTX 5000 with 16gb runs $2300, a p5000 (pascal) with 16gb is still $2000.

Does that make sense to you.... comparing a 700 card to a 2300 card. They have the same size frame buffer and the 2300 card won't perform any better on this one.

So ya they didn't include a comparison to Quadro cards for the same reason they didn't compare it to the firepro 16gb 9100... or the hands down best video editing card on the planet the Radeon SSG, which at 5k a pop get snapped up by movie and ad video production houses, NV has no answer to the SSG cards AMD owns that market. (for those markets 8k isn't just a future thing... movies are being shot at 8k today and they have been for awhile now... currently AMD is the only company selling hardware that can deal with that real time)

I am looking forward to the Vega2 based 9100 and SSG refresh parts though.

The radeon VII honestly hits a real sweat spot for game streamers and game video producers. It can game at very close to 2080 parity in windows... and best 2080 in Linux gaming. While giving people streaming 4k and creating 4k game videos a very nice editing buffer upgrade as a bonus. I do think this may cannibalize some firepro 9100 sales... but I think the game streamer market is growing and this card sounds like a perfect solution for that niche.

 

[Stoly]

Running out of memory is running out of memory.

A Quadro RTX 5000 with 16gb runs $2300, a p5000 (pascal) with 16gb is still $2000.

Does that make sense to you.... comparing a 700 card to a 2300 card. They have the same size frame buffer and the 2300 card won't perform any better on this one.

So ya they didn't include a comparison to Quadro cards for the same reason they didn't compare it to the firepro 16gb 9100... or the hands down best video editing card on the planet the Radeon SSG, which at 5k a pop get snapped up by movie and ad video production houses, NV has no answer to the SSG cards AMD owns that market. (for those markets 8k isn't just a future thing... movies are being shot at 8k today and they have been for awhile now... currently AMD is the only company selling hardware that can deal with that real time)

I am looking forward to the Vega2 based 9100 and SSG refresh parts though.

The radeon VII honestly hits a real sweat spot for game streamers and game video producers. It can game at very close to 2080 parity in windows... and best 2080 in Linux gaming. While giving people streaming 4k and creating 4k game videos a very nice editing buffer upgrade as a bonus. I do think this may cannibalize some firepro 9100 sales... but I think the game streamer market is growing and this card sounds like a perfect solution for that niche.

If you are serious about video production, do yourself a favor and use professional cards. I bet they don't use cheap smartphones to capture 4k video, right?

 

[STEM]

If you are serious about video production, do yourself a favor and use professional cards. I bet they don't use cheap smartphones to capture 4k video, right?

No, they probably use expensive smartphones to capture 4k Video...

 

[Shagittarius]

I can't imagine there are that many people who need this capability.

 

[castlefire]

I wonder how this card handles 4k CinamaDNG workload.

 

[McCartney]

"fancy transitions" sounds like an increased number of outcomes, or states.

if the computations are offloaded to the gpu, in this case to "crunch" the additional possibilities the "fancy transitions" invite, then obviously more memory is needed.

where you at, senator GLOBAL ECKANAMY *cue exasperared gesture*?

 

[SamuelL421]

I can't imagine there are that many people who need this capability.

Could be a deciding factor for someone on the fence between this and RTX who also does amateur video - but, in general, I have to agree with you.

I think this thing will be more interesting for someone who needs fp64 for some sort of scientific workflow. Not positive but I think the 1/4 fp32 setup makes it a better value at $700 vs the pro cards from either AMD or Nvidia. That said - the pool of people actually using fp64 on a workstation is probably small...

 

[ChadD]

If you are serious about video production, do yourself a favor and use professional cards. I bet they don't use cheap smartphones to capture 4k video, right?

I have dealt with companies with many thousands sunk into workstation cards. Video cards with ECC memory.... and bullet proof drivers have their place in professional video production. For semi pro game streaming... and youtube type game/hardware review/play videos. Ya neither of those are needed.... one they won't want to run the workstation drivers to seriously game with they will run the consumer grade gaming drivers anyway... and ECC ram is really not that important unless your rendering final frames for a commercial you just sold coke for a few million or something, and have to ensure every red pixel is the exact coke red they paid for. lol

 

[Grimlaking]

Running out of memory is running out of memory.

A Quadro RTX 5000 with 16gb runs $2300, a p5000 (pascal) with 16gb is still $2000.

Does that make sense to you.... comparing a 700 card to a 2300 card. They have the same size frame buffer and the 2300 card won't perform any better on this one.

So ya they didn't include a comparison to Quadro cards for the same reason they didn't compare it to the firepro 16gb 9100... or the hands down best video editing card on the planet the Radeon SSG, which at 5k a pop get snapped up by movie and ad video production houses, NV has no answer to the SSG cards AMD owns that market. (for those markets 8k isn't just a future thing... movies are being shot at 8k today and they have been for awhile now... currently AMD is the only company selling hardware that can deal with that real time)

I am looking forward to the Vega2 based 9100 and SSG refresh parts though.

The radeon VII honestly hits a real sweat spot for game streamers and game video producers. It can game at very close to 2080 parity in windows... and best 2080 in Linux gaming. While giving people streaming 4k and creating 4k game videos a very nice editing buffer upgrade as a bonus. I do think this may cannibalize some firepro 9100 sales... but I think the game streamer market is growing and this card sounds like a perfect solution for that niche.

Especially when you couple that with a new threadripper 16 core 32 thread CPU you're talking a GREAT prosumer combination that will get you close to the 15k pro grade workstations without spending more than say 4500 dollars. That is HUGE.

 

[Grimlaking]

For my boss that JUST built a system with a 2080... hummm... I might tell him about the Vega 7.

 

[babochee]

Awesome seeing Radeon step it up! Now to compete with the 2080ti (in gaming ^_^)!

 

[focbde]

This kind of reminds me of the first Titan video cards - they had uncrippled FP64 performance that would crush other consumer cards but at a lower price than the high-end Quadro workstation cards.

NVidia realized they were cannibalizing their own workstation GPU sales so successor Titans chopped down the FP64. I am expecting the Radeon VII to be a similar one-off from AMD unless they have something up their sleeve to make a truly monsterous FireGL.

The Radeon VII doesn't support uncapped FP64 either though... that would cannibalise Radeon Instinct sales.

Radeon Instinct MI50 - SPs - 3840 - HBM2 RAM - 16GB - Double Precision - 6.7 TFLOPS (1/2 rate)
Radeon VII - SPs - 3840 - HBM2 RAM - 16GB - Double Precision - 3.5 TFLOPS (1/4 rate)

Now, granted, the MI50 is massively expensive in comparison, but it should still be stated that unlike with the Titan and Nvidia situation, we're not dealing here with a rebranded Instinct card - it has indeed been hobbled.

 

[M76]

If you are serious about video production, do yourself a favor and use professional cards. I bet they don't use cheap smartphones to capture 4k video, right?

In other words be a good little idiot and buy a more expensive product even if it has no benefit in the workflow whatsoever? Quadro is not even higher quality, we used to buy quadro cards, almost all died within a few years of load, and underperformed compared to much cheaper GTX cards.

 

[focbde]

In other words be a good little idiot and buy a more expensive product even if it has no benefit in the workflow whatsoever? Quadro is not even higher quality, we used to buy quadro cards, almost all died within a few years of load, and underperformed compared to much cheaper GTX cards.

Not as simple as that. For your workflow perhaps you could get away with GTX cards, but for full FP64 compute rate you can't go GTX.

 

[M76]

Not as simple as that. For your workflow perhaps you could get away with GTX cards, but for full FP64 compute rate you can't go GTX.

If you need it, but if you don't there is no reason to buy quadro period.

 

[gamerk2]

Translation: Adobe Premiere's memory allocation on the GPU is so poor that it can lead to crashes if not enough VRAM is available, and AMD added just enough VRAM on their cards to avoid this one software bug. The real fix isn't adding more VRAM, it's fixing the software so it can manage the VRAM properly.

 

[IdiotInCharge]

Translation: Adobe Premiere's memory allocation on the GPU is so poor that it can lead to crashes if not enough VRAM is available, and AMD added just enough VRAM on their cards to avoid this one software bug. The real fix isn't adding more VRAM, it's fixing the software so it can manage the VRAM properly.

You'd like to think that Adobe would be on top of hardware acceleration for their products- but they're usually dead last.

Source: I occasionally use Adobe products.

 

[focbde]

If you need it, but if you don't there is no reason to buy quadro period.

Yes, but a lot of people who are in the market for Quadro/Instinct cards DO need it - that's the point. If you're just doing video editing, sure, not necessary, but for many others it's an absolute must.

 

[reaper12]

No, they probably use expensive smartphones to capture 4k Video...

LOL Brilliant

 

[bigddybn]

Translation: Adobe Premiere's memory allocation on the GPU is so poor that it can lead to crashes if not enough VRAM is available, and AMD added just enough VRAM on their cards to avoid this one software bug. The real fix isn't adding more VRAM, it's fixing the software so it can manage the VRAM properly.

That was the very first thing I thought of too. No matter how much memory you throw at it someone is still going to find a way to use all of it. The software needs to account for that.

 

[stashix]

Shhhh, don't tell the fanboys that this isn't a pure gaming card. They won't understand because it doesn't have ray trace invaders.

Says in the most fanboyish sentence produced all week. The irony is overpowering.

 

[M76]

Translation: Adobe Premiere's memory allocation on the GPU is so poor that it can lead to crashes if not enough VRAM is available, and AMD added just enough VRAM on their cards to avoid this one software bug. The real fix isn't adding more VRAM, it's fixing the software so it can manage the VRAM properly.

Almost every VRAM dependent app I use will simply hang or freeze when running out of VRAM, this is not unique to adobe.

 

[spine]

Adobe software is routinely the most harrowingly bloated load of crap you can possibly use to fuck a PC up with.

Worse than most malware as a matter of actual fact.

 

[R_Type]

See I have been tinkering with the idea of doing video streaming or youtube video. Just trying to work out funding. Would it qualify as a small business? Could I get a grant. But video cards like this do make the bottom line cheaper!

No idea what the rules are in America but in the UK I'm sure you could put a new gpu down as a business expense and fully claim it back. You may be in with a shot!

 

[Slade]

Not sure if applicable, but on the ml side of compute, I am able to divy up the mem load of my projects across GPUs. In one of my recent projects, I have it spread across 3 x 1080ti much in the same way I can spread the worldload across 8x Volta (nvilink on the DGX really works well to show performance improvements in my training times) Tri-SLI shows improvements but is limited by PCI-e speeds.

 

[Bawjaws]

Well, once this is more widely known semi professional production teams will buy them en mass, so, kudos to AMD?

No, they won't, because these VII cards are available in extremely limited quantities.

 

[lostin3d]

Pretty sure this won't be the last example of this series professional strengths.

 

[jardows]

Translation: Adobe Premiere's memory allocation on the GPU is so poor that it can lead to crashes if not enough VRAM is available, and AMD added just enough VRAM on their cards to avoid this one software bug. The real fix isn't adding more VRAM, it's fixing the software so it can manage the VRAM properly.

Well, it does appear easier for AMD or Nvidia to change their hardware to work with Adobe products than it is for Adobe to change their software to work with current hardware, so....

No, they won't, because these VII cards are available in extremely limited quantities.

Source? And don't give me the "It's out of stock everywhere on launch day" excuse, which is what has happened with pretty much every new video card launch from both AMD and Nvidia the last several years.

 

[lostin3d]

Source? And don't give me the "It's out of stock everywhere on launch day" excuse, which is what has happened with pretty much every new video card launch from both AMD and Nvidia the last several years.

I'm not even going to lend credibility to it by posting a link but there was some idiotic thing on the internet this week about only '5000' being made. Maybe it was out of context and they were referring to the reviewer kits. I feel sorry for anyone believing it true of the actual production numbers.

 

[lostinseganet]

Awesome seeing Radeon step it up! Now to compete with the 2080ti (in gaming ^_^)!

Maybe its next gen crossfire hardware maybe the key? Or maybe 2 or 4 gpu's on one board? They have been talking about stacking GPU's. Maybe 2 stacks of 2 on one board?

 

[STEM]

Maybe its next gen crossfire hardware maybe the key? Or maybe 2 or 4 gpu's on one board? They have been talking about stacking GPU's. Maybe 2 stacks of 2 on one board?

If AMD had the budget to hire the manpower to tweak this architecture one more time, they could pull a Maxwell on NVIDIA. TLSR;... The short version is that NVIDIA was stuck at 28nm so they removed FP64 capabilities and tweaked Maxwell so they could get a decently performing GPU. Maybe AMD needs to do the same, and then double everything. That would be one monster GPU. Too bad the market is so small for such a large monolithic piece of silicon, and AMD is trying to go in the other direction with manufacturing.

 

[ChadD]

Translation: Adobe Premiere's memory allocation on the GPU is so poor that it can lead to crashes if not enough VRAM is available, and AMD added just enough VRAM on their cards to avoid this one software bug. The real fix isn't adding more VRAM, it's fixing the software so it can manage the VRAM properly.

Your not wrong.

The video shouldn't be showing a crash on the NV side ... it should instead be showing a 40-100% increase in completion time as Adobe tried to cache the video file. There may be a few methods to speed that up..... but the thing with video is its really hard to guess before the render starts exactly how large the file will be. Big solid colour animation is going to compress a lot better then HD video of say a rain forest. So a solution would need to start unloading video out of or at least marking from the much faster gram early. I am guessing somewhat but I believe most methods to allow that rendered to be moved to system ram would greatly slow the process.

So my thinking is this is no Adobe big. They have simply chosen to use the fastest method instead of greatly reducing their softwares speed all the time to fix the out of ram case. (although I imagine a user option tick box of "allow render to use system ram" would be a good alternative to crashing. Having said that perhaps someone that uses Adobe more then me can answer this one.... doesn't adobe have that option, to render to system ram ? I imagine it would be much slower but it has the option doesn't it ?