What GPU would be better for CasparCG, for CG only, not video playouts, GTX 660 or Quadro K420? Mostly SD and HD flash templates for sport graphic and lower thirds. I currently have inside GT9500, but used for testing only. Allso using Blackmagic Duo 2
It probably doesn’t matter. Your GT 9500 is 2008, and the GTX 660 is 2012. I doubt you can buy either new these days. Given that you might use the card for more applications than CasparCG, you might think of looking at current model cards.
We are using gtx560 with decklink duo 2 and it works great, but planning to switch soon. What is the ceiling for CasparCG? I presume it doesn’t have to be tesla.
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I recently got a GTX1070ti to go with a BMD Intensity Pro 4K for testing 1080i25 workflows. I don’t know if it was a bad decision, yet - but so far it hasn’t run out of grunt.
GTX 10170 + i7 6800K + HDD RAID 0 + win10 pro - CasparCG Server 2.2
Video 1080p playback (2 outputs key+fill + preview window) with transitions and HTML template on top of it, plus music in a background and some times SocialTVhub - works 100%, no drop frames, very stable
SSD RAID is a strong suggestion for 4K content.
everything above that is a overkill (at least for 2 outputs)
Having tested with various GPUs, there are two things to consider:
- That you GPU supports at least OpenGL 4.5 or above. If you’re going to use the MIXER commands, this is a must.
- If you need to do streaming and/or recording, I urge you to look for cards that support H.264 hardware encoding. This will relieve the CPU of such tasks, and in some cases, will allow you way more performance and flexibility in video rendering. Remember that streaming and recording always imply an encoding process.
That being said, my experience so far is:
- Avoid bottlenecking your GPU by having a competent CPU. Multiple cores help way more than higher clock speed.
- Intel Core i5 or Core i7 after second or third generation will do well, mostly because of Quick Sync Video support.
- AMD Ryzen 5 or Ryzen 7 should do pretty well too, but I don’t know if Video Coding Engine is supported in encoding tasks. At least I know OBS and Handbrake use that technology for encoding.
- If you need a cost effective solution, go for a NVIDIA GTX 1050Ti or above. This will allow you at most 2 hardware encoders simultaneously. This is enough for 1 channel being streamed and recorded at the same time.
- If you want a better solution, go for a NVIDIA Quadro P2000 or above, because it’s pretty much made for this kind of job. According to the NVENC Support Matrix, the Quadro P2000 is the cheapest card that has unrestricted simultaneous encoders that will allow you to have multiple streaming and recording tasks at the same time. I’ve personally run 6 encoding sessions at the same time and performance doesn’t take a hit.
I recently made a switch from an i7-3960X with a GTX 1050Ti to an i7-8700K with a Quadro P2000 and the performance improvement is impressive.
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One important caveat regarding NVIDIA Quadro cards relates to performance issues when running multiple applications that demand use of the graphics card.
Some applications take absolute control of the graphics card, and as such, prevent other applications from using the graphics card, which might present some source of conflict and errors while using some software for encoding or streaming while CasparCG is running.
To prevent that you need to change the usage mode of your GPU from its default value to Use for Graphics and compute needs (Enable CUDA compute). That will allow concurrent usage of the graphics card by whatever application might need it at the same time, and thus allowing to run CasparCG with other software that might use the GPU, such as OBS or ffmpeg.
In my own experience I’m running 3 CasparCG channels with routing and NDI inputs and outputs, as well as 2 OBS streaming instances (one of them is recording too) and an editing session with DaVinci Resolve (or two XMedia Recode sessions), all at the same time on the same machine.
Now, memory usage as well as CPU performance are crucial to achieve this, but I’ve been running this rig for about a year without major hitches.
Sorry if this post should be somewhere else, I’m new here and your post is hardvare related.
I’m getting new hardware so if I buy NVIDIA Quadro P2000 and pair it with 10th gen i5-10500 (6 core, 12 threads), 16 GB RAM, system SSD, and 2 more SSD’s 1 for media files and 1 for recording, can it work if I use decklink duo 2 - 1 BNC for fill, 1 BNC for key into video mixer - for some simple graphics, probably only 1 animated layer, 1 BNC for simple playout and 1 for recording? Is it possible to configure all 3 output channels on 1 casparcg server, except for 1 input for recording with some other sotware? Can this config handle those 3 FULL HD outputs at the same time? Recording is just a big plus if it works but not crucial. Machine would be used every day on live shows, but after shows would be turned off so I guess more RAM or CPU won’t be needed. Also, is it better to use PCI-E m.2 SSD os SATA SSD? I’m warried PCI-E m.2 would mess with PCI lanes needed for quadro p2000 and decklink duo 2, what do you think?
I’m currently using a PC for graphics, playout, streaming and recording with similar specs and performance es acceptable.
It’s a Core i5 (8th gen) with a GTX 1050Ti, 16GB of RAM and a Decklink Quad 2.
It outputs a Key+Fill channel for graphics (plus a low res channel over NDI for preview), two playout channels over SDI and NDI and additionally two HDMI display outputs (for skype calls or presentations) and two SDI inputs, one for recording and one as webcam.
You should be OK with that system. NVME is quicker for the system and graphics but won’t be much faster for media than a good SATA SSD.
Thank you for fast response!
Good info 