Rendering on GPU - interesting behavior

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PitW.
Posts: 20
Joined: 20 Mar 2019

14 Jan 2022

So my Nvidia GTX 1060 (in a MSI GE63 Notebook) has a monitoring gadget which shows what applications are currently using it.
Guess I wrote about this here before, but I am still not a hundred percent sure if my settings are correct

Behavior here:
- When I open reason, during the splash screen, the Nvidia GPU is used by Reason
- Once the software is open, GPU is not used, even if I move Faders or do other graphical stuff
- But whenever a VST is in open and in front, GPU is used


Is this the supposed, normal behavior?

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chimp_spanner
Posts: 2908
Joined: 06 Mar 2015

14 Jan 2022

PitW. wrote:
14 Jan 2022
So my Nvidia GTX 1060 (in a MSI GE63 Notebook) has a monitoring gadget which shows what applications are currently using it.
Guess I wrote about this here before, but I am still not a hundred percent sure if my settings are correct

Behavior here:
- When I open reason, during the splash screen, the Nvidia GPU is used by Reason
- Once the software is open, GPU is not used, even if I move Faders or do other graphical stuff
- But whenever a VST is in open and in front, GPU is used


Is this the supposed, normal behavior?
What software are you using to monitor? I have an RTX3070 and would be interested to know if the same is true. In any case, whether or not it's using the GPU my actual VST frame-rate is terrible. VCV Rack 2 is like 9fps :(

PitW.
Posts: 20
Joined: 20 Mar 2019

14 Jan 2022

chimp_spanner wrote:
14 Jan 2022
What software are you using to monitor?
In the Nvidia Control panel, in the menu "Desktop" there is an option to show GPU activity in the notification area of the Windows taskbar

see https://www.nvidia.com/content/Control- ... w_menu.htm

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Arrant
Competition Winner
Posts: 521
Joined: 16 Jan 2015

14 Jan 2022

Interesting. I tried the same and on my system R12 shows up in the NVIDIA monitor at launch and stays there no matter what I'm doing.
R11 however does not show up in the monitor, as is to be expected.

VST frame rate is terrible in R12 here as well. Even the built-in UI (like the mixer window) slows down here now sometimes.

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littlejam
Posts: 787
Joined: 15 Jan 2015

14 Jan 2022

hello,

these work on windows (not sure about mac)

here is tech power up gpu z monitoring

https://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/

here is speccy monitoring

https://www.ccleaner.com/speccy

when r12 was released mattias stated that not 'everything' was handled by the gpu
i asked specifically what was handled by the gpu and never got a response by forum members or reason studios

i am still on r10 and windows 7

i have speccy running all the time
just opened up gpuz and the readings of both programs state the same results

they also measure temp of motherboard / cpu / disk drives
if your hardware has sensors

it would be nice to get a real answer from reasontstudios on what the gpu actually does when using reason

cheers and eat well,

j
littlejamaicastudios
i7 2.8ghz / 24GB ddr3 / Quadro 4000 x 2 / ProFire 610
reason 10 / reaper / acidpro /akai mpk mini / korg padkontrol / axiom 25 / radium 49
'i get by with a lot of help from my friends'

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ScuzzyEye
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14 Jan 2022

PitW. wrote:
14 Jan 2022
Behavior here:
- When I open reason, during the splash screen, the Nvidia GPU is used by Reason
- Once the software is open, GPU is not used, even if I move Faders or do other graphical stuff
- But whenever a VST is in open and in front, GPU is used
I'm actually surprised the splash screen uses the GPU. Reason has always used the CPU to do all the compositing of controls over background. It then sends the completed frames over to Windows to send to the GPU for display. Reason reserves a CPU core for the GUI. That's why when you have a big project running, and hyperthreading enabled one core will still have a lot less load on it. That's the GUI core.

VSTs can use what ever hardware is available to them for their compositing/rendering. All of Softube's plug-ins now default to using OpenGL for generating their displays (that can be disabled in the plug-in settings). When a DAW loads a VST, it really is like another program is running along with the DAW. The DAW is just informed on the size of the window, so it can position is somewhere on the screen.

As for viewing what's using the GPU. Windows 10 Task Manager now has a GPU column in the detailed process list. No 3rd party software required.

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