So I bought my first Nvidia Quadro graphics card recently.
No a fancy Tesla model or anything like that, a pretty low-key one.
But it’s not really for any of the intended uses that might come to mind when you think
of what Quadros are typically used for.
I’m not doing any sort of complex computing, and I have yet to get into 3D work - though
that’s always been on the list.
I purchased a Quadro to try to solve some of my Nvenc video encoding issues by having
it as a dedicated encoding card.
Did my strange use case work out, or did I waste my money?
Who.. what..
Orisa, where?
HUH?!
I just see a Rein...
Oh.
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It also has a mute switch so I don't have to hear all those conversations with your
grandma.
We gotta get serious to get out of Plat.
Yes, just order one tonight.
Learn more via the link in the video description.
I’m EposVox, here to make tech easier and more fun today talking about my journey setting
up my Nvidia Quadro as a secondary graphics card.
The journey isn’t completely over, but I’ve made most of the progress I can make for some
time.
I had a few problems I wanted to solve: Performance issues using the Nvidia Hardware Encoder,
or “Nvenc”, in OBS Studio with certain games that cause 100% GPU load on my GTX 1080,
issues using OBS to record itself with Nvenc, and OBS Studio not letting me record at all
with Nvenc when Adobe Premiere Pro is open.
While people like to act like expansion or accelerator cards are dead, I frequently imagine
situations in which they would be extremely helpful.
This is one such situation.
I thought about it, and realized that a dedicated Nvidia Graphics card to run the Nvenc encoder
only would probably be the perfect solution for all of my problems!
The cheapest solution would be the GTX 1050 or 1050ti - a lower-end gaming card, but has
the same encoding power of my GTX 1080.
But I only have 1 slot of space free for either x16-sized PCIe slot in my machine, and the
only single-slot 1050 or ti card I found (from Inno 3D) is seemingly only available overseas
and for twice the price I was hoping to pay.
I started looking at Quadro cards, finding lots of used ones for cheap.
But taking a look at Nvidia’s spec page for Nvenc, I’d need a Pascal series Quadro
to do the level of encoding I want.
But that left a very cheap option - the Nvidia Quadro P400.
A $125 graphics card resemblant of budget GPUs of the early 2000s, but with 3 MiniDisplayPort
outputs.
It was single slot, and according to the spec page would support Nvenc encoding at 4K and
up to 8K in HEVC H265 mode.
Perfect!
Ordered from NewEgg and arrived literally the next day.
I installed it in what I thought was the only available slot, booted up my PC and the Nvidia
Control Panel recognized it right away.
Here’s where I made my first potentially fatal mistake - I thought it would be smart
to download the Quadro-specific drivers from Nvidia’s website and install them.
The installer ran like normal, but by time it was done, I was left with black screen
across all monitors and a cursor.
I could move the cursor around, it would change presumably based on what was under it, but
the overall Windows GUI would not render.
I rebooted a few times, tried monitors on both the Quadro and the GTX 1080, logged into
Windows via Windows Hello, even removed the Quadro altogether, nothing would work.
Let’s just say Nvidia Quadro and GeForce drivers do not get along together.
I actually had a friend go through a similar issue when setting up an eGPU on his laptop
recently, but clearly I did not learn from his mistakes.
Thankfully I was able to just power cycle it during boot enough times to trigger Windows
Recovery Mode, then boot into Safe Mode.
From there, I downloaded and ran DDU - Display Driver Uninstaller, I have a tutorial for
it up on the channel - and wiped all graphics drivers and rebooted.
Back into Windows!
This time, I just installed the GeForce drivers for my 1080 and left it as-is.
An hour and a half later, I was back where I started.
But the Nvidia Control Panel did recognize it, so I decided to proceed.
But then there was more panic.
This whole decision was reliant on my memory that OBS Studio would allow me to select which
graphics card it ran on.
The option was there..
I remember it being there…
what happened to it?
Turns out that OBS Studio never implemented that feature to begin with so they eventually
removed the empty menu.
But that’s not even what I needed in the first place!
That selection controls which GPU the monitors and game renders are pulled from and where
the canvas compositing happens, not where Nvenc encoding happens.
After chatting with some on Twitter, I saw my stupidity.
Despite regularly making OBS tutorials and looking at the software on a daily basis,
I had forgotten about the obvious setting sitting right in front of me.
Not hidden in Advanced settings or anything, but right in the encoding settings when Nvenc
is selected, you can input a GPU number.
By default it’s GPU 0, and since I’ve run single cards since I ditched my 660 and
9800GT combo, I’ve always ignored it.
By setting it to GPU 1, it was able to utilize just the Quadro for Nvenc.
All sunshine and rainbows, now?
I hit start recording…
“Encoding overloaded.”
Files were choppy and glitched.
Even at lower recording settings, the card just couldn’t handle 4K at all… or anything,
really.
Well that’s odd, why would Nvidia officially list it as up to spec for even 8K encoding
if I can’t seem to record much at all?
Checking in GPU-Z, the card’s Video Engine was only hitting like 20% at max, but actual
GPU load was pegged at 100% while recording - and I confirmed in the logs that OBS was
still using my 1080 for the main rendering and compositing.
What gives?
This is where actually reading the manual for your computer hardware and developing
an intimate knowledge of the platform you’re on comes in handy.
Something I did with my old FX build, Zarya, but hadn’t taken the time to do with my
new X99 build, Zezima.
My X99-A II motherboard has the x16-sized slots laid out in a specific way, and the
one I was trying to use was limited to PCIe 2.0 and I was getting like x1 speeds, which
was nowhere near enough bandwidth for 4K recording…
at all.
My motherboard had 4 x16 slots, 3 of which ran at Gen 3 speeds.
One was taken up by my GTX 1080, one by my Intel 750-series NVME boot SSD, and the last
one never seemed to work when I plugged capture cards and such into it.
But digging into my BIOS settings and manually setting the speed, I was able to make it work
and move the Quadro P400 over.
I had to limit my GTX 1080 to x8 speed so the Quadro could also run at x8 - but not
something I should notice anytime soon.
Boot back up, let the system catch up on the change, and WHAMMO.
The Quadro was handling lossless 444 4K60 recording with no problem whatsoever.
GPU load was much much lower, and the Video Engine usage still stayed fairly low.
So that knocks out the big hurdle of my problem - my OBS course can proceed with high-quality
recordings.
But what about Premiere?
After the emotional roller-coaster of this experience, all I honestly wanted was to open
up Premiere Pro, open OBS Studio, hit “Start Recording” and things be OK.
But NOOOOPE, still the same “Cannot initiate recording” error I had gotten before.
This was incredibly frustrating, especially considering that I’ve been recording Premiere
with Nvenc in OBS since like 2014 or 2015 without a hitch until earlier this year.
Upon doing a little research related to a Nvenc-based plugin for Premiere, it looks
like one of the earlier CC 2017 updates in March or April to Premiere Pro is what caused
this problem.
Suddenly CUDA and Nvenc can’t work at the same time..
Even though it could before.
The plugin has been broken since, and no word from Adobe on this.
That’s also about when I stopped being able to record it properly.
And X264 just isn’t fast enough, even on my i7-6900k, to really guarantee a smooth
4K 60 recording while doing heavy editing in Premiere.
I even tried going back to 17.0.2 via Creative Cloud, and that didn’t fix the issue, just
cleared out my effect presets.
In theory, if it was a CUDA plus Nvenc issue, setting Premiere to only use my GTX 1080 for
CUDA should fix it, right?
Premiere doesn’t use multiple GPUs for playback, but can utilize them for rendering and still
hooks into them.
Annoyingly, Adobe doesn’t give you any sort of control or options for this kind of setting.
I did go into the Nvidia Control Panel and set both a Global rule and a per-program rule
for all Adobe apps to only run CUDA on the GTX 1080.
Rebooted, re-launched, it didn’t make a lick of a difference.
Whatever happened in the update to break this compatibility really messed it up.
Now roughly 24 hours since I started the project, at the time of scripting this video at least,
I am still happy with my purchase.
It’s my first Quadro and I genuinely wanted to know if it would handle Nvenc as a dedicated
card and solve my problems.
Having the card will help a lot with capturing the footage necessary for my big 2017 OBS
Studio course that I’m shooting this month, and it may make my renders faster.
Or slower, I’m not really sure yet and since Adobe doesn’t let me control which GPUs
it uses, I’d have to manually remove the Quadro each time I tested renders without
it, so I don’t really have time for that right now.
But if you’d like a follow-up video, I can circle back around and provide testing results
later.
It might seem a lot to some, but a mere 125 bucks to be able to do my work more efficiently
and in a higher quality is absolutely worth it.
Quadros are actually pretty neat cards, and I’m glad I got to experience one.
Plus, now I have 3 more video outputs I can use for even more monitors and if I ever do
get into Blender or 3D work, I have more CUDA power to render with.
I hope you enjoyed this different kind of video.
I just kind of wanted to document my progress, without as much rage-filled initial response
clips.
Like the video if you enjoyed and don’t forget to subscribe for more awesome tech
videos.
If you wanna buy a Quadro P400 for yourself, I have an affiliate link for you to do so
down in the video description.
I’m EposVox, and I’ll see you next time.
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