Best Nvidia CUDA Card for HQPlayer

Best way to find out is try the free trial if you haven't done so. From what I've read here i7-4770k may not get you up to DSD512, so maybe a GPU would be a good idea. However DSD256 is rated very highly, so you maybe satisfied with that.

 

Maybe someone else has experience of i7-4770k or similar?

I just started the trial. My DAC only does DSD256 so this may not be a problem.

How do I "know" if my CPU can cut it? i guess I just look at the CPU load when it is upsampling?

You'll know right away as you'll hear stuttering instead of a nice music stream. Start with low volume until you're confident of the settings. There's plenty info in the HQPlayer manual and here to get started.

My old i7-3770 can easily do DSD256. Its cpu load reaches about 25-30% with my -2s filter settings.

My old 2nd gen i5 can barely handle DSD256 on the fastest filter. DSD512 is absolutely forget about it. However when it was in my main PC with the 980 doing CUDA it wasn't an issue.

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background re FP64 design/marketing decisions made by Nvidia.

That talks only about Maxwell (900-series), but Pascal was supposed to fix that. However, they did it only for the P100, not for the others. The architecture page in Wikipedia has been updated:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal_(microarchitecture)

It is sort of sad because Pascal has many nice features that older architectures lack...

Quadro K6000 is still quite well available, but even cheapest ones cost around 5800€.

Will a i7 6700k even do 512 on all filters and modulators? I was under the impression that one needed a 6900k or better. I'd love it if I were wrong!

Sorry if it wasn't clear. The Cuda-z score is a way checking if a graphics card has enough oomph for HQPlayer. I was looking for a way around buying a completely new i7-6700K computer so I can upsample PCM to DSD512, or at least DSD256. From the charts you can see the older Titan GPU's are very powerful, but I've since discovered, more expensive than a new i7-6700K system, and not easily found 2nd hand.

Also it looks like we can rule out Dual-GPU cards such as GTX Titan Z, GTX 690, GTX 590 (thanks for the info yamamoto2002), and older GPU's not meeting HQPlayer's Cuda Compute level 3. So this leaves cards like GeForce GTX 780 Ti/GeForce GTX 980 Ti and new cards like GeForce GTX 1060/1070/1080 which are all quite expensive in the UK.So unless something nice shows up in the 2nd hand market it looks like an i7-6700K is the best option for me.

Will a i7 6700k even do 512 on all filters and modulators? I was under the impression that one needed a 6900k or better. I'd love it if I were wrong!

I believe so, several folk have posted success. Only limitation is PCM 48K to DSD512 i.e. PCM to 'wrong' family DSD, which requires an elephant

It is sort of sad because Pascal has many nice features that older architectures lack...

Did you mean that the other way round?

Would it be ideal if we could use some kind of Tesla Compute module which fitted a standard PCIe x16 slot? So a normal spec PC would be enough and just the Compute module may need upgraded over a period of years? And a nice price too - $500/£500 - maybe Chris could do a bulk purchase - dream on

Did you mean that the other way round?

No, I meant Nvidia has been improving many CUDA computing aspects in each generation. It is sad that they've cut the number of double precision units.

Would it be ideal if we could use some kind of Tesla Compute module which fitted a standard PCIe x16 slot? So a normal spec PC would be enough and just the Compute module may need upgraded over a period of years? And a nice price too - $500/£500 - maybe Chris could do a bulk purchase - dream on

Well, you can!

NVIDIA Announces PCI Express Tesla P100: Shipping In Q4’16

Price definitely goes into high-end category...

But depending on HQPlayer configuration you can offload about 50 - 75% of the work. Rest still needs to run on regular CPU.

No, I meant Nvidia has been improving many CUDA computing aspects in each generation. It is sad that they've cut the number of double precision units..

Well, you can!

NVIDIA Announces PCI Express Tesla P100: Shipping In Q4’16

Price definitely goes into high-end category...

But depending on HQPlayer configuration you can offload about 50 - 75% of the work. Rest still needs to run on regular CPU.

£8800 !!! ouch!

Understood. But at least we can use the Wiki DP FP performance table to check if a good 2nd hand GPU comes along, bearing in mind the CUDA Compute level > 3 and no dual cards.

Multi-GPU doesn't harm, but only one will be used. It would need some extra work to split the work further to multiple GPUs. Now CUDA just gives me one and I use it. I'm not sure if the driver is clever enough to split graphics and CUDA to different GPUs. It could, because it already can indicate which processes use compute features and which ones use graphcis, or both.

TY-hmm. Luckily I do not require 48k>22MHz. I am going to have to look further into that then!

I believe so, several folk have posted success. Only limitation is PCM 48K to DSD512 i.e. PCM to 'wrong' family DSD, which requires an elephant

I believe so, several folk have posted success. Only limitation is PCM 48K to DSD512 i.e. PCM to 'wrong' family DSD, which requires an elephant

-2s filters manage that too, without too much strain...

Strangely with my i7-6700K PC and geforce 1060 GPU I have no problem playing 24/96 (48K based) files at 22.5 (DSD512) as my dac does not support full 48K at 512. PC just plays them with out a pause.

@Miska did the log files I sent you yesterday at info@ show anything?

I have one new card that I think is sort of "affordable", but haven't got time yet to install it yet.

 

I'll let you know how it works once I have it in system and running. Hopefully over the weekend.

Hi Miska,

I got a question to ask. Since there has been an argument among some of my friends's discussion regarding HQplayer upsampling performance.

At the moment, I'm using I7 3770, GPU Nidiva 780, upsampled to DSD256 to my exasound dac.

Some of my friends argues that: by using CUDA, I73770 + GPU 780 will sound better. Because GPU is more efficient than CPU.

But audibly, my I7 3770 is powerful enough to upsample to DSD256 with i7 3770 at poly-sinc-2s, DSD7 modulator settings and I cannot tell the difference before and after ticking CUDA offloads option.

My question is: If the CPU is powerful enough to do the DSD512 upsample, i.e. I7 6950X, is it still necessary to use a powerful GPU card to do the CUDA offload? if the GPU takes part in even with the CPU that is powerful enough, will the addition of GPU such as K20X, TITAN improve the sound quality further?

Hope you can help us out.

Regards,

Wei

As I documented on the pc build thread (and huge thx to Jussi, among others) I have zero issues upsampling anything and everything to Dsd512 using any filter and modulator (although primarily asdsm7 dsd512+ and poly sinc mp) in an i7 6700k and gtx960. I give AO's stripped down Win10 a lot of credit too. BTW, when multichannel to my e28 I do DSD256 without issue too

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As I documented on the pc build thread (and huge thx to Jussi, among others) I have zero issues upsampling anything and everything to Dsd512 using any filter and modulator (although primarily asdsm7 dsd512+ and poly sinc mp) in an i7 6700k and gtx960. I give AO's stripped down Win10 a lot of credit too. BTW, when multichannel to my e28 I do DSD256 without issue too

Hi Ted

I thought there was a consensus that i7 6700K alone was enough for DSD512? If you uncheck CUDA offload are you still good to go at DSD512? I've started getting bits together for a system and hoping no GPU was required.

Thanks

Will test when I am back late next week

Will test when I am back late next week

Hey Ted,

Have you treid T+A DAC8 DSD yet? Looking forward to your review.

Nope. I have requests into more than one audio buddy

I am looking into setting up a PC to run HQ Player with upsampling to DSD512. I have read through this thread and have not really been able to conclude which is currently the best processor / NVIDIA card to use for DSD512 upsampling. Is it better to go for a 900 series or a 1000 series?

On another note, does the motherboard itself have to support SLI, or will any motherboard do?

I don't assume anyone has tried an AMD Ryzen. They look like they were made for this kind of thing.

Thanks for your feedback.

Quote

I am looking into setting up a PC to run HQ Player with upsampling to DSD512. I have read through this thread and have not really been able to conclude which is currently the best processor / NVIDIA card to use for DSD512 upsampling. Is it better to go for a 900 series or a 1000 series?

900-series is just one generation older than 1000-series, no benefit buying 900-series now except if you happen to get one at very reasonable price.

14 hours ago, jacobacci said:

On another note, does the motherboard itself have to support SLI, or will any motherboard do?

You need SLI only if you want to have two cards, which is not yet really supported by HQPlayer. Usually the SLI bridges come with the motherboard. But if you go for SLI, I'd recommend picking a CPU that has 32 or more PCIe lanes.

14 hours ago, jacobacci said:

I don't assume anyone has tried an AMD Ryzen. They look like they were made for this kind of thing.

I have one machine with Ryzen 7 1700X and it performs fine for the price. Very good bang for the buck, but nothing really spectacular.

Will a new 1080 card process all reasonable upsampling schemes/filters just fine?

The core system is an i7 with plenty of memory. 

7 minutes ago, Brucemck2 said:

Will a new 1080 card process all reasonable upsampling schemes/filters just fine?

I think I've got everything else except poly-sinc-xtr working with it. poly-sinc-xtr-2s of course works without problems.

12 hours ago, Miska said:

 

I think I've got everything else except poly-sinc-xtr working with it. poly-sinc-xtr-2s of course works without problems.

 

Hey Miska.

Then, what setup will fulfill the mighty poly-sinc-xrt non-2s at 48K*512 in the case of two channel system?

since i7 7700k alone cannot, what about i7 7700K with one GTX 1080 Ti or two GTX 1080TI SLI?