[Equipment Configurations] AMD Ryzen and Radeon 480/580
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It's not all that strict on the processor, but the video card could be problematic, as we don't normally test on AMD cards. NVIDIA and AMD do, do things differently when it comes to handling directX rendering. We've had problems with AMD in the past processing code slower because they do things differently.
We haven't tested the Ryzen or the newer AMD cards, so we cannot provide any guidance on whether they will work ok or not.
We haven't tested the Ryzen or the newer AMD cards, so we cannot provide any guidance on whether they will work ok or not.
It's been a year now so has EW tested any of the Ryzen or Vega cpu/gpus yet? Especially the RavenRidge Mobile platforms with integrated Vega gpus in laptops? I understand you guys prefer Nvidia, but price to performance these AMD systems are quite compelling to churches on a budget.
Any Update if anyone has used Ryzen CPU with an EW setup?
Surprised I don't get anything really in a google result, would have thought people tried this setup before? Any testings lately?
Particular interesting to compare[b] i7-8700k[/b] (6-core) vs [b]Rayzen 2700X[/b] (8-core)
[b]Would the 2 extra cores of the Rayzen benefit EW more[/b] in performance with Direct X rendering etc. especially on multimonitor/triple setups (Main + Projector + Stage) and possibly alpha channel video/feed?
Or is the slight edge in higher clock/turbo of greater advantage to EW?
I know for video editing the Rayzen blows Intel away on the same level :P
Surprised I don't get anything really in a google result, would have thought people tried this setup before? Any testings lately?
Particular interesting to compare[b] i7-8700k[/b] (6-core) vs [b]Rayzen 2700X[/b] (8-core)
[b]Would the 2 extra cores of the Rayzen benefit EW more[/b] in performance with Direct X rendering etc. especially on multimonitor/triple setups (Main + Projector + Stage) and possibly alpha channel video/feed?
Or is the slight edge in higher clock/turbo of greater advantage to EW?
I know for video editing the Rayzen blows Intel away on the same level :P
A Ryzen cpu will function just as well as an Intel processor. But no, the extra cores will not be more beneficial than DirectX rendering support which would come from the graphics card, not the cpu.
I have been in contact with a person who regularly installs setups in churches using AMD Graphics Cards. He claims that neither he or his clients have noticed any issues with them using all of the functionality of EW or any other presentation software. This person is extremely knowledgeable about graphics cards and their use in situations like this. He is well respected as well as reliable. He does admit that the initial releases of EW6 were problematic due to SoftTouch using proprietary nVidia coding as shortcuts. He hasn't seen as much of a problem with later versions which were released about a year after the initial release. That coincides with my findings of running EW6 on AMD graphics cards. EW7 doesn't seem to have any of the issues that the early EW6 releases suffered from.
Unfortunately that doesn't cover the newer RavenRidge Rysen Apus with integrated Vega Graphics. It's a shame that the nVidia Fanboys at SoftTouch don't code their DirectX in a more neutral fashion and actually test on AMD graphics as well as NVidia. It wouldn't cost that much to have one AMD graphics card and one Ravien Ridge APU system to test with. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if AMD would make a system like that available to them at a highly reduced price as they are trying to regain market share.
I have been in contact with a person who regularly installs setups in churches using AMD Graphics Cards. He claims that neither he or his clients have noticed any issues with them using all of the functionality of EW or any other presentation software. This person is extremely knowledgeable about graphics cards and their use in situations like this. He is well respected as well as reliable. He does admit that the initial releases of EW6 were problematic due to SoftTouch using proprietary nVidia coding as shortcuts. He hasn't seen as much of a problem with later versions which were released about a year after the initial release. That coincides with my findings of running EW6 on AMD graphics cards. EW7 doesn't seem to have any of the issues that the early EW6 releases suffered from.
Unfortunately that doesn't cover the newer RavenRidge Rysen Apus with integrated Vega Graphics. It's a shame that the nVidia Fanboys at SoftTouch don't code their DirectX in a more neutral fashion and actually test on AMD graphics as well as NVidia. It wouldn't cost that much to have one AMD graphics card and one Ravien Ridge APU system to test with. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if AMD would make a system like that available to them at a highly reduced price as they are trying to regain market share.
Unfortunately that doesn't cover the newer RavenRidge Rysen Apus with integrated Vega Graphics. It's a shame that the nVidia Fanboys at SoftTouch don't code their DirectX in a more neutral fashion and actually test on AMD graphics as well as NVidia. It wouldn't cost that much to have one AMD graphics card and one Ravien Ridge APU system to test with. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if AMD would make a system like that available to them at a highly reduced price as they are trying to regain market share.
It really has nothing to do with being an fanboy, but which product has proven to write better drivers and produce better hardware over the long haul. We've had numerous issues with AMD drivers over the years, one in which installed a software that injected into EasyWorship and caused it to crash. We only recommend hardware that we know will provide the best results and least amount of headache for us and the customer. So far Intel processors and Nvidia video cards have proven themselves over and over to be reliable and stable platforms that we can count on. We do our best to make sure other equipment works, but if you want us to give you system requirements that we can both count on, what we have provided is it.
It really has nothing to do with being an fanboy, but which product has proven to write better drivers and produce better hardware over the long haul. We've had numerous issues with AMD drivers over the years, one in which installed a software that injected into EasyWorship and caused it to crash. We only recommend hardware that we know will provide the best results and least amount of headache for us and the customer. So far Intel processors and Nvidia video cards have proven themselves over and over to be reliable and stable platforms that we can count on. We do our best to make sure other equipment works, but if you want us to give you system requirements that we can both count on, what we have provided is it.
What software did the AMD driver install that caused problems? We've been running EW since 2009 up thru EW7 exclusively on AMD/ATI graphics and never had any problems exept the first year of EW6, which had more to do with the sorry state of EW6 at that time as it ran about as bad on NVidia cards back them (IE: a GTX970).
As for NVidia being a platform that is reliable and stable that one can count on, I've had the exact opposite experience. I've never started up a computer with an AMD/ATI graphics card and had it decide to reorganize (renumber) the displays forcing the user to reconfigure EW to display to the proper screens. Nvidia is notorious for doing just that.
And maybe if you stopped using Nvidia specific DX hooks and shortcuts you wouldn't have so many problems with AMD graphics cards and display drivers.
And maybe if you stopped using Nvidia specific DX hooks and shortcuts you wouldn't have so many problems with AMD graphics cards and display drivers.
I personally don't write the code, so I cannot speak to what hooks and shortcuts were made. I can say that our developers have been working with DX since the 90s, so they are fairly competent with coding for it.
As I said before, we do our best to make it work on all equipment as best as possible, but our developers prefer NVIDIA over AMD. There is a small chance we could miss something every once in a while, although it's been a long time since we have. We did have to change something in 6 (not a developer so I don't know what) to accommodate AMDs way of doing things. There are several issues we've also fixed for Intel graphics cards, however we do not recommend using those either.
I'm glad the AMD / ATI solution has worked for you. I've had good results also in personal use. My previous worship computer at our church had an AMD card in it due to its ability to handle three outputs so I could use foldback without a dualhead2go, however I was available to fix any issues that might arise. I don't remember any. It's different when making hardware recommendations for a large customer base. So you can see the dilemma here. While it may work for some or even many, we don't have the confidence needed to recommend it to the masses. I hope you can see our point of view on this.
PlaysTV was the software that AMD was distributing that injected into EasyWorship.
We've also had trouble with their drivers leaving behind services that cause excessive cpu usage even after the drivers were uninstalled.
Other older cards had issues we had to work around as well.
As you pointed out, NVIDIA isn't perfect, but we've just seen less trouble in our support office from them over the last 13 years I've been at EW.
Thanks rvadon & rodger for sharing.
I must say I'm also quite surprised that SoftTouch doesn't seem to have an AMD setup over the years for testing when it's not like there are plenty of different CPU and GPU manufacturers to choose from, EW customers will use either Intel or AMD for the CPU and Nvidia or AMD for GPU.
Sure there are plenty of combination of different brands for the graphic cards but I would have thought for such large international customer base, given that EW is the main alternative to ProPresenter as the mainstream presentation software for churches (among a few much less popular alternatives) that it would be worthwhile at least having ONE AMD setup to do basic test on how EW works - just use the sale of 1-2 licenses :) but it gives the impression that SoftTouch might be too tight with financial resources to do so or don't bother/only stick to other priorities.
I don't think SoftTouch would have to spend a lot of time and effort into optimizing it but at least you know what customers might go through and could fix some major issues if there were any. I'm sure the community can understand also not to have expectations for the same level of support for this platform.
I also understand that changing cards, drivers and OS / software settings can mess things up. But normally the focus should be how it operates on a clean setup, after all it's one can always revert back to after having too many changes or issues on a PC install (than trying to test and fix everything).
I think that currently the best combination is AMD CPU being cheaper while providing extra cores for other background applications with less impacting resources for EW like sound recording (Audacity), streaming (OBS), browsing website etc. and NVIDIA GTX graphic cards to benefit of the EW software optimizations (instead of just focusing on saving money with an AMD GPU).
I must say I'm also quite surprised that SoftTouch doesn't seem to have an AMD setup over the years for testing when it's not like there are plenty of different CPU and GPU manufacturers to choose from, EW customers will use either Intel or AMD for the CPU and Nvidia or AMD for GPU.
Sure there are plenty of combination of different brands for the graphic cards but I would have thought for such large international customer base, given that EW is the main alternative to ProPresenter as the mainstream presentation software for churches (among a few much less popular alternatives) that it would be worthwhile at least having ONE AMD setup to do basic test on how EW works - just use the sale of 1-2 licenses :) but it gives the impression that SoftTouch might be too tight with financial resources to do so or don't bother/only stick to other priorities.
I don't think SoftTouch would have to spend a lot of time and effort into optimizing it but at least you know what customers might go through and could fix some major issues if there were any. I'm sure the community can understand also not to have expectations for the same level of support for this platform.
I also understand that changing cards, drivers and OS / software settings can mess things up. But normally the focus should be how it operates on a clean setup, after all it's one can always revert back to after having too many changes or issues on a PC install (than trying to test and fix everything).
I think that currently the best combination is AMD CPU being cheaper while providing extra cores for other background applications with less impacting resources for EW like sound recording (Audacity), streaming (OBS), browsing website etc. and NVIDIA GTX graphic cards to benefit of the EW software optimizations (instead of just focusing on saving money with an AMD GPU).
I agree that PlayLive was a headache and fortunately AMD stopped including it by default with driver updates.
But it's depressing that SoftTouch recommended AMD/ATI cards over nVidia for EW2007/2009. Then when developing EW6 they made a point of stating that EW6 would work on the same hardware. When asked point blank in the forums if EW6 (I think they refering to it as EW2013 at the time) would run with AMD/ATI cards on the recommended list for 2009 so people building or upgrading their systems would know what to buy we were told YES. Unfortunately those posts were removed, possibly to hide that info? Then after making our purchases we end up finding out that was no longer the case. Sorry, but we are trying to be good stewards with our funds and being asked to replace perfectly good hardware that was recommended to us with something different a year or two later is just unconscionable. ProPresenter doesn't have any problems with AMD graphics cards or processors that SoftTouch clain to have with EW which lends even more credence to the claim of EW6 and 7 being so poorly optimized.
As for how long the developers have been working with DX coding I can assure you that they are not writing efficient code. While I understand that EW6 and 7 have added some additional capabilities not found in 2009, why does it require that much of a graphics processor upgrade to do simple things like show a video? EW2009 can display a 1080p video on an 8 year old Core 2 Duo laptop with integrated Intel graphics no problem. EW7 can barely play a 360p video on that same computer. That tells us that the code base is terribly optimized. While I accept (and even expect) that EW7 would require a more powerful system to take advantage of all of it's feature set, there is no reasonable excuse for it to require that much of a hardware upgrade to do simple things like play a video.
Sorry, but this has been ticking me off for a long while.
But it's depressing that SoftTouch recommended AMD/ATI cards over nVidia for EW2007/2009. Then when developing EW6 they made a point of stating that EW6 would work on the same hardware. When asked point blank in the forums if EW6 (I think they refering to it as EW2013 at the time) would run with AMD/ATI cards on the recommended list for 2009 so people building or upgrading their systems would know what to buy we were told YES. Unfortunately those posts were removed, possibly to hide that info? Then after making our purchases we end up finding out that was no longer the case. Sorry, but we are trying to be good stewards with our funds and being asked to replace perfectly good hardware that was recommended to us with something different a year or two later is just unconscionable. ProPresenter doesn't have any problems with AMD graphics cards or processors that SoftTouch clain to have with EW which lends even more credence to the claim of EW6 and 7 being so poorly optimized.
As for how long the developers have been working with DX coding I can assure you that they are not writing efficient code. While I understand that EW6 and 7 have added some additional capabilities not found in 2009, why does it require that much of a graphics processor upgrade to do simple things like show a video? EW2009 can display a 1080p video on an 8 year old Core 2 Duo laptop with integrated Intel graphics no problem. EW7 can barely play a 360p video on that same computer. That tells us that the code base is terribly optimized. While I accept (and even expect) that EW7 would require a more powerful system to take advantage of all of it's feature set, there is no reasonable excuse for it to require that much of a hardware upgrade to do simple things like play a video.
Sorry, but this has been ticking me off for a long while.
It's one thing to have a preference and recommendation but not testing AMD as being one of the two main choices customers are forced to decide on in my opinion is not only ignorance but somewhat not acceptable for a software that is used in such large scale in a productive environment.
I understand that more time and more money is involved the more testing and fixing is done for AMD and that we can't and don't expect that same level as with Nvidia, it makes sense to keep with that development but do something in this regard and communicate this to customers your experience (not past issues with some old cpu or mainly gpus that are issues of the past).
I also discovered SoftTouch so far seem to have done the same with video capturing card.
Because of the many negative comments i read about the Blackmagic intensity pro 4k card, I found out that the other more recommended mainstream cards are either a Elgato Game Capture HD60 S / PRO since it's out for longer and has onboard H.264 encoding that takes the load off the CPU vs AVerMedia Live Gamer HD 2 that has no H.264 encoding onboard but slightly cheaper.
It's time to improve in those areas, even if slowly but better later then never 8)
I understand that more time and more money is involved the more testing and fixing is done for AMD and that we can't and don't expect that same level as with Nvidia, it makes sense to keep with that development but do something in this regard and communicate this to customers your experience (not past issues with some old cpu or mainly gpus that are issues of the past).
I also discovered SoftTouch so far seem to have done the same with video capturing card.
Because of the many negative comments i read about the Blackmagic intensity pro 4k card, I found out that the other more recommended mainstream cards are either a Elgato Game Capture HD60 S / PRO since it's out for longer and has onboard H.264 encoding that takes the load off the CPU vs AVerMedia Live Gamer HD 2 that has no H.264 encoding onboard but slightly cheaper.
It's time to improve in those areas, even if slowly but better later then never 8)
Hi I just wanted to share the following.
Our developers are not coding for a specific card. There is no specific NVIDIA code that they are using. They are doing coding, testing and tweaking on computers that have NVIDIA cards. AMD and Intel cards should work, but if an issue arises that is AMD or Intel specific, there's a possibility that we might not know about it until after release. So you may have to roll back until we get it fixed.
We did keep a list of AMD / NVIDIA cards back in the day. We had an article specifically for how to read the model numbers for AMD and NVIDIA cards. AMD was the first to the market with a triple head video card so we did recommend their eyefinity cards over the dualhead2go for foldback, because the dualhead2go was such a pain to configure. After the R series of AMD cards came out I just stopped trying to keep up with their models. It's much easier to tell a computer novice to buy the NVIDIA GTX card, instead of trying to figure out and explain what R5, R7, R9 plus a three digit number means.
Then on top of that is the issues introduced with the drivers AMD is distributing. Our support team has dealt with many more problems over the years with AMD drivers causing trouble with EasyWorship.
Any card you purchase should match or exceed the performance of our recommended system requirements, so it might be helpful to do a google search on your AMD card vs the recommended NVIDIA card on our tech specs page to make sure you are going to get the performance you are hoping for.
In regards to the capture cards, we do our best to keep up with them, but we don't have a testing department. One of our support reps has to get to it when they have time. We have recently tested elgato cards and have updated our system requirements to reflect that. We've also pulled some of the other cards due to unavailable or poor track record for reliability.
Our developers are not coding for a specific card. There is no specific NVIDIA code that they are using. They are doing coding, testing and tweaking on computers that have NVIDIA cards. AMD and Intel cards should work, but if an issue arises that is AMD or Intel specific, there's a possibility that we might not know about it until after release. So you may have to roll back until we get it fixed.
We did keep a list of AMD / NVIDIA cards back in the day. We had an article specifically for how to read the model numbers for AMD and NVIDIA cards. AMD was the first to the market with a triple head video card so we did recommend their eyefinity cards over the dualhead2go for foldback, because the dualhead2go was such a pain to configure. After the R series of AMD cards came out I just stopped trying to keep up with their models. It's much easier to tell a computer novice to buy the NVIDIA GTX card, instead of trying to figure out and explain what R5, R7, R9 plus a three digit number means.
Then on top of that is the issues introduced with the drivers AMD is distributing. Our support team has dealt with many more problems over the years with AMD drivers causing trouble with EasyWorship.
Any card you purchase should match or exceed the performance of our recommended system requirements, so it might be helpful to do a google search on your AMD card vs the recommended NVIDIA card on our tech specs page to make sure you are going to get the performance you are hoping for.
In regards to the capture cards, we do our best to keep up with them, but we don't have a testing department. One of our support reps has to get to it when they have time. We have recently tested elgato cards and have updated our system requirements to reflect that. We've also pulled some of the other cards due to unavailable or poor track record for reliability.
The fact that Nvidia has at least 3 different 1060 cards with no easily distinguishable naming difference, but vastly difference performance isn't confusing? And the fact that you merely use the Nvidia GTX or GT x30 as the basis of as the recommendation tells someone anything really useful considering the vast difference in performance of the many generations of those cards using those designations. I have a 7900 GTX from 2005/6 that wouldn't be capable of running EW properly, if at all but it is a GTX. It has Passmark score of 306 while the GTX 1060 6 gig has a score of 9000. Why not do potential users a favor and provide the actual Passmark score that they need to meet or exceed. That way they can tell how powerful of a graphics card they need and/or if the card they have or are planning to get would be acceptable. It's easy to look up the Passmark score even for someone who isn't that computer or internet savvy.
As far as AMD drivers, that may have been an issue 3 or 4 years ago, but not now. They stopped including PlaysTV (the optional portion of the driver that caused problems with EW) a long time ago. They stopped auto installing any addons like that at least 2 years ago. They now ask if you want to install ReLive during the install process. If you do not actively click on it, it never installs so that should not be a problem.
As far as AMD drivers, that may have been an issue 3 or 4 years ago, but not now. They stopped including PlaysTV (the optional portion of the driver that caused problems with EW) a long time ago. They stopped auto installing any addons like that at least 2 years ago. They now ask if you want to install ReLive during the install process. If you do not actively click on it, it never installs so that should not be a problem.
Interesting observations. We have determined any somewhat current (GTX 250 - current) NVIDIA GTX card will meet our requirements. I'm not going to continue a tit for tat discussion which amounts to a Ford vs Chevy conversation.
We continue to stand by our system requirements as we are the ones that have to support the customer and we feel this is the best solution for the vast number of customers we support. You have a right to disagree, but this is our recommendation. Should you decided to purchase equipment that falls outside that recommendation, we wish you the best of luck, but we may not be able to support you fully. We haven't been burned by NVIDIA like we have AMD and when that happens with the number of customers we have, it becomes an overwhelming problem for our small support team. Unfortunately instead of going to the equipment manufacturer the resolution falls to the software designer to find the answer and fix it, even though it has nothing to do with the software but the hardware the user decided to purchase.
We aren't saying we won't help you if you have an AMD card. We work with AMD and Intel users all the time. If we need to do something special to make an adequate AMD or Intel card work, we can do that too, all we are saying is that we prefer the NVIDIA cards. We won't help you if you have a card that is unsupported like the NVIDIA Quadro or AMD FirePro. They aren't designed to do the type of work that the gaming cards do.
I always say use what you have and if it works, great! If you are buying new, get what we recommend.
If you step outside of that, we'll do our best to help you, but it's possible that the equipment you purchased won't work.
We continue to stand by our system requirements as we are the ones that have to support the customer and we feel this is the best solution for the vast number of customers we support. You have a right to disagree, but this is our recommendation. Should you decided to purchase equipment that falls outside that recommendation, we wish you the best of luck, but we may not be able to support you fully. We haven't been burned by NVIDIA like we have AMD and when that happens with the number of customers we have, it becomes an overwhelming problem for our small support team. Unfortunately instead of going to the equipment manufacturer the resolution falls to the software designer to find the answer and fix it, even though it has nothing to do with the software but the hardware the user decided to purchase.
We aren't saying we won't help you if you have an AMD card. We work with AMD and Intel users all the time. If we need to do something special to make an adequate AMD or Intel card work, we can do that too, all we are saying is that we prefer the NVIDIA cards. We won't help you if you have a card that is unsupported like the NVIDIA Quadro or AMD FirePro. They aren't designed to do the type of work that the gaming cards do.
I always say use what you have and if it works, great! If you are buying new, get what we recommend.
If you step outside of that, we'll do our best to help you, but it's possible that the equipment you purchased won't work.
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Thanks in advance!