Is Radeon PRO WX 3100 Workstation Graphics capable of running Mercury Engine

[Bob Dix]

We have recently replaced a Nvidia Quadro FX3800  which failed in a Dell T5500 Precision Workstation with a Radeon Pro 3100 Video card.

We are not doing any major work  now and Premiere Pro  appears to be working on software only. However the rendering still appears quite fast ?

Is there any solution to now running the Mercury Engine ?

Our computer is an older Dell Precision T5500 with Premiere Pro 5.5.2 about 7 years old

Message was edited by: Bob Dix Photographer/Video Editor. We also operate a Dell Precision M6600 which runs the Mercury Engine.

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[davidarbor]

Sorry, but Premiere didn't add OpenCL support for the Mercury Playback Engine until CS6: CUDA, OpenCL, Mercury Playback Engine, and Adobe Premiere Pro | Adobe Blog

Even then, that was the first implementation of OpenCL support, it wasn't as fast as CUDA, and it didn't support all the same features, like it does now.

[Bob Dix]

Well that is interesting ,as the Adobe Premiere Pro 5.5.2 was running the Mercury Engine Accelerator GPU . ( it is now greyed out) and due to the change of video card from Nvidia FX 3800 to the Radeon PRO wx3100 and the Dell is Windows Professional Pro 7.

Now I am an old bloke now but, none of this makes any sense.

However, the rendering just takes a little longer, and it said this production was made using the Mercury Engine so I had to render manually using software ?

Thank you both for having a go at this, I will be asking Radeon ?

[davidarbor]

The only thing you can do to take advantage of GPU-acceleration with your ATI is upgrade to the latest version of Premiere. GPU-acceleration was brand new to Premiere in CS5, and it was limited to just a few Nvidia cards. It took several years to get to the point it's at today. You're using a card that didn't exist back when this software was developed. OpenCL wasn't mature enough back then, which is why the technology was only limited (officially) to a few CUDA cards in the initial release of CS5.

For reference, the Mercury Playback Engine doesn't mean GPU-acceleration, it's a marketing term that comprises a few different technologies. Software-only mode can still be fast, especially if you're not working in huge frame sizes or with a lot of effects.

GPU-acceleration is much better in almost every case, but if all you're doing is straight cuts with no effects, then you likely won't see much of a speed difference. There's a lot more that needs to be considered when comparing speed (for example, if you're scaling your final output), so it's not so cut and dry.

With the card and version of Premiere you have, your only option is Software-Only mode.

[Bob Dix]

ATTENTION :davidarbor

Yes, you are  right "

"Software-only mode can still be fast, especially if you're not working in huge frame sizes or with a lot of effects."

Thanks David,

I agree, pity the old Nvidia Fx 3800 failed , it took 7 years, it did a lot of work

[RjL190365 · Accepted solution]

As David stated, CS5.5 does not support OpenCL at all - only CUDA.

And David was only partially correct that CS6 was the first version that incorporated OpenCL GPU acceleration support: That support applied only to certain MacBook Pro laptops with certain Radeon graphics chips. Windows users are still out of luck, as all Windows versions of CS6 did not support OpenCL. In fact, Windows support for OpenCL in Premiere Pro did not arrive until the first (2013) version of Premiere Pro CC (aka Version 7.0).