Adobe CC SLI GPU Acceleration

[egproductions]

I'm planning on getting a Lenovo IdeaPad Y510P to do some mobile editing. I have the option of getting a dual SLI graphics card (GeForce GT755M) or one GT755M and a blu-ray/DVD RW. I'm leaning towards the Dual Graphics cards but wasn't sure how much improvement there would be in Premiere CC. Does anyone know if I will see a significant improvement?

 

[msorrels]

I think Preimere only uses a single GPU for playback/editing acceleration. Having two only helps encoding. See here:

http://blogs.adobe.com/premierepro/2013/05/improved-gpu-support-in-adobe-premiere-pro-cc.html

To be honest I've never seen this mythical GPU speed up, early this year an nVidia release broke CUDA and it was weeks before I even noticed it (and 3 months before nVidia answered their support ticket and released a new build that fixed it). I think it depends a lot on the file format/codec you are using and Cineform must not be on that list.

 

[msorrels]

This question got me curious about what CUDA really does accelerate in Premiere so I did some more digging and did some tests. Basically it only works on a few things, namely effects (the effects it accelerates can be found by the little icon that shows up in the effects list/you can also filter by it with the button at the top) and mixing footage on a timeline. So if you have footage that doesn't match the timeline, the GPU is used to resize/adjust that footage. Since I rarely use effects in Premiere and don't often mix footage it's no wonder I haven't seen a lot of CUDA speed. But I'd imagine it would play a role if you using 4k footage on a 1080p timeline. Which may become the new normal.

Here's Adobe's official guide (though it hasn't been updated for CC) of what CUDA does for Premiere:
http://blogs.adobe.com/premierepro/2011/02/cuda-mercury-playback-engine-and-adobe-premiere-pro.html