Rawtherapee and Cuda

Hey,

I searched for something on this but couldn’t find anything from the results here.

I’m using Windows 10 on a laptop that comes with the Optimus software. Optimus basically decides whether to use the integrated or discreet graphics card depending on the program, so as to preserve battery power. When it works its a sound theory. You can try and set it to run what you want in the Nvidia control panel but this doesnt always work.

The graphics card is a GTX 1050, laptop 16gb memory, i7 Kabylake etc.

When I open Rawtherapee it doesn’t use the discreet graphics card, instead it defaults to the Intel card.

I wrote to Nvidia and they say certain programs will not trigger the nvidia card if it does not use Cuda, nevermind the settings I decide on in the nvidia control panel.

Does rawtherapee support cuda? Should it be triggering the discreet card? Or am I stuck using the intergrated card when I use it. I’ve been trying to sort this out with nvidia for a couple of weeks now, they have esculated the ticket and have now mentioned Cuda.

Rawtherapee is great softeware and I prefer the raw conversions for Fuji files more than anything else I’ve used, but I’d like to take advantage of my relatively powerful graphics card. (it also does not trigger with GIMP, which is also a shame)

Many thanks

AFAIK, RawTherapee has no GPU-aware algorithm at the moment…

Thanks very much. It’s a shame that the program cant trigger the nvidia card, as the intel card is definitely less powerful. The performance difference is quite apparent in other software, just shifting the pixels on screen is far better. The Cuda check is made when the program is opened (it doesn’t transfer between cards during usage), shame it cant be triggered at program open, even if the program is not actually going to be using the GPU algorthm.

Enabling the Nvidia card would only be a waste of power. There would be no difference in UI smoothness at all.

I think you got it backwards. RawTherapee doesn’t run slower “because it can’t trigger the nvidia card”, it doesn’t use the Intel card. It uses and is highly optimized for the CPU. Just throwing stuff at the GPU doesn’t necessarily make it faster.

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Okay thank you, I must have that backwards then. I’m not a programmer so I dont know about these things. Many thanks for clearing that up. I will continue to use Rawtherepee anyway, as it’s great with the RAF files.