Sometime in the last few months, an update happened to either Adobe's software or possibly to a driver, which made AME stop utilizing my video card to accelerate encoding (or maybe it never did, see followup.). Until recently, I was on a 660 TI, but I upgraded in the last week to a 970, and my encoding performance didn't change at all, causing me to look deeper into the issue.
I can confirm that I am set to use CUDA encoding, and that the GPUSniffer does detect my 970 as a valid device. However, no work is being done by my GPU when encoding videos, according to GPU-Z. In fact, my GPU sits in low-power mode the entire time, with an average load of 1%.
This is really frustrating, since it is making my videos take 3-4 times longer than they should to encode (at least).
Is the any additional information that would help troubleshoot this, or any other steps you would like me to take?
Software Versions:
Windows 10
AME: 2015.2 (9.2.0.26)
GeForce Drivers: 364.72
Encoding settings: h264, 1080p60
Video Card: EVGA GTX 970 FTW+ ACX 2.0+ | techPowerUp GPU Database
Followup:
I've been continuing to research the problem, and it sounds like maybe CUDA doesn't accelerate Encoding, only rendering? If so, that's REALLY disappointing. Are there any working plugins that DO support CUDA or NVENC?