• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

How powerful of a GPU do I actually need for basic video editing?

P

Peat Moss

Gawd
Joined
Oct 6, 2009
Messages
631
I am planning to get into video editing later this year or next. I am starting to think about what kind of GPU I need.

What I will be doing is recording 2-person talking head interviews and posting them to youtube. I will probably have a few graphics/text on screen, using some B-roll and short clips, and maybe some light color grading. Nothing more, at least until I get more ambitious after a few years.

I was thinking of a 5070 TI, but then I thought, maybe I could get away with a 5060 TI? Perhaps an Intel Arc B50 or 70? Or should I go with an AMD card? I'm sure all of these would do the job. But just wondering about price to performance and not overspending.

Would I find a 5060 TI too slow?

Thanks.
 
Last edited:
Depending on the software you use you really don't need anything fancy at all. You could even use integrated graphics.

It depends on the software you use and the codecs you use. You might want to figure that out first.

I would just try editing on the hardware you have now. If it's slow or inadequate figure out what you need.
 
practically everything prefers nvidia. either of those would be fine, one might be slightly faster.
 
Pretty much any gpu with 8gb vram will work for that without issue. Nvenc encoders 30 series or newer preferred. Intel igpus are great for encoding as well. You'd probably be fine with an rtx 3050 or better. Once you know your work flow, I'd recommend testing it on some hardware you have to identify what the bottlenecks are. Certain codecs are easier to decode (pro res vs h265) and you can optimize your work flow for hardware you have.

Since it sounds like you will have a consistent work flow, what cameras, resolution, and codec will you be using?
 
sharknice said:
Depending on the software you use you really don't need anything fancy at all. You could even use integrated graphics.

It depends on the software you use and the codecs you use. You might want to figure that out first.

I would just try editing on the hardware you have now. If it's slow or inadequate figure out what you need.
Click to expand...


Thanks. Yeah, I forgot to mention I am leaning towards either CyberLink Power Director, or Davinci Resolve. For recording, probably OBS. Just using webcams for now until I can afford a proper camera.

I only have a Lenovo business laptop (Ryzen 740M graphics) right now. I don't think it's going to be enough. I'm planning to do a build.
 
Last edited:
Peat Moss said:
Thanks. Yeah, I forgot to mention I am leaning towards either CyberLink Power Director, or Davinci Resolve.

I only have a Lenovo business laptop right now. I don't think it's going to be enough.
Click to expand...
check their min requirements, if its modern that will probably work. just not quickly...
 
mnewxcv said:
Pretty much any gpu with 8gb vram will work for that without issue. Nvenc encoders 30 series or newer preferred. Intel igpus are great for encoding as well. You'd probably be fine with an rtx 3050 or better. Once you know your work flow, I'd recommend testing it on some hardware you have to identify what the bottlenecks are. Certain codecs are easier to decode (pro res vs h265) and you can optimize your work flow for hardware you have.

Since it sounds like you will have a consistent work flow, what cameras, resolution, and codec will you be using?
Click to expand...


I hadn't thought of codecs or cameras yet. What do you recommend on a budget?
 
Peat Moss said:
Thanks. Yeah, I forgot to mention I am leaning towards either CyberLink Power Director, or Davinci Resolve. For recording, probably OBS. Just using webcams for now until I can afford a proper camera.

I only have a Lenovo business laptop right now. I don't think it's going to be enough.
Click to expand...
Just have a laptop? Are you planning on building a machine for video editing? If you are I'd consider starting with an Intel Arrow Lake CPU and no vid card. Try that out, see how it does, and decide if you need the vid card. See how that does for you, then add an NV card if you need more GPU power.

Intel mostly has better price/perf for multithreaded stuff than AMD on the CPU side, and the iGPUs are better than the weeny little ones in AMD desktop CPUs. 270K gets close to a 9950X, costs a lot less when it's not sold out, etc. AMD APUs can have really strong iGPUs, but then you're either dealing with a weaker CPU or looking at something like Strix Halo that can't take a discreet GPU. More importantly, Intel CPUs have QuickSync for encode/decode. AMD CPUs and GPUs are disfavored for video editing unless you're talking about a CPU paired up with a discreet GPU from NV or maybe Intel at the cheap end. AMD is just behind on encode/decode acceleration. That setup gets you QuickSync encode/decode from a current Intel proc plus NVEnc and CUDA from an NV vid card if you decide you need it.

That said if this is going to double as a gaming rig and you can afford a 5070Ti + the rest of the build that may change things a good bit depending on what you play and how much you feel like spending.

Buying a Mac or a higher spec Windows laptop could work too. Down side with that is you can't upgrade whatever you get later.
 
You don't actually need a video card at all. Plenty of editing software works just fine on the CPU, and in fact some things can't be GPU accelerated. The biggest thing that you probably want, which everything even integrated cards should provide, is hardware decoding if you are doing native editing, meaning working straight with AVC files rather than converting them to an intermediate format like ProRes.

As for effects, it 100% depends on what you are using if it can be accelerated, and if so how much a card will help. Some can, some are CPU only. What editing software are you thinking of using and what effects? Like for text are you just looking at overlaying basic 3D text or are you looking at using something like NewBlue Titler Pro? If you are just doing basic text overlays, well that probably can't be accelerated because it doesn't need to be. Likewise with graphics are you talking overlaying a pre rendered graphic on the video? Or are you talking about having something that interacts with it?
 
Some things to consider:
  • What resolution will you be recording, editing, and uploading in? 1080P, 2K, 4K?
  • What format will you be using? H.264 (AVC), H.265 (HEVC), or AV1.
  • What bitrate will you be using? Low, medium, or high?
  • The CPU handles most of the workload, but the GPU accelerates certain tasks.
  • You'll want 32GB RAM, or 64GB and dedicate 32GB as a RAMDisk.
  • If RAMDisk, that'll be your work area, and where you want your video editing cache to be located.
  • If no RAMDisk, you'll want a hard disk drive so you don't use up a lot of your SSD's writes. It'll be slower, but depending on how much editing you do, you'll preserve your SSD longer.
Most likely you'll be going simple with 1080P with H.264 with a low bitrate. You don't need a graphics card for that, a decent Intel iGPU will do fine. If you eventually want the highest quality, you'll want a RTX 4080, 5080, or 5090, or an Intel Arc B580 or B50 for AV1 encoding. 4K AV1 with high bitrates will be choppy depending on your system, so you'll have to either lower the bitrates or scale down to 2K with medium-high bitrates.

Now, if you don't want to go the expensive AV1 route, and don't want basic 1080P H.264 videos, anything in-between in regards to graphics cards will do fine for H.265 (HEVC) medium-high bitrates up to 4K, but the higher the bitrates, the more space HEVC will take up.
 
zandor said:
Just have a laptop? Are you planning on building a machine for video editing? If you are I'd consider starting with an Intel Arrow Lake CPU and no vid card. Try that out, see how it does, and decide if you need the vid card. See how that does for you, then add an NV card if you need more GPU power.

Intel mostly has better price/perf for multithreaded stuff than AMD on the CPU side, and the iGPUs are better than the weeny little ones in AMD desktop CPUs. 270K gets close to a 9950X, costs a lot less when it's not sold out, etc. AMD APUs can have really strong iGPUs, but then you're either dealing with a weaker CPU or looking at something like Strix Halo that can't take a discreet GPU. More importantly, Intel CPUs have QuickSync for encode/decode. AMD CPUs and GPUs are disfavored for video editing unless you're talking about a CPU paired up with a discreet GPU from NV or maybe Intel at the cheap end. AMD is just behind on encode/decode acceleration. That setup gets you QuickSync encode/decode from a current Intel proc plus NVEnc and CUDA from an NV vid card if you decide you need it.

That said if this is going to double as a gaming rig and you can afford a 5070Ti + the rest of the build that may change things a good bit depending on what you play and how much you feel like spending.

Buying a Mac or a higher spec Windows laptop could work too. Down side with that is you can't upgrade whatever you get later.
Click to expand...

Yes, I just have a laptop, so I am planning to build a PC. I am intending to go with an Arrow Lake CPU (either 265K or 270K). I didn't realize Intel iGPUs were capable of video editing, thanks. The PC is not going to double as a gaming rig (I don't game), just productivity / video editing.

I thought of possibly getting a Mac. But it would entail higher upfront costs, although I could sell it after a few years and probably recoup half. I'd have to learn Mac OS. IMovie is free, and may be all I need in the short term, then get FCP later.
 
El_Capitan said:
Some things to consider:
  • What resolution will you be recording, editing, and uploading in? 1080P, 2K, 4K?
  • What format will you be using? H.264 (AVC), H.265 (HEVC), or AV1.
  • What bitrate will you be using? Low, medium, or high?
  • The CPU handles most of the workload, but the GPU accelerates certain tasks.
  • You'll want 32GB RAM, or 64GB and dedicate 32GB as a RAMDisk.
  • If RAMDisk, that'll be your work area, and where you want your video editing cache to be located.
  • If no RAMDisk, you'll want a hard disk drive so you don't use up a lot of your SSD's writes. It'll be slower, but depending on how much editing you do, you'll preserve your SSD longer.
Most likely you'll be going simple with 1080P with H.264 with a low bitrate. You don't need a graphics card for that, a decent Intel iGPU will do fine. If you eventually want the highest quality, you'll want a RTX 4080, 5080, or 5090, or an Intel Arc B580 or B50 for AV1 encoding. 4K AV1 with high bitrates will be choppy depending on your system, so you'll have to either lower the bitrates or scale down to 2K with medium-high bitrates.

Now, if you don't want to go the expensive AV1 route, and don't want basic 1080P H.264 videos, anything in-between in regards to graphics cards will do fine for H.265 (HEVC) medium-high bitrates up to 4K, but the higher the bitrates, the more space HEVC will take up.
Click to expand...

I would like to record and edit and upload in 4K
Not sure about the format. I heard youtube works well with AVI.
Not sure about the bit rate.
With Davinci, I think the GPU handles most of the work load.
Can't afford 64 GB right now. Will start with 32 GB
Yeah, I'm shopping for NVMe's as well. I read somewhere that cache drives ideally should be fast.
I know that the NVIDIA 50xx series have updated media engines that are on par with QuickSync. So I might just try going with the Intel CPU alone first to see if that works.
 
Peat Moss said:
Yes, I just have a laptop, so I am planning to build a PC. I am intending to go with an Arrow Lake CPU (either 265K or 270K). I didn't realize Intel iGPUs were capable of video editing, thanks. The PC is not going to double as a gaming rig (I don't game), just productivity / video editing.
Click to expand...
Given that you are building a PC, and that GPUs are stupid expensive, try an iGPU and see how it works. If things start to get too slow, then you can consider what you need in terms of acceleration. A lot of videos don't really push editing very hard. Like if you are mostly just choosing what camera to show and overlaying some simple text and lower thirds, that is super easy and requires little power.

Since you aren't planning on gaming, no reason to get a bigass GPU, only to discover you don't need it at all. If you do, you can add it later. If you do get a GPU, nVidia is the right answer as they have the best OpenCL support and some things like to use CUDA (or only use CUDA) and only they support it.

Peat Moss said:
Not sure about the format. I heard youtube works well with AVI.
Click to expand...
That's what it streams in normally (if your hardware supports it), but it doesn't really matter what you upload in, it'll reencode no matter what so usually you pick a format that you can encode quickly and high quality. Also if you are recording with actual cameras, they are almost certainly NOT going to do AV1, it's be AVC or HEVC. Or, if they are more professional cameras, some kind of pro format like ProRes or REDCode or whatever.

Peat Moss said:
Not sure about the bit rate.
Click to expand...
In general higher bitrates benefit upload quality somewhat, but there are limits because Youtube compresses the shit out of everything. If you have a fast Internet connection for uploads, high bitrate AVC isn't a bad choice. Youtube still recommends AVC (H.264) as the upload format.

Peat Moss said:
Yeah, I'm shopping for NVMe's as well. I read somewhere that cache drives ideally should be fast.
Click to expand...
nVME is always a good idea, though depending on your input formats, it may not matter that much. There are two basic ways of doing editing: Native and Intermediate.

Native editing is where you take whatever format the camera outputs, natively, and load that directly in to the editor and work with it. The advantage is that there's no generation loss and generally cameras don't output super-high bit rate files (unless you are talking pro cameras in RAW formats) so it saves on space and also disk speed needs. Like AVCHD cameras only tend to do 24mpbs AVC streams for 1080p30 and even XAVC S cameras are usually only 100mbpd at 4k60. Well with that, you just don't need that much disk speed. You can stream those low data rates even off of magnetic disks. The downside is increased processing cost and seeking. Because it is heavily compressed video, it takes more power and time to decompress it for editing. This is less of an issue with modern GPUs (including iGPUs) these days though as they can often do it for you.

Intermediate editing is where you convert all your footage to an intermediate format first. This is a lightly compressed format specifically for editing. Apple's ProRes would be one of the best known. The advantage is that since the format is very lightly compressed, with design for used in NLEs, it takes much less CPU time to handle and means nice fast editing. The downside is having to do the conversion, but also because it is lightly compressed it needs a lot more space and thus disk speed. Having a high speed disk becomes way more important with something like that. Like a 4k60 ProRes file could be 1.2gbps (or even more for the real high quality variations).

So which you do heavily influences how much drive speed matters. Also, again, what kind of format and data rate your cameras output.

Peat Moss said:
I know that the NVIDIA 50xx series have updated media engines that are on par with QuickSync. So I might just try going with the Intel CPU alone first to see if that works.
Click to expand...
For decoding, basically they are all on par they all do it "correctly". For encoding it varies more. Again, if you have a fast Internet connection, higher bitrate eliminates a lot of that. If you are doing something like streaming at 3-6mbps then every bit matters and that's why you'll sometimes see streamers that'll have a dedicated encoding box using x264 with super high settings to try and squeeze as much out of the low bitrate possible and you can see the difference between that and Quicksync. However if you are uploading to Youtube and just encode something at 100+mbps and upload that, it doesn't really matter as much what the encoder was.
 
Peat Moss said:
Thanks. Yeah, I forgot to mention I am leaning towards either CyberLink Power Director, or Davinci Resolve. For recording, probably OBS. Just using webcams for now until I can afford a proper camera.

I only have a Lenovo business laptop (Ryzen 740M graphics) right now. I don't think it's going to be enough. I'm planning to do a build.
Click to expand...
Are you sure your laptop wont be enough?
Had a friend who I built a PC for many years ago for him to edit his documentaries on. They were very professional looking PBS style animated still picture kinda things 20-60 min runtime.
The PC I built at the time had the budget king Ryzen first gen 1600 six core CPU, an AMD HD7950 three GB GPU(ancient even then but did the job), a 512MB SATA SSD and 16GB RAM.
Over the years I would ask if he needed an upgrade and he would always reply, "for what"?
 
Davinci resolve is also free for the non studio version. Most phones shoot 4k. I would say get some 4k footage, from phone or Webcam etc, throw it into resolve on the laptop, and see how it feels.
 
I can speak directly to this.

I do video editing through Davinci Resolve. My GPU had failed so I had to go from using a 3070Ti to AMDs integrated graphics. The difference in time to render a two hour video went from about 15-20 minutes to a good 90 minutes plus. But outside of the time difference there wasn't any real effect on the output.

My overall suspicion is what matters more is the hardware on the GPU, rather then raw GPU horsepower, but I'll defer to others on that point.
 
gamerk2 said:
I can speak directly to this.

I do video editing through Davinci Resolve. My GPU had failed so I had to go from using a 3070Ti to AMDs integrated graphics. The difference in time to render a two hour video went from about 15-20 minutes to a good 90 minutes plus. But outside of the time difference there wasn't any real effect on the output.

My overall suspicion is what matters more is the hardware on the GPU, rather then raw GPU horsepower, but I'll defer to others on that point.
Click to expand...
To add to that, you can compare results for pretty much any mainstream gpu, right down to performance per codec here:
https://www.pugetsystems.com/pugetbench/results/compare/Puget Bench for DaVinci Resolve/
 
If its an all new system, get an Intel Arrowlake CPU with an iGPU.

Intel's iGPU is fantastic for codec support and is a great way to make smooth 2K and 4K timeline editing more accessible, across various codec formats.

If its an existing PC and you don't need it for gaming: get an Intel GPU. You will get the same benefits. But the added power of the GPU will also allow pretty fast final exporting/encoding.


If you also want to game on it:

for 40 series, 4070 TI and up, have dual encoders. Making final export/encoding, quite a bit faster.
For 50 series, 5080 and 5090 have dual decoders, which makes scrubbing through an editing timeline smooth, pretty much no matter the resolution. Even with 8K projects, etc.


As far as encoding quality, all 3 Intel (Arc GPUs and Arrowlake/Nova Lake iGPU), Nvidia, and AMD (with RDNA4) have comparable quality, now.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top