GPU advice for video and photo editing, non-gamer

O

ococ

Limp Gawd
Joined
Oct 20, 2006
Messages
326
**UPDATE** Picked up this card MSI Radeon RX 560 DirectX 12 RX 560 AERO ITX 4G OC 4GB

My current rig is pretty dated (i7-2600K) and my current GPU (7600GS) is going out. I get screen flickers when moving windows around. Not surprising as the card is probably 10 years old...maybe more, lol. 4k video won't even play.

I do zero gaming, but do have the following requirements. Looking for advice on a new card, preferably cheaper, but will last me many years.


  • Dual Link DVI- to support my current Dell 30" monitor
  • Second monitor is a 24" Dell setup vertically, has DVI and VGA inputs
  • Looking to replace the second monitor with a new 30"

  • I mostly do video editing, 4k video from either a Sony A7RIII, OSMO 4k and GoPro
  • I also do photo editing (42mps), (Photoshop, Lightroom, Capture One)
  • Preferably a card that isn't loud
Thanks in advance!
 
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I just built my daughter a photo editing workstation. I built it in ITX format with a Ryzen 1700, CoolerMaster Elite 130 case, 16 GB memory, and a Nvidia Quadro P1000 video card. I don't think the Quadro is needed just for photo editing, except that it does 10-bit to match the BenQ SW2700P monitor. If you do video editing, the quadro P1000 should work very well for you. It has no power connector, and the small fan is silent. It uses 4 mini DP, but Amazon has a mini DP to HDMI cable for <$9 or DVI for <$11. There are cheaper Quadro cards if the $320 is too high.
 
What do you use to edit video? - If Vegas then get an AMD card (pref Vega 56), if Premiere get an Nvidia (1060 ti/6gb)
 
I was hoping for a card cheaper than the Quadro. What about the GTX 1050 2GB?

Right now I'm just doing simple video editing using iMovie on a Macbook Pro, but looking to do more on the PC, likely with Premier Pro.

thanks!
 
ococ said:
I was hoping for a card cheaper than the Quadro. What about the GTX 1050 2GB?

Right now I'm just doing simple video editing using iMovie on a Macbook Pro, but looking to do more on the PC, likely with Premier Pro.

thanks!
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The Quadro P600 is about $30 more than a 1050, and the P400 is about $30 less, both with 2GB. They may be better than a 1050 for your purposes.
 
I don't see any need for a 'pro' GPU for content creation; any 10-series Nvidia or current AMD GPU will support HDR output, and generally speaking you don't want to use 10bit output except for HDR, even for photo editing, unless you are absolutely certain that you'll be delivering 10bit files (i.e., 16bit TIFFs or .PSDs with AdobeRGB or other colorspace that is larger than SRGB, which the world runs on).

Beyond that, there's no special sauce in the drivers or hardware of the pro GPUs that would be useful; you're generally just going to get less processing power and memory for your money over the consumer parts.
 
Premiere Pro mainly uses the CPU. I would suggest Ryzen and I agree with the post above, anything 10 series nVidia would likely suit you.

If you're really hard core waiting for Thread Ripper version 2 might be worth it.
 
Dayaks said:
Premiere Pro mainly uses the CPU. I would suggest Ryzen and I agree with the post above, anything 10 series nVidia would likely suit you.

If you're really hard core waiting for Thread Ripper version 2 might be worth it.
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You're right that the 2600k is going to be the main limitation, but the limitation being addressed is getting output to the screen :D.

[which you're also right about- GPU just doesn't matter much for this stuff...]
 
IdiotInCharge said:
You're right that the 2600k is going to be the main limitation, but the limitation being addressed is getting output to the screen :D.

[which you're also right about- GPU just doesn't matter much for this stuff...]
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Haha true. I get distracted by the family and I forget what I am even posting on!
 
Yes, I plan to update the CPU as well. Sounds like the GTX 10 series will do. Will the 2GB version work or do I need to go higher?
 
ococ said:
Yes, I plan to update the CPU as well. Sounds like the GTX 10 series will do. Will the 2GB version work or do I need to go higher?
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As cheap as possible, since it won't be doing much work. You're more just looking for the right outputs.


[do note that GPU acceleration for video editing is most definitely 'a thing', but it's not nearly that big of a deal outside of production-grade usage]
 
IdiotInCharge said:
As cheap as possible, since it won't be doing much work. You're more just looking for the right outputs.


[do note that GPU acceleration for video editing is most definitely 'a thing', but it's not nearly that big of a deal outside of production-grade usage]
Click to expand...

GPU acceleration happens a lot when you're using After Effects and can result in a major time savings over CPU-only workloads. One of my work rendering machines is a Hexa-core Xeon with a K5000 in it. During certain renders where I'm applying a watermark and an After Effects scene, my non-GPU render takes about 12 hours but when I activate the GPU acceleration, I can get the same render down to 5 hours.
 
Depending on what you do, video editing can be very taxing on both CPU and GPU.

On the CPU side you'll want as many cores as possible and lots of memory, Ryzen 2 looks like a winner, threadripper if you have money to burn.

On the GPU, a GTX 1060 should be plenty. I don't think there are any cards with 2 DL dvi ports, but you can use a HDMI to DVI or DP to DVI converter.

BTW you'll also need fast NVME storage, I'd say 500GB+.
 
Algrim said:
GPU acceleration happens a lot when you're using After Effects and can result in a major time savings over CPU-only workloads. One of my work rendering machines is a Hexa-core Xeon with a K5000 in it. During certain renders where I'm applying a watermark and an After Effects scene, my non-GPU render takes about 12 hours but when I activate the GPU acceleration, I can get the same render down to 5 hours.
Click to expand...

This. No way in hell I'd go back to cpu only encoding. Its not exactly on topic, encoding wise but its in the ballpark.
 
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