Computer setup for Vegas 23 and 8K render

PanLeon wrote on 12/25/2025, 4:59 PM

Hi everyone, My name is Rafal and I create videos for my YouTube channel. I render videos up to 4K 50fps (but I'm also slowly thinking about rendering 8K).
The cameras I use give me 4K, 50fps, and a bitrate of 127mb/s.
The editing software is Vegas 22.

Computer configuration:

Motherboard
ASRock B860M V2
Processor
Intel Core 5 Ultra Series 2 (LGA 1851)
RAM
32GB DDR5
Graphics card
GeForce RTX 3060 12GB

I use Intel QSV for rendering, although it's faster than using a graphics card (NV Encoder)
My graphics card is obviously old, and I'm considering upgrading it. I've heard that Vegas prefers Radeon over Nvidia. Is this true?
Is it worth upgrading my graphics card and rendering with it, or is it better to continue rendering videos with the CPU? I was thinking about buying a Radeon RX 7800 XT Gaming OC 16GB GDDR6 or something a bit more expensive.

Thank you for your help.

Comments

RogerS wrote on 12/25/2025, 5:51 PM

You can see my signature for two benchmarks with various GPUs.

Your GPU isn't really old and has enough VRAM. NVIDIA has the best decoding performance with VEGAS and while QSV can be very fast for rendering, I find the quality worse than NVENC and don't use it.

3POINT wrote on 12/26/2025, 5:00 AM

Hi everyone, My name is Rafal and I create videos for my YouTube channel. I render videos up to 4K 50fps (but I'm also slowly thinking about rendering 8K).
The cameras I use give me 4K, 50fps, and a bitrate of 127mb/s.

What sense does it make to render to 8k when source media is 4k? Which device can show your 8k renders? Keep in mind that not only resolution is a measure for picture quality.

Dexcon wrote on 12/26/2025, 5:46 AM

On a 4K monitor, I've seen too many YouTube videos claiming to be 4K but really look like that they've been filmed in a lower resolution like HD - which they probably were. Unless you have a world-beating UpRez FX that makes 4K genuinely look as though it were shot in 8K, I'm not sure that up-rezing from 4K to 8K would be a good idea because those few YT viewers with 8K displays will likely easily identify a fake 8K upload fairly quickly. The only advantage is that you might get a better quality 4K display on YT for 4K viewers.

Cameras: Sony FDR-AX100E; GoPro Hero 11 Black Creator Edition; Samsung S23 Ultra smart phone

Installed: Vegas Pro 13, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22 & 23, HitFilm Pro 2021.3, DaVinci Resolve Studio 20.3, BCC 2026, Mocha Pro 2026, NBFX TotalFX 7, Neat NR 6, DVD Architect 6.0, MAGIX Travel Maps, Sound Forge Pro 16, SpectraLayers Pro 12, iZotope RX11 Advanced and many other iZ plugins, Vegasaur 4.0

Windows 11 25H2

Dell Alienware Aurora 11:

10th Gen Intel i9 10900KF - 10 cores (20 threads) - 3.7 to 5.3 GHz

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER 8GB GDDR6 - liquid cooled

64GB RAM - Dual Channel HyperX FURY DDR4 XMP at 3200MHz

C drive: 2TB Samsung 990 PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 PCIe SSD

D: drive: 4TB Samsung 870 SATA SSD (used for media for editing current projects)

E: drive: 2TB Samsung 870 SATA SSD

F: drive: 6TB WD 7200 rpm Black HDD 3.5"

Dell Ultrasharp 32" 4K Color Calibrated Monitor

 

LAPTOP:

Dell Inspiron 5310 EVO 13.3"

i5-11320H CPU

C Drive: 1TB Corsair Gen4 NVMe M.2 2230 SSD (upgraded from the original 500 GB SSD)

Monitor is 2560 x 1600 @ 60 Hz

PanLeon wrote on 12/28/2025, 8:39 AM

Hi, one of my cameras records in 8K. It's an Insta Ace Pro. I use it for static shots because it only has 25 frames.
I don't artificially increase the resolution; quite the opposite.

Video recorded in 4K but rendered to 2.7K will have better quality than 2.7K footage from a camera.
You won't be able to watch 8K footage anywhere, that's true. BUT, if you render 8K to 4K, the quality is significantly better than 4K footage from a camera. Take a look at this test. One frame is from a 4K video, the other from 8K. Both frames are rendered to 4K. The difference is significant when zoomed in.
 

Returning to the topic of hardware configuration.
Rendering a 30-minute video.
Intel QSV on an old motherboard with integrated graphics - 38 minutes
NVENC RTX 3060 render - 48 minutes
BUT, after replacing the motherboard with a newer one, but without integrated graphics AND changing Veags 22 to 23, using NVENC, the render time was 16 minutes :)

I guess Vegas 22 wasn't using the full potential of NVENC and my graphics card.





3POINT wrote on 12/28/2025, 9:48 AM

@PanLeon Yes; I know that downscaling gives better quality than directly recording in that resolution. I did this for almost 10 years, downscaling 4k footage to FHD.