Hardware recommendations?

gary-beckwith wrote on 3/15/2021, 2:09 PM

Hello,

I"m getting a new computer. My son has built a few computers for video gaming and I figure that is more intensive than video editing, but want to check and make sure. I've been using Movie Studio Platinum 13 and I figure I'll upgrade to the newest version when I get the new computer. The processor I'm getting is AMD Ryzen 5 2600X, and the motherboard is ASRock B450M PRO4 AM4 AMD Promontory B450 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.1 HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard and I'm starting with 16GB of ram.

He wants me to get this video card: ASUS Phoenix GeForce GTX 1050 Ti Graphics Card

1290 MHz Core - Boosted to 1392 MHz, 768 CUDA Cores, Pascal Architecture, 4GB of GDDR5 vRAM, 7.008 Gb/s Memory Speed, 128-Bit Memory Interface, DisplayPort 1.4 | HDMI 2.0b | DVI-D DL, 7680 x 4320 Max Digital Resolution, Single-Fan Cooler

Do i really need to spend $300+ on a graphics card? I've seen there is a 710 model that has 2GB memory and is a lot less $$.

I do NOT do gaming. I DO video editing and on my current computer one of the biggest problems is the time it takes to render graphics files, so i'm hoping that improves. Any advice is appreciated.

thank you

gary in vermont

Comments

NOVAdash wrote on 3/18/2021, 9:21 AM

Hi Gary. This is my first post in this forum, but I hope I can provide some input because I've worked with similar components. Also, I'm sure you're aware this is a horrible time to be building a PC. Waiting six months (I hope) should net you a pretty nice graphics card for a fraction of the price they're selling for today.My desktop is a Ryzen 2700X and Radeon 5700XT (which I bought at exactly the right time, September last year for $400) with 32 GB of RAM. My laptop is a Core i7 7700HQ with a 3 GB Geforce 1060 Ti.

Rendering times are much quicker on my desktop, but for me the biggest frustration is when using Video Preview, how slow Vegas is to work with on slower machines. Even my desktop, when overlaying text with shadow on a 4K video, typing something is painfully slow. It takes almost 30 seconds to type ten words (and then you find a mistake and it takes another 30 seconds to correct it). On the laptop, I refuse to work with 4K video altogether. The cookie cutter effect is another one that brings things to a crawl.

That said, general panning/cropping/fading/transitions all work reasonably well on both machines. If you keep it to simple editing, I think a slower machine is fine. I wouldn't recommend working with any video above 1080p however.

Disclaimer: I'm using Movie Studio 16. MS 17 may be better optimized.

Nozzle wrote on 3/18/2021, 11:29 AM

I use a Ryzen 2600X much like the spec you're looking at. When it comes to CUDA cores though, and I'm happy to be corrected by someone more knowledgeable, I'd say the CUDA core are NOT utilised during normal editing work.

The CUDA cores will only be used when you come to the final rendering, and only then when you select an encoder that is using NVidia hardware. If you do this, know that the output file is generated much quicker that if it was rendered with CPU alone - but it is a larger file.

During normal editing, the GFX card will be used for displaying the windows and operating transparencies and trying to apply effects on-the-fly - but that's via DirectX using the normal Graphics card functions, not CUDA.

Therefore the DirectX functions do use GFX card while editing, and it would be horrid with an integral/descrete GFX chip (as featured in most laptops) but I'd suggest that you don't need a monster of thing while editing.

As above, I'm happy to be corrected by someone who is expert in the inner workings.

Nozzle

j-v wrote on 3/18/2021, 11:46 AM

Cuda was sometimes used in older versions of Vegas Software to render a bit faster (mostly not better) than with only CPU, that was normal in those days.
In the newer used codecs it is not anymore available because of the use of f.i. the NVENC option.
The use of that NVENC option is very restricted by the used driverversion for the NVidia GPU.