Also didn't mention what you're using now. That 650 watt power supply will probably limit you to a medium level Amd or Nvidia board... something like a 580 or a 1660... check power recommendations before you commit or consider upgrading the ps too. And with the crazy prices these days, you might consider looking for used instead of new.

I second what @Howard-Vigorita said about your power supply.

I too am wanting a new GPU, but am not willing to pay the extremely high prices I see. I am content using my "old" RX480 8GB card.

@Derkus 

You can look at other users choices in the Benchmarking project, link via my signature.

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gpu-hierarchy,4388.html

Stock ... https://www.techradar.com/news/massive-rtx-3080-ti-in-stock

@Reyfox The Nvidia 2000 series cards are performing as good or better in VP as the Nvidia 3000 series cards, which are not yet fully optimised within VP. So if you’re looking at only VP then the choice is wide, of course VP19 may produce better optimisation for the newer cards.

@JN- the problem is the actual cost of any graphics card now. I will stay with what I have until something remotely close to reasonable in price is available.

I am usually not in a rush with any project, and when it comes to rendering, what I have is fairly fast enough. I am looking forward to seeing what wonderful surprises will be in VP19.

@Reyfox Indeed. It’ll probably be next year before price’s settle.

I only have a cheap AMD Radeon R7 200 graphics adapter the vendor threw in for free in my HP Z440 3.5GHz v3 Xeon quad-core/32GB ECC RAM machine I bought used (a retired, entry-level server, circa 2015). I posted this in another forum:

Magix claims unique support for AMD's hardware-accelerated H.264 rendering engine [edit: do I have this correct?], and a 2020 review of Vegas 18, which benchmarked the both NVidia and AMD GPUs, appears to prove a decided advantage to the AMD chipsets [see the TechGage review here].

The TechGage article offers two GPU recommendations, specifically for Vegas Pro 18 (as of September 2020):

• AMD Radeon RX 5700 8GB XT
• NVidia GeForce RTX 2060 8GB Super

Both are about $450 retail. I believe Vegas supports AMD's H.264 hardware-acceleration? But BorisFX' plug-ins only support NVidia's GPUs, and not AMD's, so I'm a bit split on the AMD vs. Nvidia decision. It seems AMD's Ryzen CPUs are the performance-winners in most categories, specifically for Vegas (again, according to another excellent TechGage article here), but I'm still struggling to determine which video card is "enough" for my needs.

Also, I did run into a "not enough video memory" error when rendering one particular effect (can't recall which). So I'm also wondering if a 4GB card is enough, or do I need an 8GB-equipped GPU instead? Here's the effects I'm mainly using:

• FXhome Ignite VFX pack.
• BorisFX Continuum Stylize Unit 2020.5.
• NewBlue Elements 3 Overlay.

But the key areas I'm seeking for obtaining optimal performance is in Vegas' preview-window renders and high-bitrate, output-renders so any guidance or recommendations to those ends would be greatly appreciated! My complete system-specifications are located in my signature.

I have a 5700xt myself and it works quite well in Vegas 18. On older versions of Vegas there were issues with pip not masking correctly which could be worked around by using Bezier masking in tandem. Other than that, functionality and performance are really great and power consumption is low. It's given one of my older Xeon systems a 2nd life with its performance boost compared to the rx580 I had in it before. Benches here.

My only gripes with amd video boards are that they don't support 10-bit rendering and, unlike with Vegas, they don't play well with the open source community like ffmpeg and those that use their libs like DaVinci Resolve. For these reasons my next high-end board will probably be an Nvidia. If prices ever come down. Not sure they will by next year, however... the new Intel and TSMC chip fabs that hope to alleviate the worldwide semiconductor shortage are not projected to come on line for another 2 or 3 years yet.

Thanks Howard! Do you know if the AMD Radeon RX 5700 8GB XT works okay in VMS 17 (e.g., the PIP issue you mentioned)? Also, did you notice an increase in preview-window rendering performance in particular? Does this also enable the use of higher-definition previews? Were output-render times also accelerated with your AMD graphics board installed?

Also, what is all this talk about the prices of GPUs? Have they gone up? Is this a demand-issue related to cryptocurrency mining? Thanks!

Also, what is all this talk about the prices of GPUs? Have they gone up? Is this a demand-issue related to cryptocurrency mining? Thanks!

I found this article here blaming graphics adapters' exemption from tariffs expiring as of 31 December 2020 as the root cause of the dramatic price-increases. An even more recent article in PC World examines the issue in far more depth, painting the big picture, here.

Apparently, we're in a perfect storm of GPU-craziness right now: A combination of COVID-driven demand, supply-chain issues, tariffs, concurrent demand for sole-sourced, 7nm wafer-manufacturing for holiday-delivery of game consoles [" . . . next-gen consoles, which both feature AMD chips that marry Ryzen and Radeon on a single die."], eBay scalpers, and volatile cryptocurrency valuations, all have contributed to a cumulative price-tsunami that's crippling supply and hiking prices into the stratosphere for us poor end-users.

So as luck would have it, this is literally the absolute worst time in the history of PCs to be in the market to buy a GPU.

Everyone's blaming everything for the world-wide semicondictor shortage which is effecting more than just gpu's... like onboard computers in new cars for instance. I think pandemic panic is a big driver. Ha, ha, and probably explains all the demand from gamers hibernating in their parent's basements. Many of whom are reported to be sidelining with mining rigs to help covertly transfer the inflated cost of the gpu to daddy's electric bill. But I also think US trade and tariff issues are exacerbating it all here where I live... many things seem to be in somewhat greater supply in the UK and EU these days.