New Build AMD 9950X GTX 1080->Nvidia RTX 3080ti/AMD Radeon RX 9600 XT?

Bria wrote on 11/12/2025, 10:52 AM

Just putting a new system together with an AMD 9950X, up from an Intel i2600K.

I was going to reuse my Nvidia GTX 1080; however, I thought I might upgrade my graphics card as well.

First choice is an Nvidia RTX 3080 Ti, but I also see AMD Radeon RX 9600 XT recommended as well. The AMD is only marginally cheaper, but only 300W vs 425/450W and 16GB vs 12 GB.

I lean towards the 3080Ti.

Any thoughts?

My projects are small, max 30 min 1080 so far.

I render to H264 HW and then x265 MKV to add the FLAC soundtrack with Handbrake using SW, not HW. For the finished product, I might render SW for H264 as I believe that gives the smallest files and best PQ, but it's so, so slow on my i2600K for the final product. but over the month of production, there are plenty of intermediate renders.

I'm not a great games player.

What exactly will a better graphics card do for me?

Thanks

Vegas 22

Comments

RogerS wrote on 11/12/2025, 1:32 PM

What media do you work with? I'd consider a newer generation NVIDIA for lower power consumption unless the 3080 is a great deal?

50XX is capable of decoding 10 bit 422 natively though this is still in the works to be implemented in VEGAS.

Reyfox wrote on 11/12/2025, 1:37 PM

Also depends if you plan on using 3rd party plugins and what they use for GPU acceleration.

One thing though, no matter what you decide, it will begin to feel slow the longer you edit with it. You'll notice a nice increase in performance, but as you get used to it, well, that upgrade itch starts to rear its head again.

Most of the work I do is also short, but usually in 4K. And while I will often shoot in 10bit 422, I'm not going to spend a ton of money on a GPU to be able to decode it. Sorry, I'd rather go on vacation with the extra money, even if I spend a little more time editing.

And you will surprised with how much VRAM can be consumed while editing.

Howard-Vigorita wrote on 11/12/2025, 2:18 PM

My projects are small, max 30 min 1080 so far.

I render to H264 HW and then x265 MKV to add the FLAC soundtrack with Handbrake using SW, not HW. For the finished product, I might render SW for H264 as I believe that gives the smallest files and best PQ, but it's so, so slow on my i2600K for the final product. but over the month of production, there are plenty of intermediate renders.

I'm not a great games player.

What exactly will a better graphics card do for me?

@Bria The higher end gpus will let you render h.265 quicker and with smaller files directly compared to multi-step h.264 to h.265 workflow you've been doing without the quality limit of the h.264 1st step. I've done that with a 5080 and and 4090 but I imagine a 3080 would also be a giant step up from a 1080.

In the scheme of things, video being so much more space-consuming than audio, using an mkv package to add flac audio might not be worth the trouble compared to just putting a 24bit pcm audio stream into a more widely recognized mov container... I've been using a powershell/ffmpeg script to do that to my YouTube uploads. It does a repackage of 10bit nvenc/h.265 mp4 renders from Vegas very, very quickly without a video transcode. Handbrake might be able to do the same.

See: https://www.vegascreativesoftware.info/us/forum/audio-for-youtube-uploads--149798/#ca943222