@CrespoFTW Nvenc render settings. Items 2 and 7 are pretty similar and good, see chart. I use a Preset of HQ and RC mode of Vbr HQ, Some combinations with high data rates only produce typically zero byte files, items 3, 8 and 12. Other combinations are suitable for streaming, but therefore have extremely long seek times, not suitable for editing, for example item 11.

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I found similar issue with a laptop RTX 3080 card. In VP it appears that these newer cards are not optimised for rendering, when the project is non trivial. It appears aok for HW acc. playback performance within VP.

I did a render comparison outside of VP and found that it performed as expected, very well indeed.

I used my VFR2CFR ffmpeg based util (link via signature) to test using a single video clip, no special effects. You could use say Handbrake or similar also.

My guess is that you are getting the benefit within VP if its a trivial project, but not if FX are used, then you might as well be using a previous generation card.

@CrespoFTW you need to post the media info for the footage you shot. I know if its mov or mp4 with avc or hevc, gpus can decode it in hardware... which has an impact on render speed. Not sure about mxf clips from Canon... I heard Vegas was working on that if the streams are avc or hevc in the container. Also, if its avc, I think it has it has to be 420 color... the gpu makers are only just starting to support 422 color but I think its only for hevc at the moment using the Intel Iris/Xe. You can evaluate that by watching the utilization charts in Win10 Task Manager while playing in Vegas. Or better yet, do a transcode with ffmpeg using either the h264_nvenc or hevc_nvenc codec with "-hwaccel auto" ahead of the input stream. Just make sure you have the latest and greatest Nvidia Studio drivers... they were updated specifically for the 3080's.

From Magix' marketing material, they state Vegas has built-in acceleration for AMD GPUs, as if it's an exclusive feature to AMD products only (i.e., not NVIDIA). That's why I chose an AMD over NVIDIA for my desktop. Am I missing something here?

Look up "RTX 3080 Disappointing" on the internet. It's not a Vegas shortcoming.

Look up "RTX 3080 Disappointing" on the internet. It's not a Vegas shortcoming.

This is most likely why the 3000 series perform badly with Vegas

The RTX 3070 has a far greater CUDA core count, but it’s not quite as simple as the numbers suggest. The RTX 3000-series includes its INT32 cores in the count, as they can also operate as more typical FP32 CUDA cores when needed. That means that the RTX 3070 has 2,944 typical CUDA cores and an additional 2,944 that can be used for the same purpose. The RTX 2080 Ti has 4,352 (FP32) CUDA cores and an additional 4,352 INT32 cores. That means that it has significantly more CUDA cores in total than the RTX 3070, but they are less versatile. They’re also based on a last-generation design and operate at a lower clock speed, so in many games, the RTX 3070 could well pull ahead — especially when it can leverage more of its multi-faceted cores for FP32 calculations.

Vegas doesn't know what to do with the new cores, it can only use the old cores

In this post on 12-19-2020, I compared a 3060 Ti to my AMD VEGA 64... For the type of work I do, the new Nvidia was slower than my old AMD GPU... On a 1 minute portion of video from an actual / average paid project, the 3060 TI rendered it 17% slower. On the "Red Car" sample project discussed on these Vegas forums, the 3060 TI was 21% slower... And, the Nvidia GPU could not render more than (3) instances of Vegas to MP4 at once. Since I like to edit new paid projects on one PC while batch rendering 4-5 clients' finished projects on a 2nd PC (with a copy of the source files & final VEG), the Nvidia is not able to handle my current workflow... I ended-up selling the 3060 TI to fund a 2nd PC build using a VEGA 56 I got for $200 before the mining craze hit...

All of that said, old GPUs are way overpriced today, including my VEGAs which now go for $600-$850 used... Also, most apps including NLEs like DaVinici & Adobe PP, benefit from the new GPUs as benchmarked by Puget Systems here. So a future release of Vegas could actually utilize the new GPUs to a greater extent as well as CPUs with more cores...

However, I'm all about best bang/buck NOW since I can always upgrade parts when they are better supported... My 2 main editing workstations have an Intel 9900K & 11700K CPU and VEGA 64 & 56 GPU. In V18 they are faster than many single systems that cost as much as I paid for both...

All of that said, old GPUs are way overpriced today, including my VEGAs which now go for $600-$850 used... Also, most apps including NLEs like DaVinici & Adobe PP, benefit from the new GPUs as benchmarked by Puget Systems here. So a future release of Vegas could actually utilize the new GPUs to a greater extent as well as CPUs with more cores...

2080TI is a classic card, 10% more powerful then rtx3070 with software that's fully compatible with 3070 but Vegas is not so it is much more powerful in Vegas but selling cheaper then 3070's

@TheRhino to make things simple, VEGAS Pro optimize very well if we use Intel CPU and AMD GPU?

For Vegas 18, I prefer Intel CPUs & AMD GPUs. Current versions of Vegas thrive on CPU core SPEED vs. core count as long as the CPU is paired with a capable GPU... According to Techgage:

"...a GPU is really important to video encoding, and if for some reason you still wish to stick strictly to CPU-only, you’ll want a beefy chip. Adding a GPU to the mix almost breathes new life into a CPU, allowing both to work in tandem to get the encode done much quicker. In some cases, the faster clock speeds of smaller core-count chips can help propel them high in a chart."

Paired with a RTX 3070 GPU, Techgage demonstrated how the higher-clocked 6 & 8 core Intel CPUs out-performed CPUs with more cores running at slower clocks...

My 9900K & 11700K CPUs can run all cores at 5 ghz stable & on certain tasks, the processors' included UHD 730 & 750 iGPUs also add to the performance. Because the 11700K also has more Instructions per Cycle (IPC), on certain tasks it performs up to 30% faster than my 9900K although they have the same 5 ghz clock speed...

Regarding GPUs, I expect future releases of Vegas to better-utilize Nvidia 3xxx GPUs like BM DaVinci & Adobe PP have done... However, V18 runs great on older AMD VEGA & Radeon VII GPUs as noted in another Techgage benchmark. A while back I only paid $350 for my liquid-cooled VEGA 64 & $200 for my fan-cooled VEGA 56... I have no intention of throwing money at new GPUs unless I see significantly better numbers... However, Vegas 19 will likely be released within a couple months & it may better-utilize multi-core CPUs & newer GPUs, so the best bang/buck CPU & GPU could change once we see some new benchmark numbers with V19...