How important are Cuda Cores for building a PC intended for media creation?

[Boo_OS]

Hi there,

I'm looking to upgrade my GPU, my PC is a mid tier workstation intended for Adobe Suite and 3D modelling. I've always been an Nvidia user but due to multiple issues with two cards now due to faulty memory, lack of VRam, and buggy utilities, I've been considering taking the leap to team red and grabbing a

AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT.​

Basically I want to know, how much am I going to miss the benefits Nvidia cards currently offer in media creation. I'm not particularly up to date with current cards as I took a long (7 year) hiatus from PC building, so if somebody could break that'd be great.

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My current specs:

• i7 12700

• Corsair VENGEANCE LPX DDR4 RAM 32GB (2x16GB) 3200MHz​

• RTX 3060Ti MSI Ventus 2x OC LHR >>> AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT (???)​

• 1x WD BLUE SN570 1TB M.2 2280 | 2x Crucial BX500 SATA SSD 2TB, 2.5 | 1x Seagate BarraCuda, 4TB

• TUF GAMING B660-PLUS WIFI D4​

• RM850X V2​

 

[cosmogenesis]

I think Adobe has features for Nvidia graphics cards. Well the gaming featured of Nvidia cards you don’t need ray tracing and super sampling (DLSS). However the cuda cores are important I’d say in premier elements

 

[BS Dave]

Afaik Nvidia GFX cards are used exporting say h264 etc in premiere via nvidia codec (my 3080 is at least as fast as the M1 studios at work quite probably faster) as well as when applying effects, there have been advances in recent builds to do with the general speed of the timeline but I don't know if they are nvidia specific

 

[gpuerrilla]

I would list the frequency and importance of the apps you use first.

 

[Tetras]

Basically I want to know, how much am I going to miss the benefits Nvidia cards currently offer in media creation. I'm not particularly up to date with current cards as I took a long (7 year) hiatus from PC building, so if somebody could break that'd be great.

You need to answer what gpuerrilla asked because it depends on which apps and exactly what you're doing. I've watched a fair few videos on this channel and his general advice is: 2D work you can use either, but for 3D nvidia is often much faster. From the benchmarks I've seen (which are subject to driver and app updates and this can change things A LOT), if you do a lot of 3D work, AMD is significantly slower (and by significantly I mean, not even in the same league, you just would not buy one for professional use).

 

[Chuk_Chuk]

Also what type of scenes are you building in 3D? How much VRAM are you going to need because once you run out you lose significant chunk of speed (assuming it doesn’t insta crash).

 

[Boo_OS]

You need to answer what gpuerrilla asked because it depends on which apps and exactly what you're doing. I've watched a fair few videos on this channel and his general advice is: 2D work you can use either, but for 3D nvidia is often much faster. From the benchmarks I've seen (which are subject to driver and app updates and this can change things A LOT), if you do a lot of 3D work, AMD is significantly slower (and by significantly I mean, not even in the same league, you just would not buy one for professional use).

I would list the frequency and importance of the apps you use first.

I mainly use Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator for rasterized and vector graphics, I would say I use 3D software the least to be honest. Maybe once every every few weeks when a clients commission requires it, it's definitely not all that important to me. Video editing (PR, AE) however is something that I'm interested in pursuing more often, the type of video editing that requires MULTIPLE files and plugins that would need to be compressed video Adobe Media Encoder.

 

[Tetras]

would need to be compressed video Adobe Media Encoder.

I don't know about using this ^^, but in the videos I've watched from the channel I linked, he seemed to think that AMD was fine for video work. It was 3D apps like Blender that it was much slower.

 

[gpuerrilla]

Was going to reference this guy as he has done a lot of videos on the topic. Not to say he has his bias but bear that in mind. Now I do recall watching some other videos where AMD has done very well in some apps because they have started working with the vendors products.

However looking at what you have I would stick with the 3060Ti for a bit.

 

[Boo_OS]

Was going to reference this guy as he has done a lot of videos on the topic. Not to say he has his bias but bear that in mind. Now I do recall watching some other videos where AMD has done very well in some apps because they have started working with the vendors products.

However looking at what you have I would stick with the 3060Ti for a bit.

Yeah probably for the best, at least until FSR 3.1 comes out. I'm struggling to pull the trigger on an £600 on a card with only 12gb of Vram.

 

[gpuerrilla]

Lets see what features rdna4 brings and the price. Right now anything your jumping to is going to cost a lot for not a huge gain. If you were going to use software which would distinctly speed up your day then its different but if your doing something once every few weeks its definitely not a consideration imo.

 

[Tetras]

However looking at what you have I would stick with the 3060Ti for a bit.

I never noticed the OP has a 3060 Ti, oops. I agree with you, I wouldn't get a 7800 XT unless there's clear benchmark data that it would offer a significant improvement.

AMD's workstation performance can be so hit and miss that in some cases the 7800 XT could even be slower than the 3060 Ti.

 

[Boo_OS]

I never noticed the OP has a 3060 Ti, oops. I agree with you, I wouldn't get a 7800 XT unless there's clear benchmark data that it would offer a significant improvement.

AMD's workstation performance can be so hit and miss that in some cases the 7800 XT could even be slower than the 3060 Ti.

Do you think a 4070Ti super would be bottlenecked with my current system? It is obviously much more expensive than the 4070 / 7800XT, but it offers what I want out of both cards.

 

[bloodiedathame]

Build a machine based on the ones they sell at Puget Systems. Or get a M1 Max/M2 Max/M3 Max Apple like I did. Not turned my 5800X/3080 on since.

 

[gpuerrilla]

Focus on what software you are using, continue improving and start paying attention (logging) the time it takes for certain jobs to run. Then you can gauge if you got a 4070Ti if its going to make big qol difference or just extract hundreds of pounds just for an itch..

 

[Raelgun]

Honestly if its pure productivity then look at Apple, even davinchi resolve h.265 performance and quality is better then Nvidia and AMD.

My 4K renders on my M1 Macbook air yields like 70-80 FPS on the render speed.

My 7800XT for the same sorta setting is around 61 FPS.

when I had the 3070ti, it was around 40 FPS for similar setting, this was using h.265.

 

[fs123]

This Premiere Pro benchmark video should give you an idea of how AMD performs vs Nvidia. The 7800XT 16GB actually looks better than the 4070Ti 12GB. It has more VRAM and AMD has made good progress in the software recently. Also ZLUDA can run CUDA code on AMD cards without any performance penalty. The argument over which vendor does content creation better doesn't apply anymore.

 

[bloodiedathame]

Have a look on here: https://benchmarks.pugetsystems.com/benchmarks/

Filter your results accordingly. They seem to hide 'Apple' results from their main list so make sure you add 'Apple' to system specs if you're intrigued...

 

[gpuerrilla]

There is another guy (wendell at L1 techs) who covers AMD a lot but he tends to use linux as an OS. It all depends on what productivity, conversions or bulk tasks your planning to do. Don't forget when your switching ecosystem like going mac there will be things to factor in like software/subscriptions that you didn't have/need beforehand. I can see though also its strengths which ultimately only the OP knows.

 

[Tetras]

Do you think a 4070Ti super would be bottlenecked with my current system? It is obviously much more expensive than the 4070 / 7800XT, but it offers what I want out of both cards.

Bottleneck considerations for content creation are totally different to bottlenecks for gaming. If you're heavily using the 3060 Ti at the moment (you'd have to monitor your usage when you're getting slow downs or running long duration workloads) then the 4070 Ti Super might be worthwhile, but if you are finding that the CPU is being used a lot, then no.

I'd check the benchmarks on Puget too, as suggested above.