Recommended Nvidia Consumer Graphics Card to video Conversions

[Ken_Z]

Hi everyone

I'm not a gamer but i do need advice on a graphics card please.

I've currently got an Nvidia GeForce GT640 graphics card. I'm very happy with it most of the time, except for when it's trying to convert HD and 4K videos from say mkv to mp4 format, then it takes forever. It does appear to offload some of the conversion to the graphics card as monitoring the GPU in task manager shows the "GPU Video Encode" graph running at 40% but my CPU running at 90% coverting one file (7GB). BTW i use Aimersoft Video converter ultimate for my conversions. I'e already ticked "Enable GPU Acceleration" in the preferences. Note that Aimersoft software supports Radeon AMD, Nvidoa Cuda and Nvidia NVENC for GPU acceleration.
My mothboard is a GA-Z87-HD3 with a intel i7-4770K CPU which again is sufficient for my needs for everything else.
The moterboard has 1 x PCIe x16 running at x16, 1 x PCI Express running at x4 plus 2 x PCI Express x1 slots

I'm after a graphics card for the consumer market (not professional - can't afford that!) that will speed up the conversion of video formats by offloading the majority if not all of the conversion to the graphics card and will fit into my existing hardware.
I'd prefer an nvidia card, but if there isn't one that will do the job, or another make (e.g. AMD) will do the job at a significant cost saving then i'll look at that.
I'd also like the graphics card to have 2 x HDMI outputs as i have two ProLite X2783HSU monitors attached, altough if it's got 1 x HDMI and 1 x DVI then that can work too.

Any help/advice gratefully appreciated

Regards

Ken

 

[Tetras]

It is difficult to find benchmarks for encoding performance across generations (at least, I haven't been able to).

You might want to look into the Arc cards that OCUK sell for around £100, the A310 and A380, since Intel usually does very well with this kind of workload.

Typically, I would not recommend Arc if you don't have rebar, but I think that only influences gaming performance rather than encoding performance.

 

[Pooh]

What’s your budget??

 

[Armageus]

BTW i use Aimersoft Video converter ultimate for my conversions. I'e already ticked "Enable GPU Acceleration" in the preferences. Note that Aimersoft software supports Radeon AMD, Nvidoa Cuda and Nvidia NVENC for GPU acceleration.

NVENC is likely what you want to look for these days (It's essentially a specialised chip or part of the GPU that specifically does video encoding, whereas CUDA uses the GPU "Cores" to do the work, so a more powerful GPU is needed to brute force the work)

I'm after a graphics card for the consumer market (not professional - can't afford that!)

You say that, but some of the professional cards can be had cheaply second hand - something like a Quadro P620 can be had for around £30 (all you would need is 2x Mini DP to HDMI adapters), and will accelerate almost every video codec as shown in NVIDIA's matrix below

Video Encode and Decode GPU Support Matrix

Find the related video encoding and decoding support for all NVIDIA GPU products.

developer.nvidia.com

The P620 is a Pascal generation NVIDIA card so 3 generations newer than your GT640, and is broadly equivalent to a Geforce GTX 1050

(The Professional cards also tend to be slightly more compatible in older hardware rather than Consumer cards - which are normally focused on performance)

 

[Ch3m1c4L]

Intel arc a310 or nvidia 1660 for the newer nvenc in that vs 10 series, 40 series has even newer but prob not worth it for the cost, I'd go Intel if av1 is required.

If your software doesn't let you select to use nvenc as the encoder, get handbrake to convert stuff, it's free.