Is my PC enough to run Resolve 14?

Get answers to your questions about color grading, editing and finishing with DaVinci Resolve.
  • Author
  • Message
Offline

Glen Stromquist

  • Posts: 77
  • Joined: Sat Oct 01, 2016 6:19 pm

Is my PC enough to run Resolve 14?

PostTue Nov 14, 2017 4:24 am

I've been using both 12.5 and more recently, 14 on this PC, sometimes it works good and I don't even need to generate optimized video for some clips, other times even when I optimize I don't get smooth preview playback. Watched numerous youtube videos on speeding resolve up, I have tried the different proxy settings as well as render cache.

My system is as follows: (taken from Piriform speccy)

==========================================
Windows 10 Home 64-bit
CPU
Intel Core i7 6800K @ 3.40GHz 27 °C
Broadwell-E/EP 14nm Technology
RAM
16.0GB Unknown @ 1199MHz (16-16-16-36)
Motherboard
MSI X99A RAIDER (MS-7885) (SOCKET 0) 30 °C
Graphics
U28E590 (3840x2160@60Hz)
8192MB ATI AMD Radeon RX 480 (ATI) 66 °C
Storage
931GB TOSHIBA DT01ACA100 (SATA) 30 °C
465GB Samsung SSD 850 EVO 500GB (SSD) 30 °C
1863GB Western Digital WDC WD2002FAEX-007BA0 (SATA) 35 °C

===============================================

I read through the configuration guide and see that the recommended hardware is more than what I have in most cases, and I'm also not running the recommended Windows 10 creative edition.

I bought the system when I was primarily using Vegas 13 for editing, but I'm trying to switch to Resolve for editing as the render times are much better and the colour grading much nicer to use.

I'm thinking of bumping my RAM up to 24 or 32GB, adding a 1TB SSD and replacing WD 2TB drive with a newer WD Black 6TB 7200 rpm drive (existing 2TB WD is over 4 years old & benchmarks are slow compared to the Toshiba 1TB that came with system) - or perhaps if necessary get a whole new system if I'm going to get serious about using Resolve as my primary editing program. I just bought this system just over a year ago though and would prefer to use it, if possible.

The system came with just the 1TB 7200 rpm drive, I added the SSD & reinstalled the OS on it, and 2TB drive I moved over from my old Dell desktop.

I suppose I could go back to using Vegas for editing and Resolve for final colour grading like I used to, but I'm really starting to like the editing interface in Resolve.

Thanks in advance.
Intel i7 6800K 6 core CPU, 32GB RAM
MSI X99A MB
500GB M2 SSD 2X1TB sata SSD, 6TB Barracuda pro HDD
8GB AMD RX480 GPU
Windows 10 Pro 64

HP Omen Laptop
i7 8750 6 Core CPU, 16GB RAM
500GB M2 SSD & 1TB 7200 rpm HDD
8GB RTX 2070 Max-Q GPU
Windows 10 Pro
Offline

Jim Simon

  • Posts: 29809
  • Joined: Fri Dec 23, 2016 1:47 am

Re: Is my PC enough to run Resolve 14?

PostTue Nov 14, 2017 6:56 pm

I run Resolve just fine on a much lesser system.

I do use only CinemaDNG media, though. (I don't think I'll ever go back to H.264.)
My Biases:

You NEED training.
You NEED a desktop.
You NEED a calibrated (non-computer) display.
Offline

John Paines

  • Posts: 5787
  • Joined: Tue Jul 28, 2015 4:04 pm

Re: Is my PC enough to run Resolve 14?

PostTue Nov 14, 2017 7:13 pm

This system should be more than enough for basic editing and grading. Why you should be having trouble with OM is unclear. What exactly are you doing? And at what resolution? You might want to supply a screen grab of your master preferences.

As for h.264 playback (if that's the main trouble), better hardware alone may not solve it. Performance might improve (a lot) with the Studio version, but unfortunately you can't take advantage of CUDA hardware acceleration for decoding with that AMD GPU. Anyway, that's my understanding.
Offline

Glen Stromquist

  • Posts: 77
  • Joined: Sat Oct 01, 2016 6:19 pm

Re: Is my PC enough to run Resolve 14?

PostTue Nov 14, 2017 7:21 pm

Thanks - right now I'm using it mostly for editing and rendering 4k stock video clips, and editing 4K files taken with a Phantom 4. The clips are <60 seconds and are rendered in mov with photo-jpeg codec, and Resolve does this much faster than Vegas could. I bought the system with the AMD GPU because they're supposed to work better with Vegas, which was my main editor at the time.

Anything other than stock clips I usually render in 1080, but will soon be using 4k, but when I try and render longer 4K video in Resolve it crashes a lot. I usually choose "best" option for bit rate and h264 for codec if I'm just compiling a video for youtube etc.

I'm not sure if some of the issues are with Resolve or I need to tweak my system more. Sometimes I'll start it up and I can edit 4k with no issues at all, other times the edit preview is laggy no matter what I do.
Intel i7 6800K 6 core CPU, 32GB RAM
MSI X99A MB
500GB M2 SSD 2X1TB sata SSD, 6TB Barracuda pro HDD
8GB AMD RX480 GPU
Windows 10 Pro 64

HP Omen Laptop
i7 8750 6 Core CPU, 16GB RAM
500GB M2 SSD & 1TB 7200 rpm HDD
8GB RTX 2070 Max-Q GPU
Windows 10 Pro
Offline

Dan Sherman

  • Posts: 1185
  • Joined: Fri Jul 01, 2016 11:07 pm

Re: Is my PC enough to run Resolve 14?

PostTue Nov 14, 2017 7:34 pm

I agree with John, we need to know more about the codecs and resolutions you are working with, as well as what you are doing to them.
AMD 7950X | AMD 7900XTX (23.20.24) | DDR5-6000 CL30-40-40-96 2x32 GB | Multiple PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME | ASUS x670e HERO | Win 11 Pro 23H2 | Resolve Studio 18.6.5 B7
Offline

Glen Stromquist

  • Posts: 77
  • Joined: Sat Oct 01, 2016 6:19 pm

Re: Is my PC enough to run Resolve 14?

PostWed Nov 15, 2017 6:21 pm

I am also noticing that 14 seems to crash a lot, especially if I have a few other things open when I open it. Also getting windows out of memory errors but I think this is more a windows 10 issue than it is a Resolve issue.

I think some of my issues may be fixed with OS/GPU tweaks - I notice that sometimes even playing back 4K video on windows 10 media players it is stuttery, when watching the AMD system monitor the GPU will be hardly working at all during playback at these times.

Does anyone tweak their system specifically for running Resolve?

I may try 14.1 and see if things improve any.
Intel i7 6800K 6 core CPU, 32GB RAM
MSI X99A MB
500GB M2 SSD 2X1TB sata SSD, 6TB Barracuda pro HDD
8GB AMD RX480 GPU
Windows 10 Pro 64

HP Omen Laptop
i7 8750 6 Core CPU, 16GB RAM
500GB M2 SSD & 1TB 7200 rpm HDD
8GB RTX 2070 Max-Q GPU
Windows 10 Pro

Return to DaVinci Resolve

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: Google [Bot], Singularity and 146 guests