Davinci Resolve on Windows 11

All

I searched through the forum but was not able to find anything that helps with me my issue.

I recently got a Lenovo ThinkStation P520 (Xeon 2235 Processor, NVDIA RTX 4000 GPU, 2 TB SSD and 6TB HDD).It is refurbished but works like brand new and I do not see any difference.

Except that Davinci Resolve is not performing at all.
I have in installed Version 19 (I made sure that I installed the correct version for the OS and CPU).

Davanci Resolve comes up fine. I am able to import media. I am able to drag media to timeline. Thereon, moving the media or right-click to change duration and all such operations takes forever -- get Not Responding Message on the Title. After a long time the media does moves right or left. Task Manager does not show high usage on anything.


So far I have been using Davinci Resolve on my Mac M1 mini and it runs fast. But its RAM and Storage are a fraction of what I have on the Think Station. I also think NVIDIA RTX 4000 is an adequate GPU (even though it has only 8GB memoery). I was counting on using this Machine for Video Editing and AI related work (notfor gaming). I think there is something amiss in the configuration or set up and I cannot figure out yet what it is.

Yes GPU is enabled and I have checked it. The NVIDIA card has three Display Ports and one USB C.I am using one of the Display Ports and connecting it via DP -> HDMI -> Roku TV/Monitor. All these setups are working fine. So also all my DAWs and other Programs.


Appreciate any tips you may have.
This has been a unexpected massive nasty surprise.

br Sri.

Make sure you are using GPU drivers from NVIDIA's site, not the drivers that Windows installs by default.

Brendan

Thanks for reiterating that Checklist item.
Yes I have done that and I will do that again.

br Sri.

An Update. I did a few things and not sure which onehelped me "resolve"the issue(s).

a) On the GPU I had connecting cables on a DP POrt (connected via HDMI to my Minotro/TV) as well as the USB-C (though this was not connected t any monitor. I removed the USB C Cable. I think this was probably not causing the issue.

b) I was not seeing the HDMI out for the sound output. Audio was coming out of the tiny built-in speakers. I had to play with the device manager and sound settings to get the HDML output to show. I earlier tried to do this on the NVDIA Panel but that did not help much and i carefully stayed away fromessing up thge video.

c)All along You Tibe and Windows Media Players wouldplay audio out fine via HDMI on my Monitor/TV.

d) Now onto Resolves-> Preferences. For audio Output I selected System Audio. I could now see the HDMI output. I selected it and then changed the engine to ASIO. Now it locked the HDMI device for the output.

e) Boom.Audio started coming out on the Monitor/TV and even drag and drop started performing better, but still too sloww for use.

f) I now set Project ->Render Cache to Smart. Saved and restarted Davinci Resolve

g) What a difference.. Things are working like NOrmal - though I think it should be much faster given all the resources at its disposal. At least it is now usable.

h) I did a Render task on a 5 minutes project. It was very very fast. So I know that GPU is being used in the mix and well.I am happy about this.

Overall, looks like I am progressing well and now I am off to discovery and tweaking -rather than being stalled from use.

Somehow various moving parts seem to have come together and working well. If any of you have wisdom to make more sense of what might have solved my issue it would be great. Anyways thanks in advance for any thinking cycles you might have allocated to this, or might allocate now.

br Sri.

Well I might have been overly optimistic.

Editing is still extremely slow.
Have to often wait for several miniutes for getting any responses to my Mouse movements.
Like repositioning a clip, chnaging a property etc.

Task Manager-> Performance does not indicate any signs of resource limitation.
Rendering seems to be going fast - almost on par with my Mac M1 Mini.

Any tips for:

a) How much memory should i allocate to Davinci?
b) Same for Fusion?

What are the right ways to enable Caching so access timeline or media storage (internally or disk or virtually) is not slowing things down??

Thanks in advance,

Sri