Getting a PC with an Intel ARC GPU; Will Resolve be ok?

So, it's time to upgrade my 8 year old PC (that I had updated with an 8 GB nvidia card in it and more RAM). I'm looking into getting a DELL PC with an Intel ARC A770 GPU, 13th gen CPU, and 64 GB of shareable RAM. This is the only non-Apple GPU in the desktop market that supports decoding h.265 10bit 4:2:2 footage.

So, my questions are:

1. So, I assume decoding such footage will be fine with Resolve, with hardware acceleration? I know that the ARC doesn't support h.264 10bit, but it does h.265 10bit.

2. Encoding in 8bit 4:2:0 will be equally fine, meaning, hardware accelerated? I know the card can do it, my question is in regards to Resolve working well with the drivers.

3. How much of a hit will I get if I color grade heavily, and use Fusion, compared to an nvidia card with lots of CUDAs?

4. Any other pitfalls I should know for going Intel instead of nVidia, in regards to Resolve?

4. Any other pitfalls I should know for going Intel instead of nVidia, in regards to Resolve?

Hi.

Suggest you have a look on this.

Quote last post from Juergen Engelke:

'Hi Daniel,

here are my experiences with 8K Rendering in Resolve Studio:
1. RAM minimal 64 GB
2. VRAM minimal 16 GB
3. PCIe 4.0 or higher is good for performance
4. NVMe SSD PCIe 4.0 or higher

Your questions:

A: No problems what so ever
B: Yes, no problems with rendering
C: No problems

Currently there are Driver problems - but Intel is working on it.
I had ca. 6 driver versions and there are still bugs in it.

But Performance has improved signifantly. And the Driver implementation (INTEL ARC Control and
Rendering Overlay) is excellent.

From: viewtopic.php?f=21&t=175171

Regards Carsten.

. I'm looking into getting a DELL PC with an Intel ARC A770 GPU, 13th gen CPU, and 64 GB of shareable RAM. This is the only non-Apple GPU in the desktop market that supports decoding h.265 10bit 4:2:2 footage.

Your CPU will do this on its own. You can use any GPU with it and be fine

https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/artic ... udio-2122/

You do of course need to buy the $300 studio key for resolve to access this functionality.

Also, Resolve Free on Windows will not even open 10 bit h.265 files. This is an undocumented, but well known limitation. I have a ticket open with BM to fix their documentation, but 7 months and no progress

viewtopic.php?f=21&t=166300&hilit=+documentation

.

2. Encoding in 8bit 4:2:0 will be equally fine, meaning, hardware accelerated? I know the card can do it, my question is in regards to Resolve working well with the drivers.

Yes, basically any GPU can do 8 bit 420. Resolve free will read these fine.

.

3. How much of a hit will I get if I color grade heavily, and use Fusion, compared to an nvidia card with lots of CUDAs?

4. Any other pitfalls I should know for going Intel instead of nVidia, in regards to Resolve?

$350 Arc 770 scored 1103 points, slowest on the chart. Also at $350 is the Nvidia 3060 12gb with 1970 points

https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/artic ... rformance/

If you intention is simply to have 4:2:2 decoding, there is no need for you to get an ARC GPU, your CPU has this functionality built in.


So I would recommend the 12gb 3060 at $350. The AMD 7900xt 20gb at $800 is probably the cheapest option if you need more VRAM

If you intention is simply to have 4:2:2 decoding, there is no need for you to get an ARC GPU, your CPU has this functionality built in.

So I would recommend the 12gb 3060 at $350. The AMD 7900xt 20gb at $800 is probably the cheapest option if you need more VRAM

But the 7900XT doesn't have an iGPU that will handle 4:2:2 decoding does it? -- that crown belongs to the iGPU on the Intel (non F) 12/13th gen processors only, isn't it?

Thank you for the replies, but I'm not a Resolve newbie. I'm specifically looking into having accelerated 4:2:2 10bit 4k HEVC decoding, not offloading it to CPU. Telling me "the CPU can do it" is not helpful to me or to anyone else. CPU decoding is way too slow for such a 4k video, and that's without adding plugins. I need GPU acceleration, that's why I specifically made the post.

So, to answer my own question, the truth is, the Intel ARC 770, is not that good with Resolve. While it indeed supports 4:2:2 10bit HEVC decoding in hardware (and its encoding/decoding speed is on par with nvidia), it lacks other parts of general GPU computation features that are extremely important when working in Resolve. Basically, the moment you color grade or use Fusion, or use some other functions/plugins, it performs up to 2.5x WORSE than my 7 year old nvidia GPU. Same goes for StableDiffusion AI generation, and 3D like Blender/Maya. Basically, as long as you want video encoding/decoding and 3D gaming, you're good with an Intel ARC GPU. But when it comes to general computation, basically, the menial workhorse stuff, Intel's architecture has gaping implementation holes.

So I have decided to go with an Apple Mac Studio, loaded with 64 GB of RAM. It will do everything I need at good-enough speeds, with 4:2:2 hardware decoding.

Thank you for the replies, but I'm not a Resolve newbie. I'm specifically looking into having accelerated 4:2:2 10bit 4k HEVC decoding, not offloading it to CPU. Telling me "the CPU can do it" is not helpful to me or to anyone else. CPU decoding is way too slow for such a 4k video, and that's without adding plugins. I need GPU acceleration, that's why I specifically made the post.

We're not talking about the CPU itself doing the decoding... it's the iGPU (a separate graphics controller built into the non-F series CPUs) that does the decoding/encoding. This doesn't use the regular CPU cores but some silicon specially set aside for such operations and it is as quick (or quicker) than the encoders found on NVIDIA cards in some cases.

NVIDIA's GPUs don't have 4:2:2 decode but the iGPU in the Intel CPUs do have this capability. Using this iGPU won't burden the actual CPU itself and it's *much* faster than using the CPU cores for this purpose.

You have to be careful though, the F-series of Intel CPUs don't have the iGPU. So (for instance) the i9 13900 has the iGPU but the i9 13900F doesn't.

No, there is no 10bit HEVC 4:2:2 hardware decoding support on any Intel GPU or iGPU, but the ARC ones. Even if it is HEVC, the moment it was encoded as 4:2:2, everything falls into the main CPU (without iGPU), unless you have an ARC GPU. So the trick you're mentioning here doesn't work with 4:2:2.

Ok, now I see that the 12/13th gen might have 4:2:2 10bit in-cpu. The question then becomes: does it work with Resolve to DECODE via iGPU, and then do ALL the other jobs (e.g. grading, plugins etc) via an nvidia card?

No, there is no 10bit HEVC 4:2:2 hardware decoding support on any Intel GPU or iGPU,

Incorrect

https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/artic ... udio-2122/

All the intel igpu since 11th gen can do H.265 4:2:2.

Incorrect

You read my post right after it, right?

The point remains: how well does it work for Intel to do the decoding and nvidia doing ALL the other things while editing, e.g. grading, fusion, effects?

Yes, it works, I'm using a 13th gen Intel CPU (K-model) together with an Nvidia GPU. As long as the iGPU is enabled in the bios Resolve can use the available accelerated encoders/decoders of both the Intel CPU and the Nvidia GPU, while using only the Nvidia for GPU tasks in Resolve. There are separate options for them in the Resolve Preferences. Just don't connect the iGPU to a monitor.

The Studio version of DaVinci Resolve is required in order to get all the acceleration options.

GPU.png (37.13 KiB) Viewed 13596 times

Decode Options.png (30.91 KiB) Viewed 13596 times

Encoders.png (11.2 KiB) Viewed 13596 times

Since you didn't specify which OS, I'll just mention that while the same H.264/H.265 hardware acceleration works fine in the Studio version on Linux, it doesn't support AAC audio encode/decode. It's only supported on Windows/macOS.

Thank you Roger, this is awesome info. I might just go for the Intel NUC 13 in that case, with a 13th gen i9 Intel CPU with a 770 iGPU, 64GB RAM, and an nVidia 12GB 3060. At $2600 price, that PC should do the trick I'm trying to do using your information.

Normally, I would just shoot at 10bit 4:2:0 (and in fact, I prefer that format, because cameras don't give you more bitrate for 4:2:2 over 4:2:0, even if the format requires about 10% more bitrate to get the same quality), but our Canon R6 MkII only does 4:2:2. So yeah, all that bruhaha, just because of the Canon that my husband decided to buy (I wanted the Sony FX30 or A7IV, that do give you the choice of format). So the money we saved by getting a cheaper camera (husband had a coupon from work to get the R6 MkII for real cheap) will now have to go towards an expensive machine to be able to decode 4:2:2. Totally ridiculous situation, I know.

Normally, I would just shoot at 10bit 4:2:0 (

To confirm, you already own Studio? You won't be able to open those files in Free.

Yes I do. I own a bmpcc og and a bmpcc 4k. Studio came with the latter.

I just bought one and it's going straight, back as soon as you add noise reduction it exports the footage choppy, intel had no answers for me.

Do you have a second GPU in there, or are you only using the Intel iGPU?

I'm running a 30 series GPU. Due to Ngreedia's 40 series pricing, I'm considering putting in an ARC A380 as a secondary card, strictly for AV1 encoding / decoding. Wonder if that will give me the same options in resolve as the Intel iGPU and Nvidia combination roger.magnusun reported?

Hi.

Have you considered one of the coming Graphis card?

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 8 GB Launches on 24th May & AMD Radeon RX 7600 8 GB On 25th May, acording to:

https://wccftech.com/nvidia-geforce-rtx ... -25th-may/

Regards Carsten.

I'm considering putting in an ARC A380 as a secondary card, strictly for AV1 encoding / decoding.

Hi.

You don't tell us, if you want to use an existent motherboard og want to buy a new one?
But to use two GPU, you will need a motherboard with more than one PCIe x16/ slots,
as this one with an x8/ and another x8/ slot.

Resolve don't use nVidea SLI or AMD crossfire technology to handle two and more GPU's.
But have developed its own system, where 2 equal GPU's can SHARE the total load.
If the VRam size is different, will it only use the VRams size from the GPU, with the lowest
VRam amount.

So your questen will requere some program changes in Resolve, to be possiable?

Intel Quick Sync is Intel's brand for its dedicated video encoding and decoding hardware core.
Quick Sync is until now a dedicated hardware core on the processor die.

But the latest version of Intel Quick Sync do include Intel Arc Alchemist discrete GPUs,
which adds 8K 10-bit AV1 hardware encoding.

So I wonder, how large the needed program changes will be in Resolve?

Regards Carsten.

I assume you can do the same thing with a separate ARC as I outlined with the iGPU earlier in this thread. Disable it for processing in Resolve Preferences and you can still use it for decode/encode. But it would be good to have it confirmed by someone who has the card.

Just information for the forum, EVGA is selling out B stock 3060 12 G cards. Every few months they reduce the price below $300. I bought one and it looks virtually new and works fine. Keep an eye on this site and grab one when they reduce the price:

https://www.evga.com/Products/productli ... +3060+12GB

Price changes from day to day. Right now they are not a bargain.

Regards,

Mark

The point of this thread is to be able to decode 10bit 4:2:2, which is what cameras shoot as these days, not if there's a new AMD or nVidia model out there. So far, none of these support 4:2:2. Only Intel can. Let's hope that the next gen cards support that. But none of the 3x or 4x series of nvidia will. Only the 5x might do.

The point of this thread is to be able to decode 10bit 4:2:2, which is what cameras shoot as these days, not if there's a new AMD or nVidia model out there. So far, none of these support 4:2:2. Only Intel can.

Apple too.

The point of this thread is to be able to decode 10bit 4:2:2, which is what cameras shoot as these days, not if there's a new AMD or nVidia model out there. So far, none of these support 4:2:2. Only Intel can. Let's hope that the next gen cards support that. But none of the 3x or 4x series of nvidia will. Only the 5x might do.

Hi.

There are two diffent ways to use a Intel ARC Graphics card.

Yes you can use a Intel Arc A770. It come with of 16 GB vRam. But Intel is new to separate GPU's and forum user Juergen Engelke have reportet driver problems.

The other way is to use a Intel ARC A380 only for decode/encode. Togetter with an AMD or nVidea graphics card. Then you can choose any Graphics card as you like, or even reuse your current 8 GB nVidia card.

But I wonder, if the curent version of Resolve support two different brand of GPU's operating as described?
Or if we ned a new version of Resolve?

Regards Carsten.

The advantage of an Intel CPU and a Nvidia GPU is that you can get the best of both worlds. Decode and encode with CPU and use the Nvidia power for other Resolve capacities where it is reportedly superior to an ARC GPU.

Choosing an ARC GPU the advantage is that you can choose an AMD CPU, nevertheless i don't think that is really an important choice.
Another possible advantage to be determined is if the ARC GPU is significantly faster than the Intel CPU in encoding part.


Choosing an Intel ARC GPU cannot be used concurrently with a Nvidia GPU in Resolve, but an Intel CPU can.

Hi.

Quote: “Blackmagic Design added support for AV1 decoding in Davinci Resolve 17.2. We are excited to now optimize Davinci Resolve for the latest Intel Arc graphics and next-generation Quick Sync Video technology, to be able to leverage its hardware-accelerated AV1 encoding capabilities. With our strong partnership and Intel’s unwavering support for the Creator community, we are looking forward to be able to fully optimize our software for Intel CPUs and GPUs and enhance the user experience for our customers."

Rohit Gupta, Director, DaVinci Software Engineering.

From: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en ... eator.html

English is not my native language. So how do you read the above?

Regards Carsten.

Seems just a generic declaration of AV1 support for Intel CPU and GPU's.