New Graphics Card

Hello,

I need to update my graphics card. I've been looking at an Nvidia MSI GeForce RTX 3060 Ventus 2X 12G OC. The prices have been fluctuating a lot, and availability is getting sparce at times as well. The RTX3000 series cards have been discontinued and it's only the RTX4000 and RTX5000 series now.

I work on 1080P, H.264 video, so nothing crazy, I'm only using DaVinci Resolve free version, I typically do guitar cover videos. I have a lot of parts and angles, and it's a lot of quick couple second jumps between the angles. I have found when I'm working on my videos, it works best if I typically just stack all my layers and angles, and cut/trim as needed to get my video clip on top that I want. This can get up to like 7 or 8 layers of video I'm frequently cutting/trimming. When I do this, my graphics typically lag, and I have to wait for my PC to catch up.

I'm currently using an AMD Ryzen Ryzen 9 3900X 12 Core CPU, 16GB RAM, but an old GeForce 970 graphics card.

Is an RTX 3060 12GB going to be good enough for what I do, to help my video editing process? Or do I need to look for a different graphics card yet?

I would wait for the 5060. If Nvidia adds the same 264/265 accelerated decode as in the 5070, it will make your life easier. The 3060 is fine. But the 264 decode is limited to 8 bit 4:2:0.

The RTX3060 still holds up pretty well today on a "value" basis if you can get it at the right price.

The 10-bit support of the 5000 series cards is nice to have as I think we'll see an increasing number of even cheap cameras offering 10 bit formats. However, I do quite a bit of 4K work, even with output from the DJI Pocket 3 in DLog which is 10-bit H265 at 50FPS and with 10-bit 4K 25FPS from my Panasonic camcorder and find that my CPU (an old i7 8700) still allows realtime playback without transcodes or proxies.

If you're using a Canon with 10-bit then all bets are off -- a true 10-bit hardware decode is worth its weight in gold then.

I would wait for the 5060. If Nvidia adds the same 264/265 accelerated decode as in the 5070, it will make your life easier. The 3060 is fine. But the 264 decode is limited to 8 bit 4:2:0.

I'm using two Nikon DSLR's, a D5200 and a D750, they are only recording in H.264, 8 bit 4:2:0. I'm not planning on buying any new, better, more expensive cameras soon!

If going the 5060, I see they have an 8GB version, and a 16GB version, but the price is starting about $475 for the 16GB card. I'm looking a bit more "budget friendly" why I was looking at the 12GB RTX 3060 for $329.

The 10-bit support of the 5000 series cards is nice to have as I think we'll see an increasing number of even cheap cameras offering 10 bit formats. .

10bit 4.2.2 HEVC has been common on virtually everything released for years now.

I wonder if the OP issues are really related to the GPU and not the low system memory.

The OP should open task manager and watch it.

10bit 4.2.2 HEVC has been common on virtually everything released for years now.

I wonder if the OP issues are really related to the GPU and not the low system memory.

The OP should open task manager and watch it.

You are correct to that, I currently have 16GB of RAM, but have the sticks to bump it up to 32GB of RAM when I do all my upgrades at once. When my video gets laggy, I do look at my Task Manager, and wait for everything to idle down - mostly CPU and RAM, and that is why I was looking at upgrading RAM, period.

I am also currently running an old GeForce 970 card, and from what I can find, that card really isn't supported for DaVinci Resolve for H.264 encoding. So I think the graphics card is a big bottleneck. I have a decent CPU with a lot of cores (AMD Ryzen 9 3900X), will be bumping up to 32GB of RAM, but the GPU is still suffering. See Puget Systems: https://shorturl.at/5VH9K

So I still think I need a better GPU. Can I get by with an RTX 3060 12GB, or do I need to save up more for the previously suggested RTX 5060 16GB?

The 3060 will decode everything but 4.2.2 but none of your cameras are giving that.

Encoding only matters when you render out.

https://developer.nvidia.com/video-enco ... matrix-new

I think that states your card supports 8 bit 264 decoding.

Look at Taskmanager GPU decoding. You should see it go up when playing a 264 file