Entering Davinci Resolve on budget - GTX 760, 770 or 960?

Currentlybeing a photographer I am only dipping me feet in video, therefore keeping costs down and looking to upgrade my GPU.

I’ve been through the Configuration Guide for Davinci Resolve and found it lacking information for light-to-medium users of this great software . I appreciate that it’s primarily an industry standard software aimed at professionals doing heavy grading on a daily basis and configuration recommendations of High End GPUs such as GTX 770 4GB and above are made accordingly.


Current System – i5 760 Quad Core, Radeon HD 6670 1GB, 12GB RAM, 3x SSD, 2x HDD, 5Diii + MagicLantern for RAW HD

Looking for – used GTX 760 (£100), used GTX 770 (£150, power hungry), GTX 960 (£170). Add a premium of £30-£40 or so for 4GB VRAM option for all these.

Aiming for – I am nowhere near doing 4K raw. When I do get there, if I can afford a 4K raw camera, I can easily pick up a GTX 980 or 980ti. Currently looking to do Compressed HD and RAW HD (with compressed 4K on newer mirrorless cameras as optional) for the next year or so on a budget. Aim is to produced self initiated short film projects. I would appreciate any help on questions based on these requirements below:

1. Do HD resolution projects still peak at 2GB VRAM usage and 4K resolution at above 4GB VRAM? I gathered this information from various other threads on here - viewtopic.php?f=3&t=8101. This was 3 years ago and wondering if this is still applicable.

2. Following the above, does limiting the timeline resolution of a 4K project to HD resolution allow a user to comfortably use a GPU with 2GB VRAM only for editing and grading? Does this then involves extra caching to disk (which I don’t mind at all) or does Resolve read 1/4th the pixels only from source footage?

3. How does the Delivery tab utilize GPU memory? Does the infamous ‘GPU Memory is full’ message (for smaller, light users like me on smaller GPUs) only appear in Editing/Colour tab or does it show up when delivering 4K projects at source resolution even if they have been edited and graded at an HD timeline resolution? I do understand resolve is resolution independent with respect to timeline resolution.

4. New GTX 900 series based on Maxwell architecture has smaller memory bit width and less CUDA cores across the whole range when compared to the previous 700 series and consequently considerably less memory bandwidth too - though with compression technologies performs better. How do these impact DaVinci Resolve? The reason I ask is I have seen in another thread on the message boards here Peter Chamberlain from Blackmagic recommending a GTX 780 over a GTX 980 - viewtopic.php?f=21&t=27335. There is another thread where simply 480, 580, 680 are recommended and x70 are classified as having lower performance. Is a GTX 670 or a 770 a lower choice than 480? In external message boards users often find GTX 580 outperforms all 600 and 700 series GPUs. How is it so? Is Memory Bandwidth in older GPUs more important for DaVinci Resolve than more efficient CUDA, compressed Memory bandwidth utilization?

Comparing the GPUs I am looking at for instance, on paper GTX 960 looks underequipped but actually marginally outperforms 760 when gaming:
GTX 760 – 1152 CUDA Cores, 980MHz, 256bit, 192GB/s Mem Bandwidth
GTX 770 – 1536 CUDA Cores, 1046MHz, 256bit, 224GB/s Mem Bandwidth
GTX 960 – 1024 CUDA Cores, 1127MHz, 128bit, 112GB/s Mem Bandwidth

5. I am sure there are internal benchmarks run on various GPUs using various standardized processes (controlled footage, varying GPUs, varying footage format, varying grades etc) to ascertain various performance and quality control issues when optimizing DaVinci Resolve software during its continuous development lifecycle. Is there a strategic reason as to why this are (or at least a summary) not published in the config guide or elsewhere? This would make the decision making process on the consumers part a lot easier and would again save a lot of back and forth on the end users part on message boards save an incredible amount of time and headache.

Would greatly appreciate any help on all of the above. Many Thanks and I look forward to upgrading to URSA Mini in the future (approx 1 years time) - I think it is an absolutely fantastic camera for its price.

Paul Sangha

Paul, which video camera are you shooting with or plan to shoot with this year?


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Hi Rick - thanks, I have a Canon 5Diii (along with a smaller crop sensor back up body) for photography purposes and can shoot HD H.264, uncompressed HDMI out, as well as Magic Lantern RAW up to 2K.

*In addition* to the HD/2K files from 5Diii (compressed and RAW), 4K compressed/non-raw files from mirrorless photography cameras could be added occasionally to the work flow for testing purposes, short projects etc from friends' cameras/equipment (Sony A7s for example which I can have weekend access to).

Anyone at Blackmagic or otherwise able to shed any light on any of the points above?

Used R9 290x comes in around $250 USD, which is more powerful then all of the above cards. Handles 4K files without issue

Go for the 770, ideally find one with 4Gb of RAM (which might mean the 970 since I think the 770 4Gb model is discontinued).

Used R9 290x comes in around $250 USD, which is more powerful then all of the above cards. Handles 4K files without issue

Thats what I want to know for sure since maybe the better memory management of the ATI cards (higher memory bandwidth) might be giving a considerable better performance when it comes to Da Vinci Resolve. A R9 290x might be even better performance wise than an GTX 980. Maybe Resolve gets better benefit with a better memory bandwith than more stream/cuda cores.

But... it need to be better confirmed. Thats the crossdroad I am at right now.

I have a home system I built around two 290x 4gb cards. Works well and is quite fast with HD1920x1080 footage. I haven't run a standard candle test on the system yet, but anecdotally the 290x feels about the performance of a old classic GTX Titan in Resolve.

However, at 4k+ resolutions you will run into out of GPU memory issues running GPU with only 4gb. Forget about trying to use TNR at 4k.

If you only plan to work with HD footage, 290x 4gb is a very good choice. If you possible might need to work with 4k, I would go with at least 6gb of gpu ram.

I have (2) 290x GPU's and I have no issue working with 4K files in real time. I don't do much TNR because my images are rather clean but SNR doesn't give me any issues as if I ever used it on a project it's sitting on the first node. I've never got the message "Out of GPU memory on the 290x"

I do not render 4K in "Real-time"; on a 24p timeline I'm usually around 20-22fps. On a 1080p timeline I'm usually rendering out at least twice that of "Real-Time" playback

Yes, I'll concede if you don't use TNR in 4k, you shouldn't get the error using the 290x. For me, TNR is an essential tool and I always want to have it available.

One other aspect to consider is each successive version of resolve seems to require more GPU ram than the previous versions.

Other users have reported that projects that used to work on older Resolve versions now give GPU memory errors and require GPUs with more ram.

It's interesting that AMD's new top-of-the-line $649 "Fury X" GPU has 4GB of HBM VRAM (not 6GB or 8GB):
http://www.maximumpc.com/amd-announces- ... ics-cards/

I'm curious to see whether or not this card performs well with Davinci Resolve 12 when working with UHD and higher resolution ProRes & RAW.

-

I'm in the same boat with my head spinning. I want to get a GPU that will give me a smooth experience with 4K But I really have no idea what to pick up. As of now it's between 3 cards GTX 980Ti 6G , R9 290x or GTX 970 4G. I feel like the GTX 980Ti 6G might be the obvious choice, but money is a factor. Will any of the other cards be efficient? or does anyone have any other suggestions?

Colt - If I am not mistaken - I have seen a GTX 780 (or 780 ti) being recommended over a GTX 980 by blackmagic staff on these forums - possibly due to bit width or memory bandwidth. Again this relates to some questions I've asked here originally which haven't been directly addressed. However by trawling internet you will find it was well known that a GTX 580 outperformed 670, 680 and so on for Davinci Resolve.

GTX 970 and 980 are very power efficient (both under 165W TDP) however 980 ti goes up to 250W+ TDP, with that in mind I'd say a GTX 980 would be a great purchase as you get diminishing returns with higher cards for regular consumer grading (drawing a line between consumer grading and much more demanding Hollywood/Television/Commercial Grading).

GTX 970 - 275 GBP
GTX 980 - 400 GBP on deals
GTX 980 ti - 650 GBP

If getting more than 4GB VRAM is not a priority, I highly recommend buying a used previous generation GTX GPU (780 or 780ti) for your 4K needs (though I think an HD timeline resolution should suffice even when editing/grading 4K source footage?). Use bidvoy(dot)net to check the average used prices. Bidvoy suggests an average price by trawling all ebay auctions. Works for US, UK and EU auctions. Below was my research summary when I was looking to buy a used GPU. From trawling message boards (mainly this one) I am conviced that the performance gains GTX 900 Series offers for gaming over GTX 700 series do not carry over into DaVinci Resolve and the differences are merely power efficiency related (900 series is more power efficient). Though this is just a conjecture and it would be helpful if someone (or blackmagic staff) were able to provide/release comparison benchmarks. I am sure these are not hard to carry out.

Used GTX 770 2GB - 135 GBP
Used GTX 770 4GB - 175 GBP
Used GTX 780 - 200 GBP
Used GTX 780 ti - 240+ GBP

FYI for all the responses to this thread to my original question - thank you for you input. I ended up purchasing a used GTX 770 2GB (for 135 GBP) and its working great with 2K/HD resolution for Raw, DNxHD and H264 files. I have 'medium' to 'high' playback settings selected in Davinci Resolve (generally I stick with 'medium' settings). 'Very High' playback settings (for example Optical Flow at the highest of settings) cause the card to stutter and FPS to drop but this is not needed for editing and grading, and I can still apply these 'very high' settings at the export stage of a project IIRC. You can Google 'Optimize Davinci Resolve for Playback' for more info on these settings.

I wont be stepping up to 4K for another year or more therefore I am happy - as truly speaking I need to get skilled in other areas of story telling first. The technical workflow jump can be made anytime. In a year or more's time when GTX 1000 series comes out, I will still be able to sell this card on for approx. 90-100GBP and realise great value in the meantime. Sidenote: For higher resolutions my CPU often becomes the bottleneck first (i5 760 - 4 years old CPU) - for example when de-bayering 4K RED Raw sample footage, I have to select 1/8th playback to get realtime playback.