Blackmagic Forum

Hi. I finally got DR 16 installed and working after updating my video card drivers (NVIDIA GeForce 750 Ti). That said and given the new DR 16 horsepower, I'm questioning whether my video card is still adequate. So...

Is my current video card adequate for somewhat complex edits up to 4K in DR 16? Any recommended video cards? (Yes, I understand that "somewhat complex" really isn't very descriptive.)

I Googled Resolve video cards and only got invalid links. Can someone point me to a list of compatible video cards?

Thanks and regards,

Dan.

DaVinci Resolve 16.0 requires a graphics card with at least 2GB of VRAM which supports Metal, OpenCL 1.2 or CUDA 10. This applies to both the compute and display graphics cards. Please also install the latest graphics drivers on Windows and Linux recommended by your graphics card vendor.

Which is to say based on your request of "up to 4K" you should be good. 4K and above you will need more RAM all around.

Dan Clark wrote: Is my current video card adequate for somewhat complex edits up to 4K in DR 16? Any recommended video cards?

Hi Dan.

I can't tell you any thing about graphic card requirement for resolve 16 yet, But I can tell you what I normally recommended for Resolve 15.

In Resolve the CPU is used to run the app, disk I/O and compression and decompression of codecs.
Resolve does all its image processing in the GPU on the graphics card. More CUDA/OpenCL Cores are better.

As all the image processing happen in the GPU are there two things that are important. The amount of vRam and the CUDA/OpenC Performance.
For 4K work do I minimum recommend 8 GB of vRam and in some cases more. And higher CUDA/OpenCL are better.

I don't know what kind of video files you normally work with. But some codec, resolution and bit width can be hardware accelerated in either nVidea or AMD GPU's or in some Intel CPU's, but only for the STUDIO version of Resolve. Then can you choose a Graphics card with less CUDA/OpenC Performance.

I also like to tell you that from 27. May will motherboards with PCIe 4.0 connections be introduced. And it is expected that that the first PCIe 4.0 Graphics Cards soon will follow. The PCIe version 4.0 Interface will have the double speed of the current PCIe version 3.0 Interface.

Some of these new Graphics Cards,will be produced in the new 7nm process node , that will be both faster and cheaper to manufacture.

Regards Carsten.

I have the "unable to initialize CUDA" notice when starting DR16. No such problems in DR15. So I suspect my 5 year old Nvidia GFX780 (6GB vRAM) is obsolete since the latest driver is installed. Hopefully BMD can come up with an updated list of GPUs for DR16 soon as there is only a list for DR15 available at the moment.

I got the same message on my 770M machine, but after driver update it worked

From what I understand you need 10 series Invidia cards (don't know about other brands), such as the 1050ti (which I have and works fine). Also read on Invidia's site that if you have a CUDA 9 card it should work with a CUDA 10 requirement.

Folks, thanks for the feedback about video cards.

D16 is constantly throwing "Your GPU Memory is full" errors. Workarounds like reducing the timeline resolution seems like a short term fix and that adding more corrections will make the problem reoccur. I don't want to keep fighting with my current system.

From my research, it looks like an nVidia RTX 2070 would be the most cost effective video card right now for CAD work, and for photo and video editing.

I want to fix the short term problem now, but keep an eye on the future. Although it would be easy to buy a 2070 now, it looks like AMD is coming out shortly with a new Ryzen 3000 CPU. And when that Ryzen will be released, there will be support for PCIe 4.0. And that it will better support a new video card and my three NVMe drives. Whether this new stuff will require buying completely new hardware is still an open question for me. I.e., the current 2070 may be outdated in the near future. (I have more questions than answers.)

My options seem like:

1. Upgrade my current system with an nVidia RTX 2070 now and then eval my options later this year, or

2. Struggle along with what I have, until all the new components are available, and then build a new workstation, or

3. Some other options.

I'm leaning toward option 1, but I'm open to other options. What do you think?

Thanks for any feedback.

Regards,

Dan.

Ya, go with option 1. That's what I did and it's working great. Although I up-sold myself to a RTX 2080 because "It's only a few dollars more and I've come this far already ". lol

VioletWolf wrote:Ya, go with option 1. That's what I did and it's working great. Although I up-sold myself to a RTX 2080 because "It's only a few dollars more and I've come this far already ". lol

Rick,

Thanks for the feedback.

As they say on TV ads: "But wait; it get's better!"

I mentioned CAD. I'm using CAD software (Chief Architect Premier) for our kitchen design. A few minutes ago I upgraded to the new X11 version from X10. X11 has some great new features including more advanced ray tracing to create 3D ray tracing views. The bad news is that these new features are now dog slow and produce poor 3D ray-traced drawings. So I looked that new video card specs for X11. It says, "4GB or greater gaming video card". Arrgh.

The good news is that I'm at a point in my career as a software engineer that I can afford some nicer things. The bad news is that that I have very little free time to spend time doing what I love - photography and videography, especially editing. So now I have to decide if the 2080 is worth the extra bucks - more fun with less pain vs more bucks. Such is life.

Again, thanks for the feedback.

Regards,

Dan.

All three of my DR installs (2 studio and one free) have Titan X 12GB (maxwell) cards.
Never see a "low GPU memory" warning.

Folks,

Many thanks for the feedback.

Given that Jack and Rick have purchased high-end cards, I decided that I needed this horsepower for DR16 and Chief Architect X11 now. So I pulled the trigger on a GIGABYTE AORUS RTX 2080 TI water-cooled card (https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814932075). It's not at the Titan price-level, but it's still pricey for me.

Thanks again for your help.

Regards,

Dan.

p.s. Now I just have to figure how to install the water cooler.

Jack Swart wrote:All three of my DR installs (2 studio and one free) have Titan X 12GB (maxwell) cards.
Never see a "low GPU memory" warning.

Neither do I but I suspect it's not only connected with the card(s) itself. Actually I saw the message twice 3 years ago, and it was on quite the same GPUs on Resolve 12.x I think...
What I mean is you might have had this message with your card while other wouldn't on cheaper ones. I don't think it's "really" connected to the memory only.

I am currently using the MSI GeForce RTX 2070 GAMING Z 8G. It works very well. But I might buy the AMD Radeon VII 16GB. It is designed to handle clip colors. The price of the two is not much different. According to the evaluation, a single GPU is used to run on the computer. AMD Radeon VII 16GB has good working efficiency.

Jack Swart wrote:All three of my DR installs (2 studio and one free) have Titan X 12GB (maxwell) cards.
Never see a "low GPU memory" warning.

Hi Jack,

I’m using a Titan X cards as well. How have you got them to play nicely with Resolve 16? I thought they weren’t compliant. I’m seriously keen to somehow make my Titan work with DR16 as the card has never given any trouble.

Please let me know.

Thanks, Mark.

I'd say check in GeForce experience for updates. My 1070 works fine. It is either a driver issue or you need to reinstall Dr. In studio, the render speed limitation seems to be the GPU. I went from a 4th gen i5 to a ryzen 7 and 4k still renders at about 70fps with the gtx1070.

Dr16 even works fine with Intel hd discrete graphics for hd work. It will use quick sync if you have studio.

VRAM is largely ignorable as a point of emphasis because it's typically tied to product SKUs. Increasing VRAM capacities generally correspond to increased GPU processing power.

The things that stress VRAM in Resolve tend to also require higher processing power, generally speaking. So, you should get a GPU with 8GB VRAM (6GB in some cases may work) for overall satisfactory performance. Otherwise, enjoy 3-5FPS playback and budget for disk space so you can optimize everything you grade or use Fusion on top of.

UHD/4K will work even on top of a GTX1050 in a Laptop, if you don't do much on the Color Page. If you actually use the Color Page a fair bit, or Fusion, for the matter. Then you want something comparable to a GTX1070 or better, with at least 6GB VRAM - 8GB Recommended.

AMD has decent 8GB GPUs on the market now, and they're fairly cheap. You lose CUDA, but they do perform well - even in Resolve. I guess what brand you get depends on what other applications you run on that machine, as well.

Yes, integrated graphics works well for HD work (not for Color or Fusion, though, but yes for editing). For the heavier stuff, the performance will bottleneck. Also, you need a lot of RAM in the machine/laptop because Resolve will use tons of shared memory for the graphics stuff.

Older generations of Intel/AMD iGPUs aren't usable since they have a cap of 768MB-1.5GB Shared Memory. Has to be a "newer" iGPU (the ones that allow up to ~8GB Shared to the GPU).

So there is no official list of compatible video cards?

How would they do that? Any list would imply testing the cards. Do they setup a test lab? Buy or ask for cards? What happens if a model gets a mid life change? For example Nvidia cut the memory on the 1060 to 3GB. Would they need to keep on top of that?

At best the list would be a short list of the cards they had access to and tested. Just like the Puget tests only cover stuff they might sell not everything on the market.

IIRC right now you need at least 1060 generation from Nvidia. Anything newer should also work. Memory needs to be adequate for your sources.

Older HD Intel graphics aren't supported anymore. You can download DR16 if that is all you have to work with. I occasionally use my non graphics station, without a proper gpu, for quick short work.

I'd say look for ram over series or anything else otherwise 4k or higher work is virtually impossible. Unless you use the studio version, rendering and playback require lots of creativity and patience because the GPU is largely not used in the free version.

That is, if there is no card for 4k, then only use "movavi". Got it. Ok. The question is closed.