Do we really need the latest and fastest GPU these days?

With the many improvements Resolve 16 and now 17 has made to run faster, better, and leaner do we really need the fastest and very expensive graphics cards on the market? What if you're max timeline resolution and delivery is 4K DCI and you're just cutting and coloring, very little compositing in Fusion?

I'm using a RX580 8gb GPU and it's been ok for most HD work. Resolve 17 is slightly more demanding on my system compared to Resolve 16.

It's DR that profits most from VRAM, not Fusion (which loves lots of CPU RAM).
You may get away with an AMD card with 8 GB VRAM for 4K, but for Nvidia, get more.
BTW, 4K means Studio, the free version only does UHD.

[Peter Chamberlain]

A lot of the new tools use very extensive calculations and a lot of VRAM.
if you are simply grading HD, primary, secondaries, windows etc, much less demands.

A lot of the new tools use very extensive calculations and a lot of VRAM.
if you are simply grading HD, primary, secondaries, windows etc, much less demands.

So for Resolve, lots of VRAM and not all the other benchmarks we usually look at on GPU gaming cards that is important. Is there a ceiling to how much VRAM Resolve can use before there it scales off?

I think it works slightly different (same as with CPU RAM).
If for given task you have enough VRAM then this is all what you need. If task works on card with 8GB VRAM then it will work the same way (maybe slightly faster) and same card model with 16GB of VRAM.
It's all about knowing particular system limits. Main driver is project resolution and then nature of the task. Any process which is time dependent (temporal), like noise reduction, blur etc. will use a lot of VRAM (as many frames needs to be accessible at the same time). Spatial tasks are less VRAM hungry, so scaling etc. should not be a problem.
I assume if you work with HD only then 8GB (o maybe even less) should be never a problem. This may not be be the case for UHD projects. Not sure if BM provides any guidance based on at least project resolution ( I think it's in manual).

If you look here then it seems to confirm my thinking. Given model provides about same performance- more VRAM has impact, but gain is not that big. Actually there is probably no direct gain at all and difference comes from the fact that typically cards with more VRAM use faster ram and this what really gives you more performance.
https://www.pugetsystems.com/recommende ... mendations

Puget recommends:

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Timeline Resolution     1080p   4K    6K/8K
Minimum VRAM capacity   4GB    8GB    20GB+

A lots of “it depends”: i still have 1080ti at home (2) and in some box at work titanX...

Built I dont do fusion, mostly just color....

For HD, definitely not. At 4K and above some of the more demanding tools were getting pretty slow on my 1080 Ti, and I would sometimes tap out the 11GB VRAM. With the 3090 I can do more or less whatever I want. It's frequently not necessary, especially if they did everything right during the production, but it saves time every now and then. Whether or not that's worth the price of admission is up to you.

In case of 1080Ti and 3090 in Resolve you are comparing processing power not amount of VRAM. They are technologically different and 3090 is faster for sure just by pure fact that it has almost 3x CUDA cores.
I don’t use Resolve much, numbers are Puget’s. I also think 4 GB for HD may not cover every possible project, but it gives some idea.
You want to compare same model with eg. 8GB and 12.

In case of 1080Ti and 3090 in Resolve you are comparing processing power not amount of VRAM. They are technologically different and 3090 is faster for sure just by pure fact that it has almost 3x CUDA cores.
I don’t use Resolve much, numbers are Puget’s. I also think 4 GB for HD may not cover every possible project, but it gives some idea.
You want to compare same model with eg. 8GB and 12.

Agreed, but the question probably is: having a decent card (like an 1080ti) does it make sense to get a 3090 right now if i can actually work with it without compromises?

Of course a 3090 is better, but the difference on my box at home will be negligeable and it is money saved....

Yes, but Ellory Yu question was about VRAM: if more of it means faster system (and when things saturate). It's not the case. Once you have enough for given project then more won't make it always faster. It can as quite often more VRAM means faster version, so you gain based on VRAM speed, not because you have 2x of it.
It's the same with CPU RAM. You either have enough or not. Once you have enough you see no gain for given task (but you can run "bigger" tasks).