- Hey everybody, this is Roberto Blake of robertoblake.com
and today I'm geeking out with you
over an interesting topic.
We're gonna be talking about GPU verses CPU
in video editing and rendering.
Now, if you're into video editing at all like I am
then you've often tried to decide
whether you should spend more money on your CPU,
which is the brains of the computer,
or your GPU, your video graphics card.
Now, as a graphic designer and somebody who also does
video editing and After Effects and all this other stuff,
there have been conflicting debates
and arguments about this over the years.
A lot of people because the word graphics
is in graphic design, assume that you need a
powerful GPU in order to do things like Photoshop.
Well, you really don't.
But, when it comes to video editing,
when it comes to using things like After Effects
or 3D modeling or video editing
and rendering from Premiere Pro,
there are advantages to having a graphics card,
a very powerful one, if you can afford it.
But, at the end of the day,
I honestly have to say that it is better
to spend more money into your CPU.
The CPU does the bulk of the work
when it comes to video rendering.
When it comes to video editing
and you want great displays in full resolution,
you wanna use special effects,
you wanna do color grading,
you want smooth video playback
with no delay or drop frames,
then that's when a graphics card can really help out.
It also can help out in rendering and speed things up.
In my case, when I added the GTX 1070 from Nvidia and Asus,
I used the Asus Republic of Gamers ROG Strix edition,
well for me, that cut my video rendering times in half.
And you would think that that indicates
that GPU matters more, but the reason that helps so much
is because it takes some of the burden
off of the CPU from doing other tasks
so that it can focus on what it really needs to do.
So in combination, these things working
together as a team is really what's important.
Also, multiple GPUs set up in SLI
are specifically to help you out
with things that involve gaming.
When it comes to video editing and rendering,
if you're gonna use two graphics cards,
then they need to be stand alone graphics cards,
they don't need to be SLI or Crossfire.
That's a gaming thing not a
video editing and rendering thing.
So, keep that in mind.
If you were gonna buy two very good graphics cards,
you're looking at $600 to $700.
You'd be better served spending that
kind of money in a very powerful CPU.
Either a very advanced six core or eight core CPU
would be a better investment of that type of money
and then using a powerful single graphics card
for $300 or $400, five if you've got it.
The graphics cards that I would recommend right now
are the GTX 1070 from whichever brand you prefer
and also the GTX 980TI.
These are relatively in the same price range.
As of the making of this video,
you'll pay somewhere between $450 and $550,
but these graphics cards are gonna probably be the
best bang for your buck overall
when it comes to video playback performance
when you're editing and rendering from programs
like Premiere and After Effects.
As far as CPUs, you're gonna want something
like an i7 ideally and you're gonna want
a minimum of four cores.
I currently run four cores at 4.4 Ghz
but a little bit of overclocking
and I think that does really well for me
and it's great within most price ranges
but if you can pop $480, $560 for
something a little bit more robust,
if you can get a six core, i7 Skylake processor,
then you're probably better off spending the money there.
I'll talk about RAM in a second video,
but 16 gigs is plenty.
Whenever I've done my video rendering,
that's about the most that it's utilized.
If you like the ability to maybe do something else
while you're computer is rendering,
do some email or some surfing or
whatever else you could be thinking to do,
then I would recommend that you go for
24 or 32 gigs of RAM.
It may not help with your video rendering performance.
It might help when you're doing things
like After Effects though.
So, that's just something to keep in mind.
If you're doing 3D or you're doing any kind
of motion graphics, more RAM is always definitely helpful.
If you're using Final Cut Pro, in most cases,
you can get away with eight gigs
because of the way that that is specifically optimized.
You don't get that much more out of 16 gigs in the Mac
and Final Cut Pro so you may not need to actually
spend as much money on the fanciest Mac there,
it's better to spend more money into the processor
than anything when it comes to that
and possibly getting a Mac that has
a better graphics card, maybe an integrated one.
Mac's running AMD mostly right now instead of Nvidia.
With Photoshop and Premiere Pro and the Adobe programs,
they're optimized a lot more
for the Intel and Nvidia chip sets,
so that's just something you wanna keep in mind.
I'm getting this information from Adobe's website,
their blogs and the Adobe Hardware Performance white paper.
It's not something that I just decided on my own.
So I hope you guys understand a little bit more
about the conversation of video editing and rendering
especially when we're talking about 4K video,
for CPU verses GPU.
It is both of them working together,
they both have a role to play,
but if you're gonna spend more money,
spend it on the CPU.
Anyway, if you have questions about
video editing and video rendering,
definitely leave those in the comments section.
I actually do have a tutorial video
for Premiere Pro on the best video export settings
for YouTube if that's something you guys are interested in.
Anyway, like this video.
If you like it, don't forget to subscribe.
Check out the other awesome content on the channel.
As always you guys, thanks so much for watching
and don't forget, create something awesome today.
Maybe with the power of video editing.