Editing Computer specs vs performance

[paulears]

The recent increase in jobs with lots of video tracks has really pushed my edit computer to the limit, and pressing play produces stutter playback unless I spend ages rendering everything.

I have always had a policy of buying a new computer every couple of years and the newest and fastest becomes the audio computer running Cubase with nice audio interface and lots and lots of sample based sounds. The retired machine gets Premiere and photoshop. The old edit machine became the standby machine. The bottom of the pile becomes the office computer. All have 16Gb of memory and things work well.

I've just installed an edit machine in the studio in a different building and I bought it thinking it was a great deal - but did not pay enough attention.

I'm not a computer expert by any means, but the status was this. With the CPU score from CPU benchmark

Music computer Intel Core i74790 7,222
edit computer Intel Core i74770 7,049

So I saw a cheap computer advertised new ram, SSD and extra drive, choice of video cards, new case, PSU but a re-cycled motherboard and processor - an intel board.

I got a bit carried away with the price for the whole thing, so I picked a video card on the Adobe list to get rid of the red warning I have every time I start up because the video card in the current editor is NOT on the list. I picked a 1660 card and placed the order. It turned up but I spotted on start up that the processor was not what I thought. It was an
Intel Core i7-2600 5,330. My heart sank, I'd picked an old i7 and it's score was worse than both the current machines. The supplier also had made it very clear that as they were built to order, they don't do returns unless faulty and you agree to this - which I did. I kicked myself for not checking. The obvious solution was to pull out the video card and put it in the edit machine and relegate the new machine to easier duties - BUT - the edit and music computers are 19" racked, and the damn video card is too long for the case.

Today, I put Premiere on the new machine ..... and it blows away the old one!

I run everything of a NAS drive, so the studio computer has access to the same files, so I brought the folder across and the files that were stuttery play smoothly. Piling a few FX on didn't bother it at all. It's so much more responsive.

Clearly the stumbling block with the old one was not processor power at all - it was the video processing gumming it up. The video card clearly is the key. The slower processor isn't as important as I thought.


One strange issue crept in though - any Premiere experts out there. The studio has a spare 19" rack audio interface a Tascam 1641, again, recently retired and if Premiere uses this, premiere runs fast. No idea how this happens, but the clock goes fast, the video goes fast and the audio runs fast, but is the right pitch. I'm guessing some kind of audio sample rate anomaly, but I've never had a speed issue before. Dropping the Tascam driver and using the windows one for the internal card restores normal speed - but of course is not so good quality wise.

With the SSD, start up times from off to working are very quick. Premiere is stable, and performs better. How odd!

 

[NorBro]

People sometimes spend more on their GPUs than half the cost of the entire computer. It's an important piece in the puzzle for video work.

Some software barely uses the processor (but it's good to have a fast one nevertheless).

It's also why eGPUs have been a big hit for many in the past few years as they can extend the life of some weak/aging hardware.

 

[Andy Patterson]

You can run the MS Task Manager to find the bottleneck as seen in the video link below.

https://youtu.be/pE6t1ryanO4

 

[CBS]

People sometimes spend more on their GPUs than half the cost of the entire computer. It's an important piece in the puzzle for video work.

Some software barely uses the processor (but it's good to have a fast one nevertheless).

It's also why eGPUs have been a big hit for many in the past few years as they can extend the life of some weak/aging hardware.

What eGPU would you recommend?

 

[Bassman2003]

Paul, glad you running faster than ever. Time does tend to multiply in a positive and negative way. Different NLEs use different amounts of hardware acceleration from the GPU. I use Edius and it uses none. It is very important to know which NLE you will be using and match the hardware strengths to that workflow.

 

[NorBro]

What eGPU would you recommend?

I had a Sonnet box with the 650W power supply, but my eGPU experience was short-lived as it just wasn't worth the hassle.

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1449875-REG/sonnet_gpu_650w_tbq_egfx_breakaway_box_with.html

It's discontinued now, but they still have the 550W available:

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1342457-REG/sonnet_gpu_550w_tb3_egfx_breakaway_box_550.html

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As far as cards, many options...really depends on what you do and the compatibility one may have with your current system and software.

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With all of that said, this was all way before Apple's M1 (and their future plans), which is good enough for 99% of everything I'd do (especially now post-2020) making eGPUs even more useless for me personally.