So I finally got around to testing the RTX 40-series GPUs
for video editing performance.
I've got the ROG Strix 4080 here and the TUF Gaming 4090.
And I compared them against my current 3090
and 3090 Ti cards.
Now, these cards were provided to me by ASUS.
This video's not sponsored, but I might talk
about some of the cooler features about these cards
as sort of a thank-you for them sending them over.
And I'm gonna be doing most of these tests
on DaVinci Resolve, primarily because that's what I use.
But I also think that when it comes to expensive GPUs
like these, that if you're gonna buy these cards,
you're probably better off using DaVinci Resolve.
Again, personal opinion,
because that NLE leverages your hardware much better
than any other NLEs, including Premiere Pro.
So I'm not saying you can't use Premiere Pro
and use these graphics cards.
Obviously, you can, and you can get some great results
out of them, but in my opinion, Resolve is the best use case
for getting the maximum value out of the dollars spent
on your GPU, unless we include gaming,
which we're not in this video.
But for an even deeper disclosure,
the reason why I like to do these
top-of-the-line GPU video editing performance roundup videos
is to convince the partner board companies
to send them over to me so it's applicable to my audience,
so I can make a video about them.
So then afterwards, I can use them
for my own personal gaming needs.
- Foul Tarnished.
- But anyway, the recommendations I give
on these cards will be related to video editing.
And I actually am gonna use them
for that purpose moving forward.
I've been using the RTX cards for quite a while now.
But yeah, I game with 'em on the side.
And this is all part of a grand scheme to keep my gaming rig
(laughing) at its max potential.
So first off, I averaged out a bunch of render tests.
Now, this was with, like, a 15-minute project,
which was basically one of my camera reviews.
So there's a lot of different, like,
there's footage from the camera, footage from the A roll,
tests, noise, you know, effects and stuff,
basically, an entire 15-minute camera review.
And then I exported it with all four graphics cards
using the exact same settings,
which I'm gonna put up on the screen here, by the way.
Now, I stand by these settings if you use H.264 and NVENC
because CQP numbers that I've dialed in here,
which took a lot of time,
give you almost, like, the best size-to-quality ratio.
If you want, like, almost perfect quality
at the lowest size you can get,
this is a pretty good balance of that.
But anyway, when running it through the 3090,
it took 6 minutes and 29 seconds to export
and 6 minutes and 16 seconds on the 3090 Ti,
so they're pretty similar.
You're only getting a small uptick going to the Ti.
But now with the 4080, it was 3 minutes and 30 seconds
and 3 minutes and 38 seconds.
On average, it was a little bit longer on the 4090.
But again, these two are about the same at 3 1/2
versus 6 1/2 on the previous gen, so that's considerable.
Obviously, we're only talking about three minutes here.
But on a bigger project, that's gonna increase
and over multiple renders over weeks and months.
This is gonna add up
basically halving your time spent on render.
File size on all of them was exactly the same,
which is important because sometimes, generationally,
like, going from the 10 series to 20 series,
20 series to 30 series, file sizes can get smaller or change
because they're using some sort of new system with NVENC.
But going from 30 series to 40 series,
the file size was the same for me.
Now, during those renders,
the temperatures were interesting.
So the hottest GPU was the 3090.
Now, obviously, this is gonna depend a little bit on,
you know, which card you're using.
But all of the ones that I had are like big three,
like, triple fan...
They're all, like, really, really, really good coolers,
so I think, even though they're different models
like TUF and Strix, and I had another brand for the 3090 Ti.
So 58 degrees was the max core temp when doing the render
for the 3090, 55 for the 3090 Ti,
and then only 52 on the 4080, and then only 44 on the 4090.
I found that banging out this render real quick,
like, 3 1/2 minutes, the 4090 didn't even start
to, like, climb in temperature yet.
It was still, like, barely, like,
its basic running temperature.
It took more than just one render
in order to get it kinda cooked up.
So we did a benchmark afterwards
to see how hot it would get.
The max temp on the 3090 was 67.
It was 64 on the 3090 Ti, 66 on the 4080,
so actually, it was a little bit hotter than the 3090 Ti,
and then 64 again on the 4090,
so similar results between the 4090 and the 3090 Ti.
And then the average temperature: 47, 46, 38, and 35.
So again, that's interesting.
The previous generation just seemed to run hotter on average
for me than the 40 series does,
with the 4090 in particular being the coolest.
But the memory temperatures is the biggest change here.
Like, all these temperatures are fine. They're all workable.
But 96 degrees is the maximum memory temperature
on the 3090, which, there's been videos posted
of, like, how you can fix this.
But still, 96 degrees, that's really, really hot
when you compare it to the 68, 72, and 68
of the other three cards.
So regardless, I guess,
moving to any of these cards from the 3090,
unless you wanna do a repair job on the 3090 yourself,
you will get a lower memory temperature, so that's good.
I also looked at the power draw
and total power consumption during these renders.
Now, obviously, the time that it takes
to render is gonna affect this,
because if we look at the 3090 and 3090 Ti,
it was a total of .032 and .03 kilowatt hours
to complete that render because it took 6 1/2 minutes.
And you can see the peak draw during that time was 520 watts
on the 3090 and 495 watts on the 3090 Ti.
If we look at the 4080 and 4090 instead,
it was only .018 and .019 kilowatt hours
to run the renders.
But that's also because the renders only took half the time.
So that makes sense.
And also, the peak draw was lower, though,
397 watts on the 4080 and 427 watts on the 4090.
So what I did is I let them render
over and over and over again for an hour
to see how much power consumption there'd be
over that full hour.
And for the 3090, it was .296 kilowatt hours,
.287 for the 3090 Ti, .253 for the 4080,
and .282 for the 4090.
Now, one thing to note, though, is that on the 4090,
you can underpower, like, you can lower the power limit
and potentially equalize the results between the 4090
and the 4080 in terms of power consumption
while still getting some advantages out of the 4090,
if power consumption is your primary concern.
So I ran the Puget Resolve benchmark.
3090, it got a total score of 2113,
and on the 3090 Ti, 2137.
Now, if you were just basing everything
just on those two numbers, you would say,
"Well, that's not really worth the upgrade, right?"
But obviously, there's other factors:
memory temperature, total power draw,
gaming performance, other aspects of that.
And then for the 4080,
another slight bump over the 3090 Ti to 2177.
But you could argue that the 4080 is somewhat comparable
to the 3090 Ti of the previous generation.
But it can accomplish that at a lower power consumption
and also render in half the time.
So that's a win for the 4080.
But in general editing performance,
you're probably gonna see something similar to a 3090 Ti.
But then the 4090 pulls out a clear win here
with a score of 2483, and it's the only one
that sort of showed, like, a noticeable uptick,
and again, half the render time, and you know,
about the same or slightly lower power consumption
than the 3090 Ti, so that's a win for the 4090.
I'll put the full results of this benchmark
on the screen now, so you can pause for each of the cards
if you wanna save it and compare or whatever.
But if we take a closer look between a couple,
we can see where you're gonna see
or feel some of the performance increases during editing.
So right now, comparing the 4090 to the 3090 Ti,
we can see that...
Higher is better, by the way.
This is basically how many frames per second it takes
to complete the task.
So doing an H.264 to H.264 on the 4090
was significantly better than something like the 3090 Ti.
And then if we look down in the GPU effects section,
we can see noticeable upticks
in most of the GPU effects results.
But then, you know, fusion,
probably not as big of a difference.
So I would say that if you're running a lot of GPU effects
on your footage as a process
or you're doing a lot of transcoding,
you probably will notice a difference
upgrading into the 40 series.
But if we compare the 40-series cards,
we're seeing the same advantages for the 4090
but now with a smaller margin.
So the transcoding is still better on the 4090.
And again, the GPU effects do still have
better performance numbers but much, much smaller margins,
which makes us wanna compare the 3090 Ti to the 4080.
Even though the overall performance score was quite similar,
we are seeing a decent performance uptick
in transcoding again on the 40 series
when comparing the 4080 to a 3090 Ti.
But now the GPU effects aren't that big of a difference.
I would say, if that's primarily what you're looking
to improve, probably not gonna see a huge difference,
except for optical flow was significantly better,
like, going from 24 frames per second to 36, 37,
is a noticeable uptick there.
Now, I wanted to talk about the actual physical cards
a little bit because it was a different experience here.
So the TUF Gaming is the one
that's currently in my editing rig.
Let's unbox the 4080 because I wanted to talk
about (laughing) something with this card.
Now, I'm not trying to throw any shade on, you know,
ASUS in particular here.
Geez.
By the way, these cards are significantly heavier
than the 30 series.
When I received the packages, I was like,
"Yikes, what are these?"
even comparing the box of the new Strix
versus the 3090 Strix.
And this is the the 3090 versus the 4080, and it's absurd.
Okay, a couple things.
First off, this card is massive, and this is only the 4080.
So I was scared 'cause I opened this one first,
and it's very, very heavy.
But they do give you, ASUS does anyway,
this little trinket now that's magnetic,
which is kinda cool.
On the bottom, it's magnetic.
And then you can unscrew this, and there's this little...
It's actually a screwdriver,
a screwdriver with a ruler on it.
And you know, you could put it in this way
if you wanna use it as a screwdriver.
Or you can turn it around the way that it comes.
And then you tighten this down.
And it basically acts as a support
so you can, you know, use the magnetic on your case.
And then I guess it would be installed this way.
And then you would, you know, use this
to kinda support your graphics card.
It works.
I have it working on 3090 now, and it's kinda novel,
and I like how strong the magnet is.
But (laughs) that's indicative of just how big
and heavy these cards are.
ASUS, this is sort of a request to you,
especially compared to the TUF card.
Why are there so many peelies on these Strix cards?
Every single, like, little surface decal
has, like, a peely on it.
I think I probably spent like 10 minutes
just taking all the peelies off,
and I was left with this giant wad.
Can we cool it with that or maybe just put, like, a big one
over the whole card or something?
To get this card in and sorta finagle it around things,
I actually took the fan off the cooler here on the bottom
to be able to, like, wiggle it in better.
And then the other issue is that,
do you see how recessed the place where you screw this
onto the back plate is?
Because of this and because of how straight it is,
and then where my chassis was,
it was actually really hard to get a screwdriver
to kinda, like, wiggle its way down in here
and keep a good hold on the screw
and then tighten it down to the case.
Anyway, this card was hard to install.
So I was scared moving to the 4090
'cause like, oh god, it's gonna be even worse.
But coincidentally, the TUF 4090 is actually smaller,
more compact, and much easier to install,
and for my personal taste, far fewer peelies
because there's less RGB and less, you know, flashy bits.
So if you want something, you know, that looks cool,
is all colorful like this card,
this is definitely, you know, the flashier card
if that's what you're into.
But the TUF Gaming was much more toned down.
I like the gray look.
I've got a lot of, you know, gray aspects
to my build currently.
So this one fits my style a lot better,
fewer peelies, easy to install, not as much RGB.
There's just the TUF logo that has RGB on it.
So yeah, and the price difference
between these two was surprisingly low.
Here in Canada, I think this card's, like...
I think this one's only like 100, $150 Canadian more
than this card.
Usually, there's a sweet spot in the value there
between these based on the results that I've been recording,
that if I were to, between what I tested, for instance,
I would buy the 4090 TUF before I would buy the 4080 Strix
for multiple reasons.
So just sorta keep that in mind going into it.
But to be honest, the margins between these cards
for most video editing applications,
you know, are quite small.
I would say the differences are quite minor.
That being said, there was a noticeable jump
going to the 4090, but these cards
these days are really expensive.
So that's why I'm saying, I hope that, you know,
you're either using this for business,
you're making money on it for video editing or whatever,
or at least you're hopefully getting some other applications
out of it as well, like gaming and that kind of thing.
Yeah, like I said, though, what are you doing?
You're getting these RTX 40-series cards for video editing,
and you're not gaming?
Come on. Gotta increase your value.
Anyway, I don't know how to end this video.
I hope this information was helpful to someone
somewhere in some way.
Alright...
I'm done.