Solved Suitable Graphics Card

Hi all, looking for advice from those in the know.

I run Magix VEGAS Pro on my current PC which I am looking to replace. I am looking at the Kaby Lake i7-7700K processor at the heart of the computer and then a good graphics card. I hear that with VEGAS AMD cards tend to work better but is this just a myth? I need a good card to help reduce rendering times which on my current rig can take between 12 and 24 hours. So my question. I am looking at the AMD Radeon RX 480 (probably the 8GB). With my intended processor will this card help considerably with my rendering, or is there a better option?

I am not too hot on computer hardware so any advice or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks all
BobH

Hi BobH!,

Just browsing the forum and saw this new post. For your "New" graphics card, I would say wait just a while longer. Yes, the AMD cards in Vegas Pro/Movie Studio tend to do better, but typically only for effects and other items you place on the timeline, including the quality of playback you want. Vegas Pro/Movie Studio are still highly dependent on the CPU. If you go to the link in the "Vegas Movie Studio" part of the forum, and go to this thread:

Can my computer and MSP14 edit 2.7K 60fps and 1080p 120fps

, there is a link on the first page that I posted from Joker Productions on his new AMD Ryzen build, and how it performs compared to his X99 and i7-6800K machine he has. Yes, he runs Vegas Pro 14. I have also been following JayzTwoCents, Tech City, and some others, though they typically use Adobe Premiere, yet all seem to have been quite impressed with the performance of the new AMD Ryzen 7 line-up. Yeah, some growing pains with a new architecture, but then again, those of us who adopted early on the X99 Intel platform, had the same "growing pains"! Another YouTuber I have recently come across is Michael Dontigney, who is also now using an AMD Ryzen 7 build, and compares it to his older Intel X58 platform with a 6 core/12 thread i7-970 processor. Big difference, in favor of AMD!
You said about thinking of going the Kaby Lake i7-7700K route. You might want to look at the AMD Ryzen 7 1700 with a B350 or even the X370 board. Basically same price for board/CPU, and pretty much all the other items you would and can use on either platform (i.e.: NVME drive, SSD's, Mechanical Drive - HDD, Optical Drive, Memory, Graphics Card, etc.) . And since you plan to use this computer for Content Creation, along with other items, and if you do game or stream at the same time, most of the reviewers are touting the Performance of these new AMD chips (Beasts! ).
I am expecting my new AMD Asus Strix RX480 OC w/8GB card today from B&H. It will be going into my rig that has an Asus X99 Deluxe, i7-5930K, 64GB RAM, Intel 750 NVME 800GB boot drive, 4x500GB Samsung 850 Evo drives (one is LightRoom/Photoshop; one for music loops and such; one for exporting; one for games), with all my Working Files on a Samsung 960 Evo 1TB NVME drive connected using the Asus M.2x4 adapter in a PCI-E slot. So been doing a lot of rendering tests to get times, so I can compare. Oh, the current graphics card in there now is an Asus Strix GTX 980. Just wish AMD would get the friggin' Vega cards out so people can see how it performs!
Just some food for thought. Sorry if I rambled on a bit...I seem to do that here in the forums when I post. But, I try to make sure, at least from what I am typing and see, that I explain the best I can, though I do know at times I tend to get a bit too technical (Old IT Guy and Navy Mechanic). Just not one of those Facebook/Twitter/Instagram/Phone Texting where you put stuff in weird phrases and such .
Once I get some testing done on the new card compared to old setup, I'll post some numbers.

Good Luck,

Mike "The Chief" O'Sullivan

Hi Mike or should I call you "Chief"? Thank you for your very comprehensive reply which was most helpful. You seem to have a top rig and do many things with it. I do not do gaming but I do a great deal of video editing for myself, family and friends and my current PC is now 8 years old; a lifetime in computer development. At present I render 1080p both to mp4 and also to Bluray disk format and with quite a bit of colour correction, stabilisation etc this can take 12 or even 24 hours. Shortly I will be moving up to 4k video and at that time I really need to upgrade.

I buy Computer Shopper magazine and this month they have just given a review of the AMD Ryzen 7 1800X. AMD seems to be targeting the Intel Broadwell-E range with this. The review says in terms of price versus multicore performance this is the best CPU money can buy. It goes on to say that Ryzen is about the same in single core tests but it seems to be trading off single-core speed for multicore heft. The 1800X and i7-7700k have the same TDP of 95W but the 1800X has twice as many cores. It has an advantage over the 140 TDP of the i7-6900K and i7-6950X. In conclusion it suggests that for multithreaded tasks such as video editing it is well ahead of Intel, so we might need to see how Intel will respond.

I am in no rush to upgrade so I will have to see the comments that come in when people have tried the Ryzen chips for a while. Computer Shopper say they will be reviewing the Ryzen 7 1700X and the Ryzen 1700 in future issues to see how these perform and they will be somewhat cheaper.

Thank you for your help here, Mike, and any other comments would be welcome. Have fun.

BobH