Graphics card advice needed

[Scouser]

I am currently running some tests to see if I can get away without upgrading my graphics card which is very basic ( GT1030 ) no good for anything really !

My pc spec is pretty reasonable i7-10700 2.90Ghz 64Gb RAM 4TB ssd's I was hoping that 1080p recordings would suffice, but they don't hold up to my previous workflow which was recording direct to camera at 4k and then editing and downscaling on iPad to 1080. However using the pc would have some advantages over the previous method, but I don't want to drop a fortune to get something similar.

It seems Nvenc is essential for what I want to do and on this basis I have researched reasonable possibilities and wanted to get some feedback/ ideas from you, so far the best thing that matches my budget is GeForce RTX 3060 Windforce OC 12GB but I certainly want to be sure that something like this can do what I need it to before committing.

I also need to be sure that recording in 1080, (which I can currently do) with the best obs settings definitely wont match my previous recordings. So if anyone can tell me what those obs settings would look like I would be very grateful

Thanks

[Indigo2]

A GT1030 graphics card can use 4K resolution.
I'm not sure why you would want a bigger card?
To speed up things in editing of video?

[James Perrett]

My lad is thinking of going AMD for his next graphics card because AMD are better at supporting older hardware.

[Scouser]

Because it is nowhere near good enough for the job...

It has no Nvenc option for encoding which means the CPU is doing the lions share of the work. Recording large 4k files is well beyond the 1030

[OneWorld]

My lad is thinking of going AMD for his next graphics card because AMD are better at supporting older hardware.

I went the same way, I'd had problems with nVidia, jittery playback in Cubase, AMD solved it.

However, I am doing video editing now using software called Kdenlive, which is very good, but some plugins won't work as they need a plugin called SAM2, which, yep you guessed it, it demands nVidia, or at least my early attempts at using it suggest that. Might be worth looking into that

[ajay_m]

Well, my laptop has a mobile RTX3060 with 6G VRAM. It can certainly run stuff like MS flight simulator quite well and performs respectably running the various benchmarks like Time Spy etc. I would have thought video recording at 1080 would be a doddle, especially given that the non-mobile version is significantly faster than my mobile GPU and has twice the VRAM.

[Scouser]

Yes recording at 1080, which is what I am currently doing is in fact a doddle but I am looking to record at 4k... and downscale which produces a far better result as well as having the option of not downscaling and keeping the 4k

Hence the enquiry...

[James Perrett]

However, I am doing video editing now using software called Kdenlive, which is very good, but some plugins won't work as they need a plugin called SAM2, which, yep you guessed it, it demands nVidia, or at least my early attempts at using it suggest that. Might be worth looking into that

It looks like SAM2 requires Cuda which means it needs NVidia.

My lad uses Blender for all kinds of things which now works with AMD graphics - hence his interest. He bought a used but reasonably powerful NVidia card last year and it has now become unsupported with the latest NVidia software.

[resistorman]

However, I am doing video editing now using software called Kdenlive

Does this software have a forum? I would think there or a video forum would be a better place than Windows Music to get answers

[Scouser]

Yes I have posted there...

But SOS is my go to place, simply because there are many people here, with a multitude of skills and a wealth of knowledge...

[OneWorld]

However, I am doing video editing now using software called Kdenlive

Does this software have a forum? I would think there or a video forum would be a better place than Windows Music to get answers

Yes but the overwhelming number of posts reflects what James has written - the need for Cuda There are workarounds if one is committed to a fix the equivalent of putting a man on the moon .

For now I'll just get by with what I have. To make the issue more difficult is that I se miniPCs, they are getting more powerful and there are some with nVidia GPU but are prohibitively expensive.

I have 2 PCs one for music, and as mentioned, that works fine with AMD CPU/GPU, I don't want to fix what isn't broken. I'll wait until an affordable miniPC comes along with an nVidia GPU. SAM2 does a really impressive job of masking, to get rid of the background in a video.

[James Perrett]

so far the best thing that matches my budget is GeForce RTX 3060 Windforce OC 12GB but I certainly want to be sure that something like this can do what I need it to before committing.

I've just checked and that one is 5 years old so you'll probably only get a couple of years out of it before it becomes unsupported. This is the site that my lad uses when he is evaluating graphics cards

https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/g ... 2-gb.c3682

[Nazard]

An Nvidia 3060 12gb will be able to edit 4K 10‑bit 4:2:2 footage. Having 12 Gb of DDR6 is a big plus.

The 1080 came out in 2016 and I bought mine in 2018: Nvidia announced last year that driver support would be ceasing, so that puts a lifespan of about 10 years. In that case your 3060 should be good for another 5 years or so and of course will still work even after support has come to an end.

New graphic cards are under the same constraints as other components, especially as they use DDR7 and prices have increased whilst availability has dropped. The 3060 uses DDR6 and I've come across a few rumours that Nvidia might reintroduce GPUs with DDR6 as it is cheaper and more available, although I can't see that happening.

[ajay_m]

And I would get it as soon as you can. If you think the current price hikes for memory, storage etc. are bad, you ain't seen nothing yet. One hard drive manufacturer (Seagate I think) have sold their entire year's production already to AI vendors.

The consumer market for PCs and the bits and pieces that go into them constitutes only about 5% of revenue for the companies that make that stuff. In many cases they are planning to just abandon the market entirely as the profits to be made supplying stuff for AI are so significant.

Amazon alone have earmarked something like 200 billion to invest in AI and infrastructure. This serious distortion of normal markets will lead to a huge amount of disruption and it's not clear how it'll all play out. If you have working gear now, you may well be looking at several years before prices return to some level of normality, and in the interim there is of course the not insignificant risk of the speculative AI bubble bursting, just as was the case in previous tech and financial crashes.