CUDA Greyed Out with RTX 5080 Despite Latest Drivers and Clean System

[christianm93359868]

I’m using the latest version of Adobe Premiere Pro (as of July 2025) on a clean Windows 10 Pro system (22H2) with an NVIDIA RTX 5080 GPU. CUDA is completely greyed out under Project Settings, and I’m seeing 4+ hour export estimates for a simple 5-minute video — even using low-resolution H.264 presets.

Here’s everything I’ve already tried:

• Installed the latest NVIDIA Studio Driver (clean install, not Game Ready)

• Cleared all media cache files and rebuilt the database

• Created multiple new test projects (MP4, MOV — no old effects or plugins)

• Ran GPUSniffer.exe – RTX 5080 is detected, but CUDA still unavailable

• Hardware acceleration and GPU scheduling are enabled in Windows

• Tried forcing GPU use via system graphics settings (High Performance mode)

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System Specs:

• GPU: NVIDIA RTX 5080 (24GB)

• Driver: Studio Driver 555.xx (latest as of July 2025)

• CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 7950X

• RAM: 128GB DDR5

• Storage: 2TB NVMe Gen4 SSD (OS + Apps), 4TB NVMe Gen4 SSD (Media)

• OS: Windows 10 Pro 22H2 (fully updated)

• Premiere Pro: v25.3

Thanks a lot for your ideas and help!!

[jamieclarke]

Hi @christianm93359868 -  Your GPU is working correctly. Recently, in Premiere Pro version 25.2, we removed the option for software only rendering. This means that if your system has only one GPU, the Renderer dropdown will appear greyed out, but your GPU is still being used.  You can learn more about this change here: Learn more about the removal of software rendering options

Starting in Premiere Pro version 25.4 (currently in beta), a tooltip will appear when hovering over the Renderer setting, stating:  “This playback engine is active and being used for rendering.”  This should help clarify the behavior.

One note: Your NVIDIA Studio driver appears to be out of date (currently at version 577.0).
To manually check for and install the latest Studio driver, visit:  https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/drivers/.

Just select your GPU and operating system, then choose the Studio Driver from the available options.

[christianm93359868]

Thanks for answering, James! Actually, I updated the driver for the rtx 5080 today to the studio version 32.0.15.7700 from July 22nd, 2025

Still, to export a 5 minute video in the lowest resolution 480p, h264 starts at 1 hour and 15 minutes and I canceled the export when it jumped to 2 hours. 

[Peru Bob]

What effects are used?

What type of media?

[christianm93359868]

No external effects, just Lumetri color and ones included in Premiere. I do have "Red Giant MAGIC Bullet from Maxon" installed but do not use it in that particularly project.  Camera footage is .mov from Panasonic Lumix cameras

[caroline_edits]

Thanks for the details, let's keep digging. Where are you exporting to? Have you tried sending your files to different locations on your machine to see if they export faster?

Hope we can figure this out,

Caroline

[christianm93359868]

Well, what I found out in a loooong nightshift, is that Adobe OR Nvidia does not (support) low-res videos anymore? Because I wanted to export a low-res 480p file from a 4K UHD timeline to show it around quickly.  ut like I said, 2 hours for 5 minutes. 

Same 4K timeline export in FullHD, around 10 minutes. 

So I guess, one of those two companies doesn't like 720p or lower anymore. At least they could have mentioned that 🙂

[caroline_edits]

I wouldn't guess that it has to do with 720p specifically, I'm just thinking about the scaling that's taking place! Scaling a video up or down is a GPU-accelerated process, and I'm wondering what would happen if you made a 720p sequence to export 720p.

Let us know how it goes! I also saw you made your own thread, feel free to update the other thread with this info.

Caroline

[christianm93359868]

Still, one more thing, Jamie.... when the Renderer is greyed out now in the latest version - why ist the "Preview Cache" also set to "None" with no other option? 

Not only is rendering very slow right now - it also doesn´t safe the already rendered clips/effects for the next time I open the project. Which is very annoying, to be honest. 

Thanks for clarifying!