How important is graphics card in Premiere and AE?

[TomWood87]

Hi all, I've recently been given a new PC for work, where I regularly edit 4K footage from an FS7, as well as video from iPhone X and some lower resolution media. I use Premiere and After Effects but it seems to be very laggy and I'm not sure if this is down to the graphics card, as the rest seems to be pretty high spec?

In settings I can see that the machine is an HP Z1 Entry Tower G5, with a Core i7-9700 CPU and 32GB RAM (not sure what speed). I actually have no idea where I can find out further specs on Windows 10, but I know that the graphics card is an nVidia GT710, which from a quick search looks like it's a pretty low-end £30 card which could be why I'm struggling to run Premiere and After Effects to some degree? I also know there's a 256GB SSD and a 6TB HDD in there.

I have read in a couple of places that graphics card doesn't reallycome into effect with Premiere (unsure about after effects) but it might be causing UI lag and other issues. 

If anyone can give me some advice with this it would be appreciated, as I need a bit of ammunition to go back to my IT guy to put a better card in if it's necessary.

Many thanks

[RjL190365]

The answer to that is largely the mismatch in memory throughput between the system RAM and the GPU's discrete RAM. If that GT 710 uses only DDR3 memory, its memory throughput is only 14 GB/s while the throughput of your system's main RAM (assuming that you're using DDR4-2666 RAM) is 43 GB/s. That mismatch will prevent the CPU from coming anywhere close to its maximum utilization even if the program demands it, causing even everyday apps to lag. In other words, your CPU is being choked out by the lousy GPU card. When looking for a discrete GPU, look for one with a memory throughput that's equal to or greater than the throughput of your system's main RAM for best everyday performance.

And you will not attain much if any GPU acceleration with that GT 710 because it has only 192 CUDA cores, whereas most of the GPUs that we recommend happen to have more than 1,000 CUDA cores.

[TomWood87]

Thank you so much for this, makes sense. The RAM I have installed looks like it's 2133MHz DDR4 from what it says in Task Manager. Is there a solid but not bank-breaking card you recommend that may help close this gap??

[RjL190365]

For that system at such a low-ish budget, go for a GTX 1650. It is currently the cheapest CUDA GPU that's officially listed as "recommended" by Adobe for GPU acceleration in Premiere Pro.

[TomWood87]

Thank you, that's what I was looking at. I'm sure anything would be better than the 710 I've currently got. Thanks for all the help!

[John T Smith]

https://blogs.adobe.com/creativecloud/cuda-mercury-playback-engine-and-adobe-premiere-pro/ may help

[R Neil Haugen]

That GPU is pretty much a waste of a slot in the computer. Move up to a 1070 or better, you'll find that for the things that Premiere uses the GPU for, it will work much better.

For use of the GPU, look over the GPU Accelerated Effects List ... it's things like Lumetri/color, Warp stabilizer, and major frame-size resizing. The GPU isn't used for basic playback when there aren't GPU Accel effects involved.

GPU Accelerated Effects: https://helpx.adobe.com/premiere-pro/using/effects.html

Neil