Premiere Pro CC 2021 - Should I use BOTH integrated and Dedicated GPUs

[NNC_Video]

Hello Everyone!

I recently noticed that in Premiere Pro 2021, there is an option to have Hardware accerated decoding with both Intel and Nvidia. Does anyone know if it is better to use both or just Nvidia. 

On top of that, should I go into the Nvidia control panel to ensure that I the program is only using my dedicated GPU?

I notice that during export, both GPUs are working, so I would think that it is best, but a lot of the info I see online says to use Dedicated only (but it might be out dated info).

I am running the following laptop:

Windows 10

11th gen i7-11800H @ 2.3GHz

RTX 3070 8GB GPU

64GB RAM

Windows and drivers up to date. 

[RjL190365 · Accepted solution]

My recommendation for that laptop is to use the Intel GPU for hardware decoding and the Nvidia GPU (CUDA) for rendering (which is the default, in the case of your particular system). Setting the renderer to OpenCL would have forced the system to use only the Intel GPU for renders.

For hardware encoding only the Nvidia GPU is available by default; you cannot currently use the Intel hardware encoder if you have a discrete GPU installed.

[NNC_Video]

Hello RjL, Thanks for getting back to me. Do you know why it would be best to use the Intel GPU for hardware decoding? I thought my GPU was pretty good. (or maybe no so much). 

Thanks

[RjL190365]

Here's the reason:

In my own testing no discrete GPU, not even the RTX 3090, is as fast in hardware decoding as even a cheapo Intel integrated GPU from a 10th-Gen Refresh i3 CPU.

In addition, the discrete GPU won't be as overworked if you spread out the hardware features between the two GPUs. Having the discrete GPU do everything may overwork the GPU, causing it to underperform (and this underperformance is relative to its capabilities, not necessarily other GPUs).

[NNC_Video]

Great thanks that makes sense! 🙂 You were very helpful.