Upgrade GPU Nvidia Geforce vs. RTX Quattro

[willferox]

Hello I'm looking to upgrade my ancient GTX1060-6GB. I'm currently looking at the 3070 / 3080 / 3090 / 4080 / 4090 and also the Quattro A2000 and Quattro A4000. I'm happy to spend more if there are good reasons to do so. I'm a professional film-maker and editor and about 20% of my income is from editing.

I'm interested to know about Geforce vs Quattro, particuarly weighing up the VRAM vs CUDA count. The Geforce series tends to have more cores and the Quattro has more VRAM. I generally haven't been worried about reliability since my 1060 has never failed me, and the Studio Drivers seem to make the card more stable. I'm also considering waiting for the 4080 due to the performance gains, however, I'd like some steer on whether or not the 4080 would be overkill for my requirements.

I generally edit up to 4k Prores, MXF and RED files, rarely projects longer than 10 minutes. I edit online files, not proxies. My computer spec is M2 drives, 64gb ram, 24 core 13900k. I use Adobe Premiere pro, Photoshop, Lightroom and Bridge. My monitor is a 4k BenQ. I would like this setup to last me 5 years. I don't do any gaming.

Thanks,
Will

[Ann Bens]

Moved to hardware forum.

[Averdahl]

I'm currently looking at the 3070 / 3080 / 3090 / 4080 / 4090 and also the Quattro A2000 and Quattro A4000. I'm happy to spend more if there are good reasons to do so. I'm a professional film-maker and editor and about 20% of my income is from editing.

By @willferox

The Quadro name is dead for recent cards and not used today. 🙂

Nvidia calls just call them RTX A2000, RTX A4000, etc, etc today.

I just bought an RTX A5000 and it is performance wise equivalent to the RTX 3080Ti from the readings i did. RTX A6000 is equivalent to the RTX 3090. It´s easy to get info just by typing into Google GTX 1060 vs RTX A4000 and you will get lots of info and comparisons between the cards. YouTube is probably filled with videos and comparisons.

I prefer the RTX A-series since they have more VRAM, stable drivers and the relatively low power consumtion, ECC VRAM, they (A5000/A6000) occupy two pci slots instead of three unless the GTX-card is a founders edition. The A4000 occupy only one Pci slot so thats even better.

If you buy one, look up prices before you buy since the prices do vary for the very same card depending on from where you get it and depending of how they are branded. Buy a PNY card and not a Lenovo/Dell/HP branded card.

The VRAM comes in handy when working with 4K and can make a big difference.

[willferox]

Thank you Averdahl!

Really useful info there. I was curious to know if, other than the additional VRAM, improved stability/reliability and reduced power consumption, there were any additional benefits to these cards over GeForce. I wondered if the reduced clock speed (apparently to keep the card stable and cool) had any significant impact on performance and how this woud manifest itself. Finally I wondered, if these cards are specifically aimed at 3D artists, are there significant benefits for people like me who only use Premiere Pro, Photoshop, Bridge, Lightroom etc.

I actually ended up buying a barely-used PNY RTX A4000 on ebay for £500 (same price as a new RTX 3070). On 4K projects I'm utilising about 8-9GB VRAM go glad I got this card over a 3070 with only 8GB VRAM. A concern is that I'm using 100% CUDA when rendering projects, which makes it feel like a bottleneck. Does your A5000 utilize all CUDA?

Thanks,
Will

[Averdahl]

I was curious to know if, other than the additional VRAM, improved stability/reliability and reduced power consumption, there were any additional benefits to these cards over GeForce.

By @willferox

For me one huge benifit was that the card uses 2 Pci-e slots instead of 3 since i have another Pci-e card for NVME storage installed directly under the GPU. A 3 Pci-e GPU would force me to remove that card. Apart from that, no other benifits.

Finally I wondered, if these cards are specifically aimed at 3D artists, are there significant benefits for people like me who only use Premiere Pro, Photoshop, Bridge, Lightroom etc.

Those workstation cards are aimed mainly (?) for 3D/CAD and the additional VRAM comes in handy for large stills and video work.

A concern is that I'm using 100% CUDA when rendering projects, which makes it feel like a bottleneck. Does your A5000 utilize all CUDA?

For me it depends on what cuda effects i have used, media used and how much scaling i use. I have seen approx 10-30% utilization up to approx 100% utilization. I don´t see 100% so often though.

I use a HP Z4 G4 workstation with a Intel Xeon W-2245 (8 core, 3.9 Ghz) and 64GB RAM.

[Warren Heaton]

It can be helpful to look at what's being used in recommended configurations by well known system builders like Dell, HP, and Puget Systems.  For example, Puget Systems is currently using the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti 8GB and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 10GB in their recommended workstations for Premiere Pro.

More can be found here:

Adobe Premiere Pro User Guide > Hardware recommendations for Premiere Pro and After Effects

Scroll down to Recommended Systems for links to Dell, HP and Puget Systems.

The NVIDIA 4090 has reports of a cable that melts, so double-check that prior to purchasing that card.