Why is Adobe premiere Pro so CPU Dependent?

Question

Hello there fellow creators! alil about myself, i do videos for my youtube channel. This is not a promotion so i wont link it unless anyone interested to know more of what i do to get a better picture to help me. That being said, i used to run APP using AMD's FX8350 CPU and a Quadro 2000 GPU. While its a cool processor, i thought to upgrade to get better work flow and smooth editing (as my AMD build gets real slow when i have a huge project). I upgraded to to intel i7 4790k CPU with Geforce GTX Titan Z. (I now have the Titan X Maxwell.) with all three GPU's Im seeing that the same thing happens when i have huge projects with effects and so on. I wondered how much of my GPU was adobe really using and i found out (with GPU and CPU monitoring software) that adobe is using about 10-20% of my GPU's power. My CPU its at 100% on playback (with huge project).

Ok so all that being said, im aware that GPU and CPU work together and that a slow CPU wont work well with a fast GPU etc. etc. but correct me if im wrong but doesn't Adobe supposed to be using more of my GPU than my CPU? the i7 4790k is a respectable CPU with tons of power that should be enough to run adobe smoothly so im alittle confused.

JFPhoton · Accepted Answer

yes its checked, ill try that format and see thanks for the help Alani

If you are trying to edit 4K on a timeline with more than one track,plus effects, your CPU is a liitle weak for the job. Premiere Pro needs more "cores" than your CPU to adequately handle a 4K workflow. If you are editing 1080p, than there would be additional problems. You have 4 cores and 8 " threads"....the frequency of your CPU is great, plenty high enough

You did not mention system memory or your storage arrangement. Sometimes these can be "bottlenecks",but, in your case the 100% CPU usage tells you immediately what is happening. Generally, 32 GB system memory is the minimum recommended, as PPro now utilizes more memory in its newer versions....esp. with 4K.....16 GB would slow things down.

Slow, mechanical spinning hard drives are now a thing of the past and are not recommended now that SSDs have come down in price. Trying to serve up 4K video streams from a possibly fragmented, more than half filled hard drive chugging along at 50MB/sec. will turn your edit experience into a slow motion nightmare worse than death itself. Get modern and use at least two separate Samsung 850 Pro SSDs.....one as your "boot drive" containing OS,Programs, Windows page file, and the "media cache" and "cache" file from PPro in their default location. All the rest would go on the second SSD, ( i.e. media clips, project files, exports, and previews). Spinning hard drives can be used to archive finished projects and media,or, for backing up.......they are not recommended for active video editing....the media clips need to come off of your fastest drive for best performance.

You may want to consider using a new M.2 PCI NVMe SSD which will provide over 3GB/sec read and over 2 GB/sec write speed....you can actually use just ONE of these drives, ( Samsung 960 Pro) for EVERYTHING without a performance penalty !!! Then, the "spinners" can be back up drives.

So, with the low core count and editing difficult 4K material, you may want to tune up your rig as described and then transcode your clips to a more "edit friendly" codec like the free Cineform,or, similar to lessen the load on the CPU.

Ann Bens · Answer

Moved to Hardware forum.

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