Are the NVIDIA RTX video cards good for video editing?

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The new RTX series from NVIDIA are not very exciting for Adobe applications, but they are great for DaVinci Resolve giving up to 20% higher performance than the GTX 1080 Ti. These cards are also very interesting cards for the future due to the addition of two major new features: Tensor cores and RT cores.

Are Tensor Cores used in video editing?

While already available on the more expensive Titan V GPU, the RTX line introduces tensor cores at a more reasonable price point. These tensor cores operate alongside the normal CUDA cores that traditionally do the heavy lifting, but are designed specifically for machine learning inference (running already created and trained machine learning models). Blackmagic has already announced that they will be using these cores in DaVinci Resolve 15 to "accelerate AI inferencing for graphics enhancement", but so far there has been no word from Adobe. Even if implemented fully, these cores will likely not improve things like live playback FPS or export times, but they will be used for things like shot color matching, denoiser, or automatic masking.

Are RT Cores used in video editing?

RT cores are brand new in this generation of graphics cards, and are specialized for a single type of operation: ray tracing. It is possible that these cores may be used in VFX or motion graphics, but if or when they will take advantage of is currently unknown.

These new features are primarily what you are paying for with the new RTX cards, so the primary reason to purchase them is to future proof your workstation so it will be able to take advantage of the tensor and RT cores in/when the future if the developers add support for them. It is currently unknown exactly how these cores will be utilized by Adobe or Blackmagic, or the kind of performance gains we may see once they are. However, we have already looked at how the RTX 2080 and 2080 Ti perform in a number of video editing applications as they are today:

Is the RTX 2080 8GB worth it for video editing?

In most video editing applications, you are unlikely to notice a difference between the RTX 2080 and a similarly priced 1000-series GTX card. In fact, you should get more VRAM from an older GTX card which makes the RTX 2080 slightly worse for 6K+ workflows. The main reason to invest in the RTX 2080 is to future proof your system in the hope that the new Tensor and RT cores will be leveraged in the future. Blackmagic has already announced that Resolve 15 will take advantage of tensor cores in the future, but Adobe has not yet announced their plans for these cores.

Is the RTX 2080 Ti 11GB worth it for video editing?

For Adobe applications, you are unlikely to notice a difference between the RTX 2080 and a similarly priced 1000-series GTX card. However, in DaVinci Resolve the RTX 2080 Ti performs on par with the much more expensive Titan V. For most users, however, the main reason to invest in the RTX 2080 is to future proof your system in the hope that the new Tensor and RT cores will be leveraged in the future. Blackmagic has already announced that Resolve 15 will take advantage of tensor cores in the future, but Adobe has not yet announced their plans for these cores.