Skip to content

Main Navigation

Puget Systems Logo
  • Solutions
    • Recommended Systems For:
    • Content Creation
      • Photo Editing
        • Recommended Systems For:
        • Adobe Lightroom Classic
        • Adobe Photoshop
      • Video Editing
        • Recommended Systems For:
        • Adobe After Effects
        • Adobe Premiere Pro
        • DaVinci Resolve
        • Foundry Nuke
      • 3D Design and Animation
        • Recommended Systems For:
        • Autodesk 3ds Max
        • Autodesk Maya
        • Blender
        • Cinema 4D
        • Houdini
        • ZBrush
      • Real-Time Engines
        • Recommended Systems For:
        • Game Development
        • Unity
        • Unreal Engine
        • Virtual Production
      • Rendering
        • Recommended Systems For:
        • OctaneRender
        • Redshift
        • V-Ray
      • Digital Audio
        • Recommended Systems For:
        • Ableton Live
        • FL Studio
        • Pro Tools
    • Engineering
      • CAD
        • Recommended Systems For:
        • Autodesk AutoCAD
        • Autodesk Inventor
        • Autodesk Revit
        • SOLIDWORKS
      • Photogrammetry
        • Recommended Systems For:
        • ArcGIS Pro
        • Agisoft Metashape
        • Pix4D
        • RealityCapture
    • Scientific Computing
      • Recommended Systems For:
      • Data Science
      • Machine Learning / AI
      • Scientific Computing
    • More
      • Recommended Systems For:
      • Compact Size
      • Live Streaming
      • NVIDIA RTX Studio
      • Quiet Operation
      • Virtual Reality
  • Products
    • Intel Core i7 & i9
      Workstations with 13th Gen Intel Core i7 & i9 processors on Z690 and Z790 chipsets
    • AMD Ryzen 7 & 9
      Workstations with AMD Ryzen 7000 Series processors on B650 and X670 chipsets
    • AMD Threadripper PRO
      Workstations with AMD Threadripper PRO 5000 WX processors on the WRX80 chipset
    • Intel Xeon W
      Workstations with Intel Xeon W 3300 processors on the C621E chipset
    • Rackmount & Server
      Servers and workstations in rackmount chassis
    • Custom Computers
      Customize a desktop workstation from scratch
    • Custom Servers
      Customize a rackmount server from scratch
    • QNAP Network Attached Storage
      Check out our external storage options as an authorized reseller for QNAP
    • Recommended Third Party Peripherals
      View our list of recommended peripherals to use with your new PC
  • Publications
    • Articles
    • HPC Blog
    • Blog Posts
    • Case Studies
    • Podcasts
    • Press
  • Support
    • Contact Support
    • Support Articles
    • Warranty Details
  • About Us
    • About Us
    • Contact Us
    • Press Kit
    • Testimonials
    • Careers
  • Talk to an Expert
  • My Account
  1. Home
  2. /
  3. Hardware Articles
  4. /
  5. DaVinci Resolve 15 CPU Roundup: Intel vs AMD vs Mac

DaVinci Resolve 15 CPU Roundup: Intel vs AMD vs Mac

Posted on December 10, 2018 by Matt Bach
Always look at the date when you read an article. Some of the content in this article is most likely out of date, as it was written on December 10, 2018. For newer information, see DaVinci Resolve 15 CPU Roundup: Intel vs AMD vs Mac

Table of Contents

  • Introduction
  • Test Setup & Methodology
  • Benchmark Results
  • Color Tab FPS – Benchmark Analysis
  • Fusion Tab FPS – Benchmark Analysis
  • Intel vs AMD vs Mac for DaVinci Resolve 15

Introduction

Unlike most other applications used in the video post-production process, DaVinci Resolve relies much more on the power of your video card(s) than it does on your processor. However, you do need enough CPU power to keep up with your GPU(s) and there are still some aspects of Resolve (like the Fusion tab) where the CPU is more important.

In this article, we will be looking at a wide range of processors from Intel and AMD including the Intel 9th Gen, Intel X-series, AMD Ryzen 2nd Gen, and AMD Threadripper 2nd Gen CPU lines. In addition, we will be comparing them to a current Mac Pro 12 Core and iMac Pro 14 Core for those that are curious about how much faster a PC workstation can be compared to a Mac.

One thing to note is that we will not be including results for any previous-gen CPUs in this article. At first, we were going to include them but the charts and tables soon got out of hand. Instead, if you want to know how these CPUs compare to previous generations, we recommend checking out the following articles:

  • DaVinci Resolve 15: Intel X-series 2018 Refresh Performance
  • DaVinci Resolve 15: Core i7 9700K & i9 9900K Performance
  • DaVinci Resolve 15: AMD Threadripper 2990WX & 2950X Performance

If you would like to skip over our test setup and benchmark result/analysis sections, feel free to jump right to the Conclusion section.

Test Setup & Methodology

Listed below are the systems we will be using in our testing:

Intel-based PC Test Hardware  
Motherboard: Gigabyte AORUS Z390 Pro WiFi Gigabyte X299 Designare EX
CPU: Intel Core i9 9900K 8 Core
3.6GHz (5.0GHz Turbo)


Intel Core i7 9700K 8 Core
3.6GHz (4.9GHz Turbo)


Intel Core i5 9600K 6 Core
3.7GHz (4.6GHz Turbo)
Intel Core i7 9800X 8 Core
3.8GHz (4.5GHz Turbo)


Intel Core i9 9820X 10 Core
3.3GHz (4.2GHz Turbo)


Intel Core i9 9900X 10 Core
3.5GHz (4.5GHz Turbo)


Intel Core i9 9920X 12 Core
3.5GHz (4.5GHz Turbo)


Intel Core i9 9940X 14 Core
3.3GHz (4.5GHz Turbo)


Intel Core i9 9960X 16 Core
3.1GHz (4.5GHz Turbo)


Intel Core i9 9980XE 18 Core
3.0GHz (4.5GHz Turbo)
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-U12S Noctua NH-U12DX i4
RAM: 4x DDR4-2666 16GB
(64GB total)
8x DDR4-2666 16GB
(128GB total)
AMD-based PC Test Hardware  
Motherboard: Gigabyte X470 AORUS GAMING 7 WIFI MSI MEG X399 Creation
CPU: AMD Ryzen 2700X 8 Core
3.7GHz (4.3GHz Turbo)
AMD Threadripper 2990WX 32 Core
3.0 GHz(4.2GHz Turbo) – DLM On


AMD Threadripper 2970WX 24 Core
3.0 GHz(4.2GHz Turbo) – DLM On


AMD Threadripper 2950X 16 Core
3.5 GHz(4.4GHz Turbo)


AMD Threadripper 2920X 12 Core
3.5 GHz(4.3GHz Turbo)
CPU Cooler: Corsair Hydro Series H80i v2 Corsair Hydro Series H80i v2
RAM: 4x DDR4-2666 16GB
(64GB total)
8x DDR4-2666 16GB
(128GB total)
Shared PC Hardware/Software
Video Card: 1-2x NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti 11GB
Hard Drive: Samsung 960 Pro 1TB M.2 PCI-E x4 NVMe SSD
OS: Windows 10 Pro 64-bit (version 1803)
Mac-based PC Test Hardware  
System: Apple Mac Pro (12 Core) Apple iMac Pro (14 Core)
CPU: 12-core
2.7GHz 30MB of L3 cache
14-core Intel Xeon W
2.5GHz Turbo Boost up to 4.3GHz
RAM: 64GB 1866MHz DDR3 ECC 64GB 2666MHz DDR4 ECC
Video Card: Dual AMD FirePro D700, 6GB of GDDR5 VRAM Radeon Pro Vega 64, 16GB of HBM2 memory
Hard Drive: 1TB PCIe-based SSD 1TB SSD
OS: MacOS Mojave (10.14.1)

Our testing was done on DaVinci Resolve Studio 15.1.2.8 and primarily revolves around the Color tab and focuses on the minimum FPS you would see with various media and levels of grading. The lowest level of grading we test is simply a basic correction using the color wheels plus 4 Power Window nodes with motion tracking. The next level up is the same adjustments but with the addition of 3 OpenFX nodes: Lens Flare, Tilt-Shift Blur, and Sharpen. The final level has all of the previous nodes plus one TNR node.

We kept our project timelines at Ultra HD (3840×2160) across all the tests, but changed the playback framerate to match the FPS of the media. For all the difficult RAW footage we tested (CinemaDNG & RED), we not only tested with the RAW decode quality set to "Full Res" but we also tested at "Half Res" ("Half Res Good" for the RED footage). Full resolution decoding should show the largest performance delta between the different cards, but we also want to see what kind of FPS increase you might see by running at a lower decode resolution.

Codec Resolution FPS Bitrate Clip Name Source
H.264 3840×2160 29.97 FPS 80 Mbps Transcoded from RED 4K clip
H.264 LongGOP 3840×2160 29.97 FPS 150 Mbps Provided by Neil Purcell – www.neilpurcell.com
DNxHR HQ 8-bit 3840×2160 29.97 FPS 870 Mbps Transcoded from RED 4K clip
ProRes 422 HQ 3840×2160 29.97 FPS 900 Mbps Transcoded from RED 4K clip
ProRes 4444 3840×2160 29.97 FPS 1,200 Mbps Transcoded from RED 4K clip
XAVC S 3840×2160 29.97 FPS 90 Mbps Provided by Samuel Neff – www.neffvisuals.com
XAVC Long GOP 3840×2160 29.97 FPS 190 Mbps Transcoded from RED 4K clip
Blackmagic RAW 4608×1920 24 FPS 210 Mbps A001_08122231_C008 Blackmagic RAW
RED (7:1) 4096×2304 29.97 FPS 300 Mbps A004_C186_011278_001 RED Sample R3D Files
CinemaDNG 4608×2592 24 FPS 1,900 Mbps Interior Office Blackmagic Design
[Direct Download]
RED (7:1) 6144×3077 23.976 FPS 840 Mbps S005_L001_0220LI_001 RED Sample R3D Files
RED (9:1) 8192×4320 25 FPS 1,000 Mbps B001_C096_0902AP_001 RED Sample R3D Files
We want to give a shout out to Neil Purcell and Samuel Neff. They both sent us a sample clip to use in our testing to help us ensure that our testing is applicable to professional video editors and colorists. Thank You!

With the addition of the "Fusion" tab in Resolve, we are also going to be including some basic tests for that tab as well. At the moment these are relatively easy projects that specifically test things like particles with a turbulence node, planar tracking, compositing, and 3D text with a heavy gaussian blur node. These projects are based on the following tutorials:

  • The Post Color Blog – Composite a new phone screen in Davinci Resolve and Fusion!
  • VDV Productions – 3D Dancing Text Animation with light rays | DaVinci Resolve 15 & Fusion Tutorial
  • Chetal Gazdar – Blackmagic Design Fusion Tutorial: Golden Dust Particles

If you have suggestions on what we should test in the future, please let us know in the comments section. Especially if you are able to send us a sample project to use, we really want to hear from you!

Benchmark Results

While our benchmark presents various scores based on the performance of each type of task, we also wanted to provide the individual results in case there is a specific task someone may be interested in. Feel free to skip to the next section for our analysis of these results.

Color Tab FPS – Benchmark Analysis

To analyze our benchmark results, we are going to break it down based on whether we used one or two RTX 2080 Ti GPUs and the three different levels of color grading we tested. The easiest level of grading – a basic grade with 4 power windows – is not too difficult and every CPU we tested should be able to give full playback FPS with everything but RED 6K/8K media. However, each level up should show more and more of a difference between the different processors.

The "Score" shown in the charts is a representation of the average performance we saw with each GPU for that test. In essence, a score of "80" means that on average, the system was able to play our project at 80% of the tested media's FPS. A perfect score would be "100" which would mean that the system gave full FPS even with the most difficult codecs and grades.

DaVinci Resolve Studio 15 Single GPU Benchmark CPU Roundup - Intel 9th Gen, Intel X-series, AMD Threadripper 2nd Gen, AMD Ryzen 2nd Gen, Apple Mac Pro, Apple iMac Pro

Starting with the Color Grading results with a single RTX 2080 Ti, you can really clearly see that while you need to have enough CPU power to keep up with your GPU(s), there isn't much benefit to having more CPU power than you need. In fact, all the AMD Threadripper CPUs and all the Intel X-series CPU (with the exception of the i7 9800X) pretty much performed the same. So, if you wanted to get the full performance out of your RTX 2080 Ti, as long as you simply use an Intel X-series i9 or AMD Threadripper CPU, you should be just fine.

If those CPUs are outside your budget, the Intel 9th Gen CPUs also did pretty well, although at this level the AMD Ryzen 2700X is likely a better choice since it is typically priced closer to the i5 9600K while being ~30% faster for color grading in Resolve.

On the Mac side, the iMac Pro and Mac Pro don't use particularly powerful GPUs which means that they are not ideal for high-end color grading work in DaVinci Resolve. Even the iMac Pro with the Vega 64 GPU was only able to beat the Core i7 9600K, and even then only by ~8%. Keep in mind that this isn't a completely fair comparison in terms of CPU power alone since we would need to be using an AMD Radeon Vega 64 on the PC in order to get a direct comparison.

DaVinci Resolve Studio 15 Dual GPU Benchmark CPU Roundup - Intel 9th Gen, Intel X-series, AMD Threadripper 2nd Gen, AMD Ryzen 2nd Gen, Apple Mac Pro, Apple iMac Pro

With dual RTX 2080 Ti, we see a bit more of a benefit to using a more powerful CPU. With this setup, we would recommend at least the Intel X-series i9 9920X 12 Core or the AMD Threadripper 2950X 16 Core in order to get full performance. You can go even higher-end if you want to of course, but there is almost no performance reason to do so unless you are planning on adding a third or fourth high-end GPU to the system.

Fusion Tab FPS – Benchmark Analysis

DaVinci Resolve Studio 15 Fusion Benchmark CPU Roundup - Intel 9th Gen, Intel X-series, AMD Threadripper 2nd Gen, AMD Ryzen 2nd Gen, Apple Mac Pro, Apple iMac Pro

Moving on to the results for Fusion, the first thing we want to point out is that having multiple GPUs doesn't appear to greatly affect performance. To be fair, we are not using footage inside any of our projects that is particularly difficult to process, but given the FPS we saw in each project we doubt that that having multiple GPUs would significantly improve performance even if you are using 8K RED media. Because of this, we are going to focus on the results we saw with a single RTX 2080 Ti video card.

Fusion is very different than the rest of Resolve since it is more about single-threaded CPU performance than anything else. In fact, these results are similar to what we saw for After Effects. In short, the Intel 9th Gen CPUs are king, easily beating the Intel X-series and AMD Threadripper CPUs. The one bit of a surprise to us was that the 14 core iMac Pro was able to keep up very well with the Intel 9th Gen CPUs in the Fusion Tab. It wasn't quite as fast as the i9 9900K or i7 9700K, but it certainly did better than the Intel X-series or AMD Threadripper CPUs.

Something interesting to point out is the low performance we saw with the AMD Threadripper "WX" models. Those models are essentially two CPUs crammed onto a single die which results in additional overhead that can cause performance loss in applications that cannot take advantage of higher core counts. Even with the new "Dynamic Local Mode" feature enabled (which is supposed to assist in this sort of workload) the WX models clearly have some performance issues.

Intel vs AMD vs Mac for DaVinci Resolve 15

In DaVinci Resolve, performance is determined more by the power of your GPU(s) than your CPU, but it is still important to have enough CPU power to keep up. In most cases, we would recommend using an Intel X-series i9 CPU or an AMD Threadripper CPU in order to ensure that you are getting the best performance for your dollar. For a mid-range CPU (roughly $500-$1200) Threadripper should give you slightly better performance for color grading work, although at higher price points the Intel X-series take the lead.

Where it really gets complicated is if you use (or plan to use) the relatively new Fusion tab. Fusion is much more about single threaded CPU performance, so CPUs like the Intel 9th Gen i9 9900K are king. The Intel X-series still do pretty well in Fusion – which makes them a great balance between the Color and Fusion Tabs – although AMD Threadripper CPUs tend to underperform slightly since their per-core performance is currently lower than Intel.

Our testing included the Mac Pro and iMac Pro, but to be honest this isn't a very fair CPU comparison. Since the Mac systems use AMD graphics with relatively mid-range GPU performance, our testing doesn't really show what the Mac systems can do on a pure CPU level. We could have used a Radeon Vega 64 in all our testing, but for the price of a 14-core iMac Pro you can easily get a PC with dual RTX 2080 Ti GPUs which should be about 40% faster in DaVinci Resolve than the iMac Pro. So, while this isn't fair to the CPU alone, it still is very informative on how a Mac system could compare to a PC in DaVinci Resolve.

If you are curious how the latest Intel and AMD processors perform in other applications, be sure to check out our recent Processor articles as we have a number of articles looking at CPU performance in Photoshop, Lightroom, After Effects, Premiere Pro, and many other software packages.

CTA Image
DaVinci Resolve Workstations

Puget Systems offers a range of powerful and reliable systems that are tailor-made for your unique workflow.

Configure a System!
CTA Image
Labs Consultation Service

Our Labs team is available to provide in-depth hardware recommendations based on your workflow.

Find Out More!

Related Content

  • Puget Systems Hardware Trends of 2022
  • Intel Xeon W-3400 Content Creation Preview
  • NVIDIA RTX 6000 Ada vs RTX A6000 for Content Creation
  • DaVinci Resolve Studio: NVIDIA RTX 6000 Ada Performance
View All Related Content

Latest Content

  • Puget Systems Hardware Trends of 2022
  • Guide To Removing Instapak Foam
  • Basic Guide to Identify and Remove Malware
  • Should I Upgrade My Gpu
View All
Tags: 2700X, 2920X, 2950X, 2970WX, 2990WX, 9600K, 9700K, 9800X, 9900K, 9900X, 9920X, 9940X, 9960X, 9980X, 9980XE, AMD Ryzen 2nd Gen, AMD Threadripper 2nd Gen, Apple iMac Pro, Apple Mac Pro, DaVinci Resolve, Intel 9th Gen, Intel X-series

Who is Puget Systems?

Puget Systems builds custom PCs tailored for your workflow

Extensive in-house testing
making you more productive and giving you more performance for your dollar

Reliable workstations
with fewer crashes and blue screens means more time working, less time waiting on your computer

Support that understands
your complex workflows and can get you back up and running ASAP

Proven track record
check out our customer testimonials and Reseller Ratings

Get Started

Browse Our Workstations

Fractal Design Define 7 Chassis with Puget Systems Logo

Select your workflow:

Content Creation
Engineering
Scientific Computing
More

Latest Articles

  • Puget Systems Hardware Trends of 2022
  • Guide To Removing Instapak Foam
  • Basic Guide to Identify and Remove Malware
  • Should I Upgrade My Gpu
  • Case Study with Lost Boys Interactive
View All

Post navigation

 Lightroom Classic CC 2019 CPU Roundup: Intel vs AMDTesting Dynamic Local Mode on AMD Threadripper 2970WX – Photogrammetry 
Puget Systems Logo
Build Your Own PC Site Map FAQ
facebook instagram linkedin rss twitter youtube

Optimized Solutions

  • Adobe Premiere
  • Adobe Photoshop
  • Solidworks
  • Autodesk AutoCAD
  • Machine Learning

Workstations

  • Content Creation
  • Engineering
  • Scientific PCs
  • More

Support

  • Online Guides
  • Request Support
  • Remote Help

Publications

  • All News
  • Puget Blog
  • HPC Blog
  • Hardware Articles
  • Case Studies

Policies

  • Warranty & Return
  • Terms and Conditions
  • Privacy Policy
  • Delivery Times
  • Accessibility

About Us

  • Testimonials
  • Careers
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

© Copyright 2023 - Puget Systems, All Rights Reserved.