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  1. Home
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  5. DaVinci Resolve 15: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 Performance

DaVinci Resolve 15: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 Performance

Posted on October 22, 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 Some of the content in this article is most likely out of date, as it was written on October 22, 2018. For newer information, see our more recent articles.

Table of Contents

  • Introduction
  • Test Setup & Methodology
  • Color Tab FPS – Raw Benchmark Results
  • Color Tab FPS – Benchmark Analysis
  • Fusion Tab FPS – Raw Benchmark Results
  • Fusion Tab FPS – Benchmark Analysis
  • Is the RTX 2070 good for DaVinci Resolve?

Introduction

Note: This article uses much of the same data as our previous DaVinci Resolve 15: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 & 2080 Ti Performance post. It simply adds the results for the RTX 2070 8GB and focuses more on that card in particular. Much of the text & format is otherwise the same between both articles.

In many ways, DaVinci Resolve is the poster child for how video editing applications should leverage the power of the GPU. While other core components like the CPU are certainly important, if you want the best FPS possible while color grading, a significant portion of your workstation budget will likely be spent on either a single powerful GPU or multiple GPUs.

NVIDIA's new RTX series cards are especially interesting since not only should they perform extremely well from the get-go, DaVinci Resolve is listed as already implementing (or planning to implement) the new features found on the RTX platform by using "Turing Tensor Cores in Resolve 15 to accelerate AI inferencing for graphics enhancement". This is a fairly generic bit of text, and it really only makes sense if you understand the two major new features found in these RTX cards: Tensor cores and RT cores.

What are Tensor Cores?

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, but exactly how they do so and where exactly it will improve performance is still to be seen.

What are RT Cores?

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 Blackmagic may utilize these cores for ray tracing in the Fusion tab, but if or when they will take advantage of these RT cores is currently unknown.

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 test platforms we will be using in our testing:

Test Hardware  
Motherboard: MSI MEG X399 Creation
CPU: AMD Threadripper 2990WX 3.0GHz
(4.2GHz Turbo) 32 Core
CPU Cooler: Corsair Hydro Series H80i v2
RAM: 8x DDR4-2666 16GB (128GB total)
Hard Drive: Samsung 960 Pro 1TB M.2 PCI-E x4 NVMe SSD
OS: Windows 10 Pro 64-bit
Software: DaVinci Resolve 15 (ver. 15.1.0.25)

To see how the new RTX cards and the RTX 2070 in particular perform in DaVinci Resolve, we tested it against a selection of cards from NVIDIA as well as AMD's Vega 64 GPU.

Test Video Cards  
Gigabyte Radeon RX VEGA 64 GAMING OC 8G NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 8GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Ti 8GB
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 8GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti 11GB
NVIDA Titan XP 12GB NVIDIA Titan V 12GB
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 8GB NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 8GB
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti 11GB  

Our testing for DaVinci Resolve 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!

Color Tab FPS – Raw Benchmark Results

Color Tab FPS – Benchmark Analysis

To analyze our benchmark results, we are going to break it down based the three different levels of color grading we tested. The easiest – a basic grade with 4 power windows – is not too difficult and every GPU we tested should be able to give full playback FPS in everything but RED 8K (Full Res Premium). However, each level up should show more and more of a difference between the different cards.

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 card 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.

In terms of pricing, the new RTX 2070 8GB should be just a bit more expensive than the GTX 1080 8GB, but quite a bit cheaper than the GTX 1080 Ti. Because of that, we feel that the most valid comparison between the RTX 2070 and the previous GTX line is to look at it versus the GTX 1080. If you also want to look at the RTX 2080 and RTX 2080 Ti, the most straight-forward comparison is against the GTX 1080 Ti and Titan Xp respectively.

While there really isn't much of a difference between any of the cards we tested with our lightest level of grading (since they all achieved near full FPS), the RTX 2070 did extremely well with the two higher grades. Where the RTX 2080 and 2080 Ti only saw a 10-25% increase in performance compared to the previous generation cards with the more difficult color grades, the RTX 2070 was about 40% faster than the GTX 1080. This means that it is a much closer match to the GTX 1080 Ti than it is to the GTX 1080.

Fusion Tab FPS – Raw Benchmark Results

Fusion Tab FPS – Benchmark Analysis

Fusion is relatively new to our DaVinci Resolve testing, and so far we haven't been too impressed with how well it takes advantage of the GPU. To be fair, we are not using media footage in these 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.

Whether it is due to our test projects or simply how much more CPU dependent Fusion is, we really didn't see much of a difference with any of the cards we tested. However, we will again point out the future potential of the RTX cards for Fusion. The new RT cores in particular could be very interesting and while we have no idea if/when they will be used, it is certainly something to keep in mind.

Is the RTX 2070 good for DaVinci Resolve?

Compared to the previous generation GTX 1080 8GB, the new RTX 2070 8GB is on average about 20% faster although that increases to roughly 40% faster with more difficult levels of color grading. This makes the RTX 2070 a terrific entry option for DaVinci Resolve, even ignoring the new Tensor and RT cores which may be utilized in the future.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 & 2080 Ti DaVinci Resolve 15 Benchmark

Be sure to check out our previous DaVinci Resolve 15: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 & 2080 Ti Performance article if you want to read our analysis of the RTX 2080 and 2080 Ti models or if you want to see how they perform in multi-GPU setups.

There isn't really much mystery here, the RTX cards are simply really good for DaVinci Resolve. Especially if you consider the fact that Blackmagic has already stated that they will be taking advantage of the Tensor cores in Resolve 15, it makes these cards incredibly attractive for use in a color grading workstation. However, not everything is perfect and there is one big issue that you may have to work around: the cooler most RTX cards use.

To put it bluntly, the style of cooler used on the reference cards from NVIDIA and most 3rd party manufacturers is not good for multi-GPU configurations. They can be excellent for a single GPU, but if you want two or more cards the design is sub-optimal. The issue is that the cooler does not exhaust out the back of the system so the hot air generated by the cards is simply recycled inside the system over and over. We didn't see a significant performance drop in our Resolve testing, but we are also testing in an ideal environment with relatively short clips. In GPU-heavy applications like OctaneRender and Redshift, however, we have seen up to a 30% performance drop over time using multiple reference RTX cards. This doesn't mean you cannot use the RTX cards in multi-GPU configurations, but rather that you should try to use cards with a "blower" style cooler that is designed to vent the heat directly outside of the chassis.

If you are interested in how the RTX cards perform in other applications, be sure to check out our recent Video Card articles as we have (or are working on) a number of other articles for the RTX 2070, 2080, and 2080 Ti.

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Tags: 1060, 1070, 1070 Ti, 1080, 1080Ti, 2070, 2080, 2080 Ti, DaVinci Resolve, GeForce, Radeon, RTX, Vega

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