Do Video Editors Need GeForce RTX 50 Series GPUs?

Introduction

At its core, the video editing process has remained consistent over the past 10+ years. Footage is captured, ingested, reviewed, cut together, and distributed for eyes to see. However, video editing as a craft has evolved significantly over the past 5 years, absorbing a range of technological advancements and mechanical shifts that have altered the methodologies behind the process. In today’s landscape, where hardware and software work in tandem, video editors face a more complex environment that requires them to maintain their creative vision while adapting to technological changes. As new hardware components and software applications emerge, video editors must adjust their workflows and creative methods to this evolving ‘function’ of video editing.

For modern-day video editors, cutting together video content – whether it is art, live broadcasts, music, movies, or television – requires an understanding of how the craft of video editing itself has evolved as well as the technological tools, cultural trends, and editing techniques that shape modern-day workflows. Recognizing these advancements helps editors understand their resources and limitations. Can they process ultra-high-resolution formats like 16K? Do they know which AI tools can speed up tasks while preserving footage quality? Are they equipped for hybrid environments with cloud-based processing and global collaboration? Ultimately, the key question is: Can their software and hardware support their vision?

There is no one-size-fits-all hardware configuration for video editing workflows, as each editor’s approach, skillset, and knowledge base differs with tasks like video editing, color grading, and motion design. Hardware recommendations can vary based on the applications used and the editor’s familiarity with the tools available. Video editing software like Adobe Premiere Pro and Blackmagic’s DaVinci Resolve rely on the CPU, GPU, and RAM to decode and encode footage. Historically, these applications were CPU-dependent, but with more complex footage types, effects, and tools offered, GPUs now play a more significant role in processing – accelerating tasks once handled solely by the CPU within these applications. Today, many processes rely on GPU acceleration, making the graphics card a critical component for optimizing system and application performance in modern video editing workflows.

As video editing workflows become faster, more flexible, and more robust, the question of upgrading to newer GPUs, like the NVIDIA RTX 50 Series, hinges on the tasks within an editor’s process. To better understand whether an upgrade is worthwhile, let’s take a closer look at the specific models within the RTX 50 Series lineup, which include:

• NVIDIA GeForce RTX™ 5090 (32GB)
• NVIDIA GeForce RTX™ 5080 (16GB)
• NVIDIA GeForce RTX™ 5070 Ti (16GB)
• NVIDIA GeForce RTX™ 5070 (12GB)

These new video cards have several improvements over the previous generation, including specialty features like the additional hardware decoders (NVDEC) and encoders (NVENC), which support the 4:2:2 chroma subsampling format. For a full breakdown of what is new with these GPUs, as well as a detailed performance analysis for a range of applications (including Photoshop, After Effects, and Unreal Engine), we have in-depth technical articles available for each GPU: RTX 5090, RTX 5080, RTX 5070 Ti, and RTX 5070.

In this article, we’ll consider whether upgrading to an NVIDIA RTX 50 Series GPU is a good investment for video editing workflows. For those with newer systems (~1-2 years), does the performance boost of a newer GPU justify the upgrade? And for those with older systems (3+ years), is their current GPU limiting their ability to work effectively compared to a newer model, or are there features in newer hardware that could make an upgrade worthwhile?

While this article dives into GPU performance for video editors, we also have another that explores whether upgrading to an RTX 50 Series GPU makes sense for graphic and motion designers as video editing and motion graphics workflows continue to converge.

GeForce RTX 50 Series for Premiere Pro

For video editors using Adobe Premiere Pro who may not be fully aware of how the GPU enhances performance, Adobe provides a high-level overview of GPU-accelerated rendering. This resource is a good starting point for understanding the GPU’s role in Premiere Pro. However, it’s important to note that it offers general guidance, as the Premiere Pro team is constantly working on new features to optimize GPU usage, especially with the release of new hardware and updates.

While Premiere Pro uses the CPU for tasks like decoding Intraframe footage and debayering certain RAW footage types, the GPU is programmed to accelerate specific effects and LongGOP footage, as long as both hardware and software support the codec, bit depth, and chroma subsampling format. Having these effects and footage types processed by the GPU improves system responsiveness, allowing the CPU to manage remaining workloads without throttling, minimizing bottlenecks, and improving overall performance within Premiere Pro. This results in smoother scrubbing, faster preview rendering, and more reliable playback in the Program Monitor. If the CPU operates at or near full capacity, users may encounter reduced performance in Premiere Pro and other applications running on the system.

For NVIDIA GPUs, Premiere Pro leverages CUDA cores as part of its GPU acceleration framework, offloading specific tasks from the CPU to the GPU. NVIDIA GPUs feature dedicated media engines, NVDEC for decoding and NVENC for encoding, which help with processing computationally intensive codecs like LongGOP formats (H.264 and H.265). The GeForce RTX 50 Series GPUs are the first to include media engines capable of decoding and encoding H.264 4:2:2, a recording format used in professional camera systems. While Premiere Pro version 25.2 does not yet support the Blackwell architecture, integration is expected later this year. In the meantime, users can test H.264 and H.265 4:2:2 decoding in Premiere Pro Beta version 25.3, which includes early support for Blackwell GPUs.

To help assess whether upgrading to a GeForce RTX 50 Series video card is a worthwhile investment, we’ve compiled benchmark data from our newly updated PugetBench for Premiere Pro results. In this comparison, “average” refers to the aggregated scores of all models within each GeForce RTX generation (50, 40, and 30 Series). We’ll focus on the overall score and compare it to the GPU effects score, highlighting the performance differences between different generations of GeForce RTX GPUs in GPU-only tasks. Additionally, we’ll examine LongGOP, Intraframe, and RAW scores, as these categories are directly related to decoding and encoding, two core categories tested in our Premiere Pro benchmarks.

Upgrading from a GeForce RTX 30 Series GPU to a GeForce RTX 50 Series GPU results in a roughly 28% increase in overall performance. While this improvement is significant, it may not be enough to justify the investment for every video editor. A more compelling reason to upgrade lies in the 66% performance boost in the Extended GPU Effects score, which can be beneficial for those implementing Premiere Pro’s built-in GPU-accelerated effects on top of their footage.

While GPU effects are important, the bulk of work in a sequence involves decoding and encoding footage. Based on our second chart, there is a 21% increase in LongGOP scores. However, this score is complex, as it combines both decoding and encoding results. Decoding plays a more significant role in video editing workflows. At the time of testing, Premiere Pro did not fully support Blackwell Architecture GPUs, which means our test results did not take advantage of the media engines in the GeForce RTX 50 series. We expect this to change when Premiere Pro releases version 25.3 later this year, which will include support for Blackwell architecture. Until then, our findings and recommendations are based on the Premiere Pro version 25.2.

For Intraframe codecs like ProRes and DNxHR, the performance increase is modest, at just 3%. This is because the CPU processes Intraframe codecs, so GPU performance has minimal impact in processing this type of media.

There is a 26% performance increase in processing RAW formats when comparing the RTX 30 Series to the RTX 50 Series GPUs, which should benefit video editors considering an upgrade. However, for workflows involving mixed media or various RAW formats, we recommend reviewing the RAW results in our 50 Series content creation articles – as not all RAW formats fully benefit from CUDA processing due to variations in the debayering process and Premiere Pro’s handling of these footage types.

Upgrading from a GeForce RTX 40 Series GPU to a GeForce RTX 50 Series GPU typically results in a 6% overall performance gain and a 10% improvement in GPU-accelerated effects. While these increases may not justify the upgrade for video editors already using a 40 Series GPU, workflows involving LongGOP (H.264 and H.265) footage benefit slightly more, with an 11% improvement – and are likely to see an even greater boost once the Blackwell architecture is fully supported in Premiere Pro. The RTX 50 Series leverages the latest NVDEC decoders and NVENC encoders, offering enhanced processing for 10-bit 4:2:2 and 4:2:0 formats, which are common recording formats in professional cinema cameras. Notably, no other hardware component can currently process these specific H.264 footage types in Premiere Pro.

GeForce RTX 50 Series for DaVinci Resolve

DaVinci Resolve is a versatile application that can function as a standalone video editing tool or be integrated into a larger post-production workflow. Some editors handle all their video editing, color correction, and audio mixing tasks directly in Resolve, while others may first edit their projects in an NLE like Adobe Premiere before importing the timeline into Resolve for color grading. VFX artists, on the other hand, might render scenes in different software, then bring them into Resolve for color grading, compositing, and finalizing the project, either within Resolve or in another NLE. Given these diverse use cases, the choice of GPU can significantly affect DaVinci Resolve’s performance, depending on how users incorporate it into their post-production pipeline.

Within system preferences, DaVinci Resolve offers flexibile hardware configurations – allowing users to choose which components, particularly GPUs, the software utilizes during operation. While the free version of Resolve supports only a single GPU, the Studio version enables the use of multiple GPUs, granting access to faster hardware acceleration, advanced effects, and other enhanced features. Although adding multiple video cards does not scale in a linear 1:1 performance increase, there are measurable improvements in processing RAW footage, AI features, and GPU-accelerated effects with a multi-GPU configuration.

However, setting up a multi-GPU system is not as simple as installing additional cards. Several factors must be considered. First, the chassis size determines whether multiple GPUs can fit securely. PCIe slot availability and bandwidth is another key consideration. Multi-GPU setups require motherboards with enough PCIe lanes to support the GPUs and any other peripherals needed for video editing, ensuring sufficient space for proper airflow and heat dissipation. Additionally, multi-GPU systems draw more power, requiring a robust power supply (PSU) capable of handling the total wattage demanded by the GPUs, CPU, storage, and other components. Effective heat dissipation solutions, such as high-performance fans or liquid cooling, are also necessary to prevent thermal throttling and maintain system stability.

For video editors working solely in Resolve, it’s important to consider the type of footage they’re working with, as the GPU assists by offloading some of the processing load from the CPU. RAW formats like ARRIRAW, SONY X-OCN, and Blackmagic BRAW are debayered and processed by the GPU. However, other RAW formats like RED and Cinema RAW Light, and intraframe formats such as ProRes and DNxHR, are CPU-based and remain unaffected by GPU acceleration. For LongGOP formats like H.264 and H.265, Resolve can utilize hardware-accelerated media engines, depending on the hardware available within the editor’s system. Media engines such as AMD’s Unified Video Decoder (UVD) and Video Coding Engine (VCE), Intel’s Quick Sync, and NVIDIA’s NVDEC and NVENC offload decoding and encoding of LongGOP footage from the CPU to these specialized hardware components.

DaVinci Resolve supports a wide range of bit depths and chroma subsampling formats for hardware-accelerated decoding and encoding. However, as of Resolve 19.1.4, GeForce RTX 50 Series GPUs are not yet supported for hardware-accelerated decoding and encoding as this version of Resolve is not programmed to support Blackwell Architecture, but users can test these features in Resolve 20 Public Beta Version 1.

Outside of video editing, DaVinci Resolve offers tools for color grading, compositing, and motion graphics with Fusion, its integrated node-based compositing and VFX application. Fusion relies more on the CPU for processing, so users focused primarily on Fusion may not experience significant benefits from high-end GPUs, which are more effective for GPU-dependent tasks in Resolve. However, for those using both Resolve and Fusion or working with GPU-accelerated effects and AI tools like Magic Mask, face refinement, depth map generation, and super-resolution for upscaling, understanding how these tools interact with CPU and GPU resources can help optimize performance.

Upgrading from a GeForce RTX 30 Series GPU to a GeForce RTX 50 Series GPU results in a 27-31% increase in overall performance in DaVinci Resolve. While this improvement is significant, it may not justify the cost for all users. To make a more informed decision, users should look at specific results from our RAW data tables or on PugetBench for Creators for DaVinci Resolve to identify metrics that align more closely with their specific needs, such as processing RAW formats or GPU-accelerated effects.

Our second chart shows a 77% increase in LongGOP scores. At the time of testing, Resolve did not fully support NVIDIA’s Blackwell architecture GPUs, meaning our results did not take full advantage of the media engines in the GeForce RTX 50 Series. We expect this to change when Resolve version 20 exits Beta and includes full support for Blackwell. Until then, our findings and recommendations are based on the current public version of Resolve 19.1.4. Despite this constraint, the 77% increase in decoding and encoding performance is a substantial improvement and, in our opinion, would justify an upgrade for those who consistently work with media recorded in a LongGOP format.

Much like Premiere Pro, Intraframe codecs like ProRes and DNxHR are processed by the CPU, which correlates to only a 2% performance improvement.

Looking at the results for processing RAW footage alone might not justify an upgrade, as there is a modest 14% performance improvement on average. However, specific RAW formats like ARRIRAW, X-OCN, and BRAW can benefit from GPU processing. Editors working with these formats should check whether the RAW formats in their workflow are GPU-processed or CPU-bound, as this distinction influences how much of an impact the upgrade will have. For instance, if the RAW formats are GPU-processed, the performance gains from upgrading to the GeForce RTX 50 Series could be more substantial.

With GPU-accelerated effects, the GeForce RTX 50 Series GPU shows a 52% performance improvement over the RTX 30 series GPU. This gain should benefit users who rely on GPU-accelerated tasks like noise reduction, film grain, and color grading. The 19% improvement in AI performance, while notable, may not be sufficient on its own to justify an upgrade. This could become more valuable as Blackmagic continues to incorporate more AI tools into Resolve and Fusion. For Fusion, the 16% performance increase with the GeForce RTX 50 specificseries GPU is unlikely to justify an upgrade, as Fusion is predominantly CPU-based. While specfiic tools within Fusion do utilize the GPU, most of its functions are designed to rely on the CPU for processing.

Upgrading from an RTX 40 Series to a 50 Series GPU yields a smaller 12-17% overall performance increase, but the decision to upgrade should be based on specific use cases. For users working with LongGOP formats like H.264 or H.265, the 39% improvement in NVDEC and NVENC performance will make the RTX 50 Series a valuable asset. For GPU-accelerated effects, the 27% boost in performance is also a compelling factor, benefiting editors who rely on these effects in their workflow.

However, tasks processed by the CPU, such as Fusion and certain RAW footage formats might see diminishing returns. For example, Fusion, which tends to be CPU-dependent, only shows a modest 6% improvement. Similarly, AI-driven tools like face refinement or Magic Mask show minimal performance gains. In these cases, the value of the upgrade may not be as apparent, and users may need to evaluate whether there are other tools and effects that would justify the investment in an RTX 50 series GPU.

Is it Worth Upgrading to a GeForce RTX 50 Series GPU?

From a broader perspective, this article covers the generational performance improvements users can expect when upgrading from a GeForce RTX 30 or 40 Series GPU to the newer RTX 50 Series. NVIDIA’s Blackwell architecture introduces a new generation of media engines exclusive to the RTX 50 Series that unlocks hardware-accelerated decoding and encoding of 10-bit 4:2:2 H.264 and H.265 footage. This is advantageous for video editors working with formats commonly recorded by cinema cameras, which have traditionally placed a heavy processing load on both system resources and video editing software like Premiere Pro and DaVinci Resolve. Previously, Intel’s Quick Sync was the only hardware-accelerated option for 4:2:2 HEVC, and only on select CPUs. With Blackwell, users gain GPU-level access to decode and encode this type of footage, without resorting to proxies or transcoding.

The RTX 5090 and 5080 models are equipped with dual 6th-generation NVDEC decoding media engines, while the 5070 Ti and 5070 feature a single 6th-generation decoder. Editors working with multi-camera sequences or timelines that involve multiple video layers can benefit from the additional decoders in the 5080 and 5090. The 5070 and 5070 Ti are better suited for simpler workflows, as long as heavy GPU effects and several additional video layers aren’t added into a sequence. These improvements are especially relevant to decoding LongGOP footage as NVIDIA’s media engines are built to process this type of footage.

In Premiere Pro, determining whether the RTX 50 Series is a worthwhile upgrade depends on the type of footage and effects being used. For workflows centered around LongGOP formats such as H.264 and HEVC, the 50 Series GPUs deliver performance gains of 21% compared to the 30 Series and 11% compared to the 40 Series. These gains vary across the product stack, influenced by differences in CUDA cores, decoder and encoder counts, and VRAM capacity and bandwidth. For video editors working exclusively with RAW media in Premiere Pro, the NVDEC (decoder) media engines won’t provide any benefit, as they are designed to process LongGOP footage. However, the 9th-gen NVENC encoder is still relevant for editors working with RAW media as the encoder can speed up export times.

When processing RAW footage in Premiere, users upgrading from a 30 Series GPU can expect a 26% improvement in playback performance. That figure alone sits on the edge of being upgrade-worthy, but the 66% boost in GPU-accelerated effects strengthens the case to upgrade. Editors should evaluate how much of their workflow depends on GPU-driven effects and RAW playback performance. In addition, they should verify whether the RAW format within their sequence is GPU-processed or CPU-bound, as that distinction will impact performance.

In DaVinci Resolve, the value of upgrading to the RTX 50 Series depends on the type of footage being processed and whether the editor utilizes GPU-accelerated features like split-frame encoding, super resolution, and related tools. For editors working primarily with LongGOP formats such as H.264 and HEVC, the 50 Series GPUs show a 77% gain over the 30 Series and a 39% gain over the 40 Series. Although full support for the Blackwell architecture is not yet integrated into the current public release of Resolve (19.1.4), the improvements in LongGOP performance are already evident. Once Resolve 20 Public Beta 1 exits Beta, further enhancements in LongGOP processing efficiency are expected as the software integrates full support for the RTX 50 Series’ media engines. At that point, regardless of the GPU generation currently in use, upgrading to an RTX 50 Series GPU is recommended to take full advantage of the advanced media engines for processing H.264 and H.265 4:2:2 chroma subsampled footage.

It’s important to be aware of system-level constraints for Resolve users considering a multi-GPU configuration. The RTX 5080, whether in NVIDIA’s Founders Edition or third-party designs, can be deployed in dual-GPU setups within some high-performance desktop workstations, provided the system has sufficient power capacity and proper thermal management to support a multi-GPU setup. The GeForce RTX 5090 presents greater challenges due to its larger form factor and higher power draw (575W). A multi-GPU configuration with 5090s requires a rackmount solution to accommodate the larger cards, especially those from AIB manufacturers. Cramming so much processing power into a single box also creates challenges around providing sufficient power and cooling, which may require locating it in a server environment and connecting remotely if this level of performance is necessary for your workflow.

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