AMD Ryzan 9 build

[Richard Kynaston]

Hi guys,
We are looking to replace the oldest of our two edit systems - the following has been spec'd by a colleague and id appreciate your views. Im more into the production side than the IT I admit, but any help would be appreciated. Currently we are working with 4K footage (occasionally R3Ds, mainly Sony footage), but we are looking at a RED Camera later in the year, so 5K R3D handling will likely be a necessity for this machine. 98% of editing is done in Resolve, although we are moving to Resolve Studio in a couple of months.

CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X, Zen 2, 12-core with SMT, 3.8Ghz
Motherboard: ASUS Prime Z570-PRO
Memory: 64GB (4x16GB) Corsair DDR4 Vengeance LPX 3200Mhz
Graphics: GB ASUS GeForce RTX2060 Turbo, 1920 cores, 1680Mhz Boost, 14000Mhz GDDR6.
Power: Corsair 650W RMx Silent
OS Drive: Samsung 970 EVO Plus M.2 1TB
Project Drive: Samsung 970 EVO Plus M.2 1TB
Backup/Misc Drive: Seagate Ironwolf Pro Sata3 HDD 8TB
Output: Blackmagic Intensity Pro4K
OS: Windows 10 Pro 64-Bit

The graphics we could swap to either two of them, or move to a single 8GB EVA GeForce RTX2070 SUPER, 2560 Cores, 1770Mhz Boots, GDDR6 within budget if that would be better performance.

From what I've heard/read moving to a Ryzen9 3950X (16 Cores/32 Threads) would be a good move for Resolve editing, and keeping all footage/render/cache on M.2 drives is the best for performance. Im happy for people to say we've got something wrong, but if you could help me understand why we've got it wrong, it would help!

Cheers guys
Rich

 

[Misha Engel]

Moving to Resolve studio is your cheapest possible upgrade for making use of the GPU power in Resolve.
When you want to handle 5k with some effects you need at least a GPU with 11 GB of memory when you don't want to have one of the most commen error's in Davinci Resolve Studio (GPU out of memory error).

So in the end it comes down to budget and ROI.

 

[Richard Kynaston]

Thanks Misha,
That is happening later in the year, but our oldest edit machine is now approaching five years old a needs replacing. I understand your comment about going to 11GB of GPU memory, but that takes things beyond the budget I have unfortunately. There is the ability to go to the RTX2070 SUPER which has 8GB, so I presume on the premise of what your saying that would be a good a move?

 

[Neil Purcell]

An Nvidia 2060 Super also has 8Gb GPU RAM, marginally slower than a 2070 Super (a few percenatge in benchmarks) but a bit more affordable? - slightly slower exports??

https://pcpartpicker.com/trends/price/video-card/#gpu.chipset.geforce-rtx-2060-super

 

[Misha Engel]

This would be my choice saving a buck here and there.

PCPartPicker Part List: https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/mC4vDx

CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 3950X 3.5 GHz 16-Core Processor (£679.00 @ Amazon UK) It's fast
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-U12A 60.09 CFM CPU Cooler (£89.95 @ Amazon UK) a silent good cooler
Motherboard: MSI MPG X570 GAMING PLUS ATX AM4 Motherboard (£148.00 @ AWD-IT) Cheap X570 board with a pretty good rating for the price
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 64 GB (2 x 32 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory (£289.99 @ Corsair UK) 2x32 GB gives you the possibilty to upgrade to 128 GB in the future when you want to do more with fusion
Storage: Samsung 860 Evo 500 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£66.78 @ Aria PC) System drive and programs (often faster than NVMe drives with windows and starting programs)
Storage: Samsung 970 Evo 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive (£158.34 @ Ebuyer) 1 as scratch drive
Storage: Samsung 970 Evo 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive (£158.34 @ Ebuyer) or two in raid0 as super fast scratch drive when your budget allows it
Storage: Seagate IronWolf NAS 8 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£208.99 @ Box Limited) 2 in raid-1 for storage (1 drive is no drive, you still need backups)
Storage: Seagate IronWolf NAS 8 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£208.99 @ Box Limited)
Video Card: XFX Radeon VII 16 GB Video Card (£505.00 @ Amazon UK) It's fast,cheap and has 16GB of fast VRAM
Case: Phanteks Eclipse P300A Mesh ATX Mid Tower Case (£50.99 @ AWD-IT) just a case
Power Supply: Silverstone Strider Platinum 1200 W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply (£141.48 @ Scan.co.uk) don't cut corners on a good PSU


Total: £2705.85

Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-02-21 23:28 GMT+0000

https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/DaVinci-Resolve-Studio-CPU-performance-AMD-Ryzen-9-3950X-1616/
https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/DaVinci-Resolve-15-AMD-Radeon-VII-16GB-Performance-1382/

 

[Richard Kynaston]

Misha,
Many thanks. Bar for the motherboard and cooling, we're pretty much the same. I think the MSI motherboard may actually suit us better as it seems to have 3xM.2 SSD slots, rather than the 2slots of the Asus, so that gives us the opportunity in the future to add another SSD high speed drive if we need.

Thanks for your help.
Rich

 

[Karim D. Ghantous]

Thanks Misha,
That is happening later in the year, but our oldest edit machine is now approaching five years old a needs replacing. I understand your comment about going to 11GB of GPU memory, but that takes things beyond the budget I have unfortunately. There is the ability to go to the RTX2070 SUPER which has 8GB, so I presume on the premise of what your saying that would be a good a move?

I wonder if one really needs 64GB of RAM? I mean this sort of application is outside my skill set, so maybe I'm way off. With SSDs, you really don't need an excessive amount of RAM - at least for most applications.

The way I see it, you're going to never have enough RAM anyway, so don't bother trying to catch up. Stand back and let the SSD do the work.

Edit: Good to know about the GPU and Resolve.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Er... I would recommend 128GB for Misha's 16-core build. 64 to start via 2x32 is a way to keep within a budget and then expand.

The x86 architecture allows up to 2GB per thread and up to 3TB per process. Plus you need some for overhead and more depending on what all you'll be working with in RAM. Lots of data components get duplicated along those threads, no reason to cut yourself short. Building a 16-core system, 64GB is the minimum IMO...

 

[Richard Kynaston]

Er... I would recommend 128GB for Misha's 16-core build. 64 to start via 2x32 is a way to keep within a budget and then expand.

Thanks Jeff,
Yes the budget does dictate 64GB initially, but I plan getting that doubled once I can get more money out of the directors!! I've also specified a 480GB SSD as the boot drive - I thought keep it small, to minimise the chance of it being used for other things. We are planning on going for a WD SN750 1TB NVMe SSD for the Project Drive, and a Corsair MP600 1TB NVEe for the cache drive. I was originally looking at the Samsung 970 EVO Pro 1TB, but then realised the Corsair is one of the few (if not the only?) that can use PCIe4.0 to get higher speeds, which I assumed would help. My thought is that once the costs have dropped a bit, we may add another MP600 and configure in a RAID 0, or replace with a 2TB version.

Rich

 

[Richard Kynaston]

This would be my choice saving a buck here and there.

PCPartPicker Part List: https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/mC4vDx

Video Card: XFX Radeon VII 16 GB Video Card (£505.00 @ Amazon UK) It's fast,cheap and has 16GB of fast VRAM
Power Supply: Silverstone Strider Platinum 1200 W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply (£141.48 @ Scan.co.uk) don't cut corners on a good PSU

Hi Misha,
Sorry to ask another question, but the XFX Radeon seems to have vanished, I cannot find anywhere in the UK that has one on their website - even the Amazon one which was there on Monday has gone.

EDIT: Having just read that AMD discontinued the Radeon VII cards last summer, that explains why I cannot find any. Does that push towards the Nvidia 2060, 2070 or 2080 cards?

Rich

 

[Misha Engel]

https://www.amazon.com/XFX-Radeon-16GB-Boost-1xHDMI/dp/B07NFGDZWQ/ref=sr_1_1?crid=39TB41G2FNNQA&keywords=radeon+vii&qid=1582759369&sprefix=radeon+%2Caps%2C249&sr=8-1

 

[Richard Kynaston]

Interesting that the US site gives an in stock date of late March. The UK Amazon site has removed the listing with the exception of a second hand one.

 

[Randall Oelerich]

You have me wanting a Ryzen 9 now, to upgrade my Ryzen 7!

 

[Misha Engel]

You have me wanting a Ryzen 9 now, to upgrade my Ryzen 7!

Wait a little, Zen3 is on it's way to all of us and Ryzen 7 is pretty good for the money.

 

[Dermot Shane]

should be an announcement on the 14th about the 3000 series nVidia, likely no cards in your price range for a while as nVida tends to bring out the higher priced cards first, but it may mean deals on existing 2060/70/80 as retailers clear stock

 

[Taras Miskiv]

Did you work with XFX Radeon VII 16 GB Video card with 8K r3d? Or just RTX 2080 TI and more.

 

[Misha Engel]

Did you work with XFX Radeon VII 16 GB Video card with 8K r3d? Or just RTX 2080 TI and more.

Radeon VII 16 GB handles 8k.R3D with ease (and so does the 6 GB RX 5600 XT) in Resolve.
AMD(OpenCL) has a different memory handling than CUDA.

https://www.slashcam.de/artikel/Test/AMD-XFX-Radeon-RX-5600-XT-Grafikkarte---Durchschnittliche-Mittelklasse--XFX-Radeon-RX-5600-XT-Thicc-II---Die-P.html

Die Performance unter DaVinci Resolve 16

Unsere früher erwähnten Probleme, bei denen Resolve mit AMD-Karten immer lange Umschaltzeiten zwischen den Räumen benötigt ist mittlerweile aus der Welt. Dafür fiel gegenüber Nvidia Karten auf, dass die Clips bei AMDs Treiber irgendwie noch einmal gecached werden, bevor sie ruckelfrei von der Grafikkarte abgespielt werden. Und so bleiben Vorschaubilder im Programm beim Start erst einmal ein paar Sekunden leer. Wir führen dieses Verhalten mittlerweile auf unterschiedlichen Code zwischen OpenCL und CUDA zurück. Denn noch ein weiteres Speicher-Verhalten fiel uns auf: Während unser 8K Test-Projekt im CUDA-Modus mit einer RTX2080Ti trotz 11 GB DDR6-RAM immer wieder wegen Speicherüberläufen abbricht, passiert dies mit der 6GB-AMD Karte seltsamerweise nicht. Diese agiert zwar deutlich träger, aber bricht nicht wegen vollem Speicher die Bearbeitung ab. Das Speichermenangement unter OpenCL dürfte daher grundsätzlich anders funktionieren als unter CUDA.

Google Translate:

The performance under DaVinci Resolve 16

Our previously mentioned problems, in which Resolve with AMD cards always requires long switchover times between rooms, is now out of the world. However, compared to Nvidia cards, it was noticed that the clips in AMD's drivers were somehow cached again before they were played smoothly on the graphics card. And so preview images in the program remain empty for a few seconds at first. We attribute this behavior to different code between OpenCL and CUDA. Because we noticed another memory behavior: While our 8K test project in CUDA mode with an RTX2080Ti keeps aborting due to memory overflows despite 11 GB DDR6 RAM, this doesn't happen with the 6GB AMD card. Although this is much slower, it does not abort processing due to full memory. The storage management under OpenCL should therefore function fundamentally differently than under CUDA.