Expected performance for Resolve with 8K workflow

[Tom Sefton]

Hi,

Looking at building a PC rig for resolve grading and exports for a project we are working on. Needs to cope with 8K Helium footage, 3-4 nodes of colour correction and some noise reduction before being exported to 8K ProRes.

At the moment, using a 10 core iMac Pro with everything else maxed, and with an eGPU connected, a 1minute file takes up to 5hrs to export.

If I built an 18core PC with dual 2080Ti cards, 192GB of RAM and an nVME OS drive, with external storage on Thunderbolt 3, what sort of improvements would I expect to see?

 

[Misha Engel]

You kind of have a bad timing when you need it now. In november Intel will release an 18 core for half the price (9980XE $2k vs. 10980XE $1k), same story with Threadripper(24 core for ~ $1k). With 8k you will also run out of memory with the 2080ti's. When external storage over thunderbolt 3 is not a necessity and you want something faster than above mentioned for around the same price that you can buy today have a look at AMD.

AMD EPYC Rome 7502P 32-Core ~ $2.525 https://www.newegg.com/p/N82E16819113589?Description=epyc%207002&cm_re=epyc_7002-_-19-113-589-_-Product
AsRock Rack EPYCD8-2T ATX Server Motherboard ~ $700 https://www.newegg.com/asrock-rack-epycd8-2t-amd-epyc-7000-series-processor-family/p/N82E16813140011
2x NEMIX RAM 128GB 4x32GB DDR4-2933 PC4-23400 2Rx4 ECC Registered Memory (256 GB) ~ $1,000 https://www.newegg.com/nemix-ram-128gb-288-pin-ddr4-sdram/p/1X5-003Z-00T45
2x ASRock Phantom Gaming X Radeon VII DirectX 12 Radeon VII 16G 16GB ~ $1.400 (2x $700) https://www.newegg.com/asrock-radeon-vii-16g/p/N82E16814930012?Description=radeon%20VII&cm_re=radeon_VII-_-14-930-012-_-Product

Some M2 NVMe drive for system and programs and for storage you can use spinning drives, U2 NVMe drives or a 10G NAS.

When you have more time, it's better to wait for next gen HEDT (Intel or AMD).

Playback in real-time is no problem (no matter the compression ratio), the more noise reduction you use the slower the system will be(atleast twice as fast as your current system).

 

[DC Chavez]

https://www.pugetsystems.com/recommended/Recommended-Systems-for-DaVinci-Resolve-187

 

[DC Chavez]

For the record, I made the jump to PC a few months ago and its been amazing. Built a machine for around $8,500 and it SCREAMS.

- i9 9960X 16 core 3.1ghz processor
- 128GB DDR4 2666 RAM
- Dual Samsung 970 Pro 1TB NVMe SSD's
- Dual NVIDIA 2080 Ti Founders Edition GPU's
- Gigabyte Designare EX Motherboard
- Custom loop watercooling with CPU and GPU waterblocks
- EVGA 1200w Power Supply
- dual radiator setup
- Phanteks Evolv X Case

I can edit 8K in realtime in both Premiere and Resolve and my exports are almost realtime. It's sped up my workflow soooooooo much coming from the Trashcan. Do it and you'll be super stoked.

 

[Marc Wielage]

Looking at building a PC rig for resolve grading and exports for a project we are working on. Needs to cope with 8K Helium footage, 3-4 nodes of colour correction and some noise reduction before being exported to 8K ProRes. At the moment, using a 10 core iMac Pro with everything else maxed, and with an eGPU connected, a 1minute file takes up to 5hrs to export.

I bet the new forthcoming 2019 Mac Pro system will be great and could handle this... but it won't be cheap. I would guess it will be priced about the same as a comparable PC/Linux system from Supermicro or an HP z8, and those can easily get to $20K-$30K-$40K depending on the options.

I can recall Michael Cioni (then working for Light Iron) demonstrating real-time 8K playback at Cinegear Expo a couple of years ago, and he told me that Quantel Pablo system was $2 million dollars and took up a couple of racks' worth of gear. And it crashed several times, struggling to play back at speed. It's sobering to reflect that in 2019, it's now possible to do that for only a fraction of that kind of expense, in a much smaller package. If you're trying to run Resolve in 8K, bear in mind that speed will be affected depending on how much processing you're doing and how fast the disk i/o is rated.