Efficient GPU for photo and video editing

[FlawlessMind]

Hello guys, first a little intro. I've been doing a lot of research for the last two weeks and finally I decided to post here because I couldn't find any information related to benchmarks as it goes to photo and video editing with the latest nVidia and AMD GPUs.

I am doing landscape photography and I am shooting with DSLRs as well as medium format cameras and the files which I process are somewhere in the 50-80 Mpx range. Opened in Photoshop that could go all the way to 4GB file depending if I upsize them and on the number of layers used. I use the following products:

Photo Editing:
Adobe Lightroom CC
Adobe Photoshop CC
PhaseOne Capture One Pro 9

Video Editing:
Adobe Premiere Pro CC
SONY Vegas Pro
Final Cut Pro X

The only one here which has only OpenCL support is Capture One Pro, but since nVidia also have OpenCL implementation I believe that should not be a compatibility problem.

My budget on the GPU is around 500$. As far as I see my options I've came down to the following cards:

Asus STRIX GTX 980 or EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Superclocked ACX 2.0 for the GTX
Sapphire Tri-X R9 390X for the R9

I have read a lot of reviews and benchmarks and I can see that there are reviewers that are biased, some would favor the GTX 980 and results on these websites would show a slight edge for the GTX 980 over the R9 390X and vice versa. All of these benchmarks and reviews show only gaming tests and there is no even one that I can find with test for Primiere or Photoshop for example.

The only benchmark information which I could find on the topic is way too outdated and people tend to comment without actual experience in most of the cases, but generally the wide spread opinion (again outdated I think) is that nVidia would perform much better on photo/video editing especially with Adobe products. I say outdated here because people tend to bring their memories from the past and AMD came a long way and now we can see many software companies constantly working on their OpenCL implementations.

All that being said I do believe that either one of these cards would be a good choice, but I would appreciate any opinions.

My concern with the R9 390x is that it consumes a lot of power and even though I would not be gaming for hours there are specific tasks that take considerable amount of time.

I should note here that I am using two 4K displays in my workflow.

P.S. What do you think would be the benefit here of using such high end cards as compared to lower end ones or even the specialized nVidia Quadro (not inexpensive too)? Do I really need to spend that money if I am not gaming?

Any opinions are appreciated!

Thank you very much!


~Cheers~

 

[ajpaolello]

Already I'm going to try an address all of your problems the best I can. Your question is an interesting one since most people don't but "beefy garphics card" and "photo and video editing" in the same sentence (except for maybe "You don't need") Ordinarily I would tell you to get an i7 and not worry about the gpu. But you posted in the graphics card section so I'm going to assume you know that already.

I don't think you will have any OpenCL issues with either company.

No matter where you go, everyone is going to be a little biased and try to argue that the 1~2 FPS gain makes the 980/390X better. I'd look at their feature sets and see which work better for you. Nvidia does have ShadowPlay, which uses the GPU to record, so there's that. I think AMD has something too, can't remember what it's called. There was a recent issue with some R9 3XX cards overheating with AMD drivers, but I think it's been fixed.

390X will consume more power than 980 (275 watts advertised TDP vs 175 watts advertised TDP). Whether that is an issue or not is up to you.

Quadro are more for big rendering stations. You'll know if you need a Quadro I would think.