Upgraded to new PC for 4K needs, still having video issues.

Glen_4

Commendable
Jun 28, 2016
9
0
1,510
When I started shooting 4K video, it appeared that my old Dell i7 with 12GB ram & 1GB video card was just not up to the task, even started a thread about it about a year and half ago. I considered upgrading the card, but with the hardware getting long in the tooth anyway I decided to do a whole upgrade.

I ended up getting an i7 6800 six core chip, 16GB ram, RX480 8GB gpu (this machine), I added a 500GB SSD for OS drive and a 2TB WD Black 7200 drive to complement the 1TB toshiba 7200rpm drive it came with.

Right from the start I noticed it was better, but I still get bad stuttering on some footage, even the erstwhile trustworthy VLC still won't play 4K, I have better luck with the native windows 10 media players. It seems ok sometimes when I play video after first starting up, but once I open a browser window (chrome) and a couple of things, it gets real bad. I even installed the old WMP as it's supposed to be better for this, but still get stuttering with it.

This is just Phantom 4 video too, not even real high bitrate footage.

I thought I'd have power to spare with this hardware setup, but I'm running into the same issues, only less so. I was thinking about pushing ram up to 24 or 32GB, but I'm wondering if I'm just missing something in my setup. I put on AMD's system monitor and I do notice when I play the 4k videos on native player the cpu and gpu are working (but not really hard), but I'm still getting the stuttering. With VLC they're not working at all so I think that's an application setting.

I also got a 4K samsung 28" monitor, that is supposed to eliminate gaming lag when used with a display port cable to connect to the graphics card, but right now I'm just using HDMI and I thought that should be plenty good for video.

Looking for suggestions about where I can look to tweak the system, and where / how can I find out where the bottleneck is? Would bumping RAM up, or adding another GPU?
 
Solution
The UE590 series is indeed HDMI 2.0, but displayport tends to be more problem-free as it's been able to do 4k60 for 8 years, so is the more mature technology.

Out of memory with plenty of available memory is usually running out of User or GDI heaps. In such a situation, adding more memory would not help. Those softwares have many complaints about this over multiple versions, even from people with 32GB.
Many new monitors still do not come with HDMI 2.0, as they expect the HDMI will only be used as an auxiliary input for DVD and Blu-Ray players. You still have not bothered to tell us what monitor or cable you have, or what refresh rate you are running, only that they "should be plenty good" and "should not be an issue."

Why do you feel that 16GB RAM or a single video card should be issues then? Crossfire does not work in the 2D desktop of your single monitor, or in a window.
 

Glen_4

Commendable
Jun 28, 2016
9
0
1,510


My monitor is a Samsung U28E590 - doesn't say if the HDMI is 2.0 or not - so I'm thinking probably I should use the display port cable rather than HDMI and see how it is. Right now I'm just using standard HDMI cable between the monitor and graphics card.

I don't feel that the RAM or video card should be an issue, but I was wondering if either was.. I go get the occasional message from either Vegas Pro and Davinci Resolve (I don't run both at once) that the system is low on memory - and when I check memory in task manager there's usually still 7GB available.
 
The UE590 series is indeed HDMI 2.0, but displayport tends to be more problem-free as it's been able to do 4k60 for 8 years, so is the more mature technology.

Out of memory with plenty of available memory is usually running out of User or GDI heaps. In such a situation, adding more memory would not help. Those softwares have many complaints about this over multiple versions, even from people with 32GB.
 
Solution