Help deciding graphics card for my video editing build. 780ti or 980?

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1

Hi from Vietnam!

Im going to get a new computer soon to edit the videos we produce in my company, and I need help deciding a graphics card. Ill try to make this read interesting as a form of gratitude.

Also take in consideration: I currently don't have the money I need to invest in the computer I actually want to build, which goes +5k usd.
At the moment I can spend around 2000 but can push it to 2400usd if it's best bang for the buck.
In the future I would plan on mainly getting Pci based SSD's, which unfortunately are almost impossible to come by in vietnam at the moment.
Prices in Vietnam can vary, it depends on how corrupt the shop is, normally I go ask in 8 different places and then just choose the least shady one. (high perf shops in vn are all shady)
This is the biggest least shady shop http://phongvu.vn/thiet-bi-tin-hoc/cpu-bo-vi-xu-ly/cpu-intel-147c.html
but they just dont really sell the cool stuff.

Available in Vietnam at a reasonable price I can get:

I7 5820K
Motherboard: The MSI x99 SLI Plus comes in rather cheap in vn. Can also find ASUS x99. No way to find WS motherboards T_T
RAM: 32gb (4x8gb) Gkill 32GB Bus 2800 F4-2800C15Q (really wanted 128gb kits, but unavailable in vietnam)
CORSAIR Hydro Series H110 (will it keep a 5820K @4ghz cool enough?)
M2 drive: SAMSUNG 950 PRO M.2 512GB (this is the editing drive)
SSD: SAMSUNG 850 EVO 2.5" 500GB (this will happily be my OS drive)
AND IF: EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Ti

everything would total around 2275usd which is around 51 millions of Dongs :) Ill make sure to take a picture when I go pay the parts for the laughs, its all money bag cowboy stuff with stacks of money ;) Biggest note = 25usd
(my original budget being 50million VND)

Now my big question, should I get a 780ti or a 980?

I see the 780Ti got more CUDA cores than 980. But 980 is more recent and surprisingly I can find it in Vietnam at a reasonable price.
Also how much ram on the card would you recommend? Any specific card manufacturer i should be looking into? I heard mostly good stuff about EVGA lately

What would you recommend?

My workload is mainly AfterEffects work and Vegas. Lots of uncompressed DNxHR workflows as we do VFX, there's also lots of just plain editing in vegas where I require getting flawless real time playback out of mainly GH4 4k video files, (can proxy, been doing it all this time, don't want to anymore)
Something I'm definetly looking forward is to be able to actually be creative with After Effects. Without having to die waiting +30s for a frame to load when doing heavy color or integrating VFX.
3D in after effects is stuff of nightmares for me right now, the machine has got to flow, vietnamese customers don't :)

At the moment Im still working on a... wait for it.... gts250m. Yes, m. and an i7 720qm. Have been investing in lenses all this past 3 years, its definetly time for computer now
If i see fit, will post pictures of the epic fix I got done in 5h on that laptop in HaNoi. Its even got the communist colors :) (msi gt640)

Gaming: Yeah sure, there will be games played on that sometimes, the vietnamese love Lan gaming. Its not too different from Seoul, just poorer and no competitions or prices because of our beloved capitalicomminustic governement.
When we finish a job we sometimes gather the team and we play old school stuff in a lan in the office. Everybody has laptops here by the way, proper desktop machines are not a common ocurrence here. (if you dont count the random dell 150usd shittyrig in any random office)

Games definetly not a priority. Whatever I get must be video editing focused 100%. Whatever speed games run I will be happy with. For sure it will be faster than my current system :P

Hope this was an interesting read,

Let me know what you think of this build,
specially im very confused about getting 780ti or a 980 or maybe a 760ti is best bang for the buck? help :)

2

780ti is last gen

Sony Vegas doesn't have native CUDA support I believe, you can add it I think, but I'd probably suggest you get an AMD card if possible in your area, the 390 would fit your budget most likely unless price difference is huge between the 390 and 980, the 390 is going to give you better performance per dollar at least as far as gaming goes

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/showmessage.asp?messageid=735201

Although if you're doing this professionally you may want a workstation card, unless you also do a lot of gaming

Some comparisons, apparently it really doesn't matter with a gaming GPU from that video, guess it depends on the codecs used going by the comments

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I would pretty much just pick 980, since it has more video memory that might come in handy in a long run.

You shouldn't really quote me on anything either, since I don't know a lot about hardware and there are a lot smarter people around here. Just take it as an opinion.

4

I thought about getting an AMD card, for sure is cheaper so I could place that money on m2 drives

As he says, Vegas doesnt really benefit from CUDA nor OpenCl, it's all on the CPU.
Also reducing render times is not really my goal, what I need out this computer is speed while editing. Mainly after effects. Im pretty sure if I get a card that is fast enough for After Effects and Adobe's mercury engine it will be fast enough for Vegas.

I wonder though, in after effects specifically, while editing, an AMD card will perform better than a 780ti or 980?

Regaring the workstation card you mean a quadro? I think it would be getting a lot more speed for the money if i go for consumer cards.
My personal insight: In this business for bigger companies with +30 workstations for sure would benefit having quadros and ECC memory, but for a small team like mine, just 5 dudes making TVC's and web viral videos, we mostly benefit from a very fast gaming type of computer. The little hiccup here and there is not a big deal. of course regarding storage is a different story.
Also in Vietnam video production is much lower paid than in the US say, unfortunately computers aren't cheaper...
I wish I had the money for a couple of Xeon's and so on, :(
At the moment I need to get the most I can for the money.

5

I don't know about your availability but workstation cards aren't too expensive really, at least firepros I think the Quadro cards are costly, maybe I'm just not looking for the right ones

costs about as much a 390/970 in most places

W5100 4GB
https://pcpartpicker.com/part/hp-video-card-j3g92at

Suppose it is a bit of a marketing video though

6

Quadros are overpriced.

7

I find this video insightful.
Even though the dude had thought an AMD cpu would be useful for video editing he does some interesting tests. You might just skip to the render timelapses to get his point.

8

for adobe get a Nvidia card indeed.
I would say grab the GTX980, it has more vram.

Your 5820K will allready have a dcent render performance of its own for that matter.
But in adobe you could definitely bennefit from Cuda

9

Save up the extra and get the GTX 980ti.

10

Yep keeps mine at around 38 idle OC to 4.1

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Thanks for all the replies. I think finally I will get a 980ti if i can find it at a reasonable price.
I feel that Vegas will mostly need CPU, while in Adobe's suite the latest Nvidia is probably the way to go.
Anyway, I have been told is pretty much impossible to get a 780ti of any kind in vietnam. For some reason they weren't imported. There's only 6xx and a few 9xx around.

About CPU temperatures if you say its 38 idle, I guess it will shoot up to 40 - 50 while full load. Which is pretty much what is going to happen with this computer for the majority of its lifetime, full load 100%. I feel those should be safe temperatures.

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I00002.jpg2048x1151 202 KB

So this is what I got at the end.
i7 5820k
msi x99
32gb 3000mhz gskill
2x force lx 512gb for raid0
rm1000
h110iGT Which is noisy as hell, but it does perform.
And finally, best I could find at a reasonable price GTX 970 gaming 4G

here you have a quick timelapse of the build. Sorry for the poor video, i was too excited and too focused on the computer :>

Finally it became this, I moved the cooler after finding a way to pass the block through the top of the case.

I00001.jpg2048x1536 227 KB

Gotta move the computer to spain in about 5 or 6 months so I just re-used an old case and found a way to stick that massive cooler somehow.
On the top is super noisy but its really efficient. Im going to have to clean up often though.

The gtx970 is working rather well with Adobe and Vegas. Vegas is flawless, it plays back all, all at realtime, even uncompressed codec when on the raid0.
AE has ray tracer issues, known problem with 9xx cards, hopefully will get fixed soon.
As for everything else, it's a wonderful machine, true 4k editing capable.

13

GTX970 should work fine.

I don't do any video editing since I suck badly at it but I don't think the CUDA Performance is much faster with for example a GTX 980Ti.