Quadros vs Consumer GPUs for Video Editing

[Imbellis]

A man I was working with at our local airport is wanting to build a rig for video and audio editing. He was talking about running two 1080 TIs in SLI (~1900 USD Right now); however, I recommended him instead to go with a Quadro series card like the P4000/P5000 (800/2000 USD respectively). I'm pretty sure he'd be running Linux for editing, but I'm not sure. Additionally, he has absolutely no interest in gaming.

 

Questions:

Do quadros, per their price, outperform consumer gtx cards?

Does video editing benefit from SLI efficiently? Isn't support being fazed out?

Isn't dual 1080TIs a bit over the top? (I'm not sure I'll be able to talk him down).

Could running a Quadro be easier than getting drivers working for branches of Linux? (Edited in - I don't know much about Linux myself).

 

I just want to make sure I'm recommending the dude the right things.

 

Edit: Looking at linus' "Do You Really Need a Xeon and Quadro?" video showed that in CAD, Quadros provided a major benefit - I'm just unsure if this also applies to video editing.

[MedievalMatt]

1 minute ago, Imbellis said:

A man I was working with at our local airport is wanting to build a rig for video and audio editing. He was talking about running two 1080 TIs in SLI (~1900 USD Right now); however, I recommended him instead to go with a Quadro series card like the P4000/P5000 (800/2000 USD respectively). I'm pretty sure he'd be running Linux for editing, but I'm not sure. Additionally, he has absolutely no interest in gaming.

 

Questions:

Do quadros, per their price, outperform consumer gtx cards?

Does video editing benefit from SLI efficiently? Isn't support being fazed out?

Isn't dual 1080TIs a bit over the top? (I'm not sure I'll be able to talk him down).

 

I just want to make sure I'm recommending the dude the right things.

Quadros differ from their GTX counterparts primarily with the use of ECC memory and better driver support for productivity workloads.

 

architecturally, they are the same.

 

AFAIK (not a video editor) that workflow doesnt benefit from SLI a great deal.  a single 1080ti might be worth it.  I wouldnt go for two.  There is the law of diminishing returns.

[DrMacintosh]

If you are editing in a program like Adobe Premiere adding more GPUs will not accelerate your render times. Editing video in a Windows environment is CPU limited, most any modern GPU anywhere from a RX 560 to a 1080Ti will accelerate the same. 

 

 

[Guest The Viking]

quadro is just the pro line-up. You get guarantee that their drivers will work with all pro software. Drivers are optimized for those specific workloads-though you can game just fine on a quadro.

 

I would recommend getting a quadro if he plans on spending 1900$ on graphic cards and not game on them.

[whoisit1118]

4 minutes ago, The Viking said:

quadro is just the pro line-up. You get guarantee that their drivers will work with all pro software. Drivers are optimized for those specific workloads-though you can game just fine on a quadro.

 

I would recommend getting a quadro if he plans on spending 1900$ on graphic cards and not game on them.

Pretty sure there was an LTT episode about how Quadros are able to game.

[Zodiark1593]

18 minutes ago, The Viking said:

quadro is just the pro line-up. You get guarantee that their drivers will work with all pro software. Drivers are optimized for those specific workloads-though you can game just fine on a quadro.

 

I would recommend getting a quadro if he plans on spending 1900$ on graphic cards and not game on them.

Even in professional use cases, Quadros are only useful in very niche scenarios. Unless you need massive quantities of vram, video editing is not one of these niche scenarios.

[Guest The Viking]

1 hour ago, whoisit1118 said:

Pretty sure there was an LTT episode about how Quadros are able to game.

pretty sure i said that too

1 hour ago, The Viking said:

though you can game just fine on a quadro.

 

1 hour ago, Zodiark1593 said:

Even in professional use cases, Quadros are only useful in very niche scenarios. Unless you need massive quantities of vram, video editing is not one of these niche scenarios.

yes but between spending 1900$ on 2 1080ti's and 1900$ on a single quadro, knowing you won't game?

[Zodiark1593]

36 minutes ago, The Viking said:

pretty sure i said that too

 

yes but between spending 1900$ on 2 1080ti's and 1900$ on a single quadro, knowing you won't game?

For video editing alone, I would recommend no more than a single 1080 TI. Use the rest for more SSD storage or RAM.

 

Some production and compute tasks can leverage multiple GPUs however. Blender's Cycles engine, as a freely available example, will happily devour whatever compute you can throw at it, even mismatched cards (a 980 TI + 1080 TI), so long as the identical api (CUDA, OpenCL) and version is used, and the scene fits in the card with the least VRAM. Obviously, cards being used for compute are not leveraging SLI, and it is actually preferable to disable it (SLI) for these tasks.

[LienusLateTips]

Just get something like a Vega 56 or 1080, and get a ultra high end CPU like the 1950X.