I am building a PC primarily for video editing using Premiere Pro CC. I've budgeted a modest amount for a graphics card - enough for a pretty top-of-the-line consumer / gaming card. But this same budget would only stretch to a low-end workstation graphics card. Looking at specs and benchmarks, it seems that I get significantly more bang for my buck with a consumer / gaming card. These cards are fully supported by Premiere Pro (according to the Adobe website), and I don't need 10-bit video output. So my question is: should I still be considering a lower end workstation graphics card, or should I stick with a high-end consumer card. (Before anyone asks, I don't need the machine to double for gaming - I just want the best possible render and preview times in Prem Pro). THANKS
If the software you are using does not require a workstation card, there is little reason to play the premium for one. As you have already seen, for the same price a consumer card will be dramatically better performing than a workstation card.
To second the above, given the same budget, I'd suggest that in all but a precious few use cases the consumer card will outperform the workstation one. Premiere Pro appears to be quite satisfied with either - https://helpx.adobe.com/premiere-pr...14) system requirements and language versions The interesting comparisons can come when you're looking at like-hardware (i.e. top end Quadro compared to top end Geforce) with certain apps, but then the costs are clearly miles apart. If you aren't interested in a 30-bit workflow, then stick with the consumer card. I don't know enough about how much Premiere Pro offloads to the GPU to make a statement on the matter, but I could pose it as a question - is a "high end" consumer card even overkill if you're not interested in gaming? A middle of the road card may perform just as well and that budget could be re-applied to memory or CPU if that's more useful. This might be useful in determining what card to choose - https://www.video2brain.com/en/lessons/mercury-playback-engine-gpu-acceleration
If you were doing architectural design using CAD/CAE programs for 3D modeling designing skyscrapers, big bridges, or luxury yachts or aircraft carriers, then I would say don't hesitate to budget $3000, $4000 or more for a workstation graphics card. But in your case, you don't need to. I would still budget for a good card, with lots of on board RAM, and ensure this PC has lots of RAM (I would go for 16Gb), a good i7, and an SSD.
