4K cpu specs needed on preview

[Mutzer]

Hi.

Brand new here.

Just installed racerender3 to do a smal test video with overlay, and the preview function is utterly useless on my current old machine with massive stuttering. Making it impossible to use the preview function. CPU is at 100% while this is going on. I have an older i5 6600K 4 cores, so definately not a new machine!

So guess that it not enough :-)

Since I am upgrading my computer anyway, I would like to hear other peoples experiences, with how much CPU is needed, in order to run the preview fluently.

I am using a GoPro hero 9 black, with 4K, 60FPS high quality video. I can see it is about 100Mb/s. So high bitrate video file.

So anybody else using this, where preview can work, and what CPU are you using?

I want to make sure I get one big enough for this particular task.

My choices so far are one of these:

Ryzen 9 7900x
i7 13700K
Ryzen 7 7800X3d (best for gaming, but less powerfull for video editing than the other two)

So let me know if anybody has input, on CPU needed for preview to work with this high quality video file.

Mutzer

[HoboBob]

I had a 4790K/780ti in my old PC which was frequently hitting 80-90% during previews and rendering. So I figured for the next PC that I needed as much CPU as I could possibly get and picked up a 5950x/3070. Then my CPU never really got above 20% or so, and the GPU appears to be taking much more load than before.

I'm guessing that by getting a much newer GPU capable of encode/decode without requiring the CPU that the GPU ended up taking most of the workload instead of the CPU.

So, in your situation, I'd recommend going with a 7600x or 7700x and putting the extra ~$100-200 into a nicer GPU.

I also think that getting a m.2 is going to have a huge impact on previews. The absurd sequential read speeds that they have really help with this exact scenario. With flash memory prices being so low, you can pick up a 4tb drive for less than a 2tb drive from a few years ago.

[Mutzer]

Thank you for the input.

Just to verify. Your were working with 4K files as well, with the cpu usage mentioned on both old and new setup?

Looks like any newer mid tier CPU would be able to handle it, especially paired with a newer GPU as well. I will not update the GPU right now, just waiting for AMD to release mid tier 7 series GPUs before I purchase :-)

[HoboBob]

Good call on the GPU.

I'm mainly working with 1440p files, but I also have a side video that's 1080p. Sometimes I'll put together a comparison video which has two of each. I've never had any issues with preview or rendering on the new PC. It does take 0.5-1s after clicking play before the playback starts, but once it starts playing, everything is smooth even with the 20-30 display objects that I have.

For advancing frames, I just use the forward and backward arrows (and hold shift to advance a single frame since I'm working with 60fps). That's much better than clicking play and hoping I pause on the exact frame that I want.