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Selection of the best graphics cards for video editing

(Image credit: Future)

The best graphics cards for video editing are a wise investment. Although they'll cost you a bit of money, the money they'll save you by speeding up your workflow will dwarf that initial outlay.

To help you find the right one for your needs, we've brought together the best graphics cards for video editing in the article below. First, though, a warning. Most graphics cards are currently in very short supply due to production shortages.

That means Nvidia's RTX 30-series cards, in particular, are selling at over-inflated prices on some websites. So check the latest deals below from our affiliate retailers, to ensure you don't get ripped off.

Note that you can only upgrade the graphics card in a desktop computer, not a laptop. It is possible to increase the graphics card performance in a laptop by adding an external graphics card (eGPU), attached via Thunderbolt. But here we're only covering internal graphics card upgrades for desktop computers.

For more details, jump ahead to our section on How to choose the best graphics card. Or, if you'd rather just replace your computer entirely, check out our roundups of the best video editing computer and the best laptops for video editing.

The best graphics cards for video editing in 2022

Why you can trust Digital Camera World Our expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing products and services so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about how we test.

Product shot of Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090, one of the best graphics cards for video editing

(Image credit: Nvidia)

1. Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090

The best video editing graphics card overall

Specifications

Memory (VRAM): 24GB

Memory bandwidth: 936GB/s

Boost clock: 1,695MHz

Shader processors: 10,469

Power consumption: 450w

Reasons to buy

+

Fast and powerful

+

Perfect for 8K

+

Future proof

Reasons to avoid

-

Thirsty 450w power draw

-

Requires a powerful PC

Right now, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 is our top recommendation for video editing. The stats speak for themselves: this beast of a graphics card comes with 24GB of GDDR6X memory, running on a 384-bit bus at 19.5 Gbps, making for a whopping 936GB/s of effective memory bandwidth. 

All that plus impressive cooling technology, low noise and exceptional performance in practice means this is going to handle anything you can throw at it, even if you're working in 8K. 

Admittedly, it only offers marginal performance gains on its predecessor, the RTX 3080, and until a few months ago, it was double the price. So unless you'd won the lottery, we'd have pointed most people towards the 3080. 

Recently, though, the 3090 come down to almost the same price as the 3080 on Amazon, making it a slam dunk. Well, as long as you have a PC powerful enough to handle it, of course. Both in terms of its 450W power draw, and its rather large physical size.

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti, one of the best graphics cards for video editing

(Image credit: Nvidia)

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2. Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti

The best graphics card for value

Specifications

Memory (VRAM): 8GB

Memory bandwidth: 448GB/s

Boost clock: 1670MHz

Shader processors: 4864

Power consumption: 200w

Reasons to buy

+

Excellent performance

+

Reasonable power consumption

Reasons to avoid

-

Expensive

-

Limited stock

Like to get value for money? The graphics card that best hits the sweet spot between price and performance right now is the Nvidia's RTX 3060 Ti. 

Admittedly, thanks to Nvidia's sustained price hikes with the launch of each new generation of GeForce cards, as well as ongoing chip supply shortages restricting production volume, we're talking big money for what's still just a mid-range card. But with rival AMD's graphics cards coming up short for video editing performance, it's still the best value you can get right now.

There are numerous card manufacturers making the RTX 3060 Ti, many sporting a slight performance overclock to make them marginally faster than standard. The main issue, though, is that since launch few manufacturers have been able to keep up with demand, and consequently stock of the 3060 Ti is limited.

Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Super, one of the best graphics cards for video editing

(Image credit: EVGA)

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3. Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Super

The best budget graphics card for video editing

Specifications

Memory (VRAM): 6GB

Memory bandwidth: 336GB/s

Boost clock: 1785MHz

Shader processors: 1408

Power consumption: 125w

Reasons to buy

+

Affordable price

+

Good performer

+

Available to suit smaller PC towers

Reasons to avoid

-

Not great for 4K or 8K footage

-

Not great with DaVinci Resolve

Short on cash? The good news is that a decent graphics card for video editing doesn't have to break the bank. And the GeForce GTX 1660 Super has a lot to offer at an affordable price.

Video export speeds will be 10-20% slower than more exotic GeForce RTX-series cards, but then the 1660 Super should be at least half the price, so we're talking great value overall. That said, with 'only' 6GB of video RAM on board, higher performance cards will have a more significant edge if you're editing 8K and high frame rate 4K footage.

Like almost all graphics cards, various board manufacturers make their own variants of the GTX 1660 Super, and unless you're gunning for every last frame-per-second in gaming performance, spending extra on a factory overclocked version isn't worth it. 

Being more of an entry-level graphics card, it's also possible to find the GTX 1660 Super with a physically shorter board design, making it suitable to fit in smaller PC cases, though usually the cooling heatsink and fan assembly will still require the space of two expansion bays in your motherboard.

AMD Radeon RX 6800XT, one of the best graphics cards for video editing

(Image credit: AMD)

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4. AMD Radeon RX 6800XT

The best graphics card for a 2019 Mac Pro

Specifications

Memory (VRAM): 16GB

Memory bandwidth: 512GB/s

Boost clock: 2250MHz

Shader processors: 4608

Power consumption: 300w

Reasons to buy

+

Excellent choice for 2019 Mac Pro

+

Great for gaming

Reasons to avoid

-

Very expensive

-

Relatively power-hungry

AMD's cards are consistently slower than their Nvidia counterparts for video editing. However, if you're rocking a 2019 Mac Pro tower and are looking to upgrade your graphics card, AMD is your only option for macOS. 

While the top-of-the-line 6900XT will give you slightly more encoding performance in a Mac Pro, it commands a significantly higher price tag than the already expensive 6800XT. Consequently it's a tough price difference to justify, at least until GPU availability improves and pricing becomes more sensible again.

NOTE: before you buy, ensure the specific brand variant of RX 6800 XT you choose is shorter than 310mm, or it won't fit inside a 2019 Mac Pro.

Product shot of the Nvidia Quadro RTX A4000, one of the best graphics cards for video editing

(Image credit: Nvidia)

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5. Nvidia Quadro RTX A4000

The best video editing graphics card for reliabliity

Specifications

Memory (VRAM): 16GB

Memory bandwidth: 448GB/s

Boost clock: 1560MHz

Shader processors: 6144

Power consumption: 140w

Reasons to buy

+

Designed for stability

+

Very fast

+

Slim single-slot cooler

+

Super energy-efficient

Reasons to avoid

-

Is extra reliability that important?

Nvidia doesn't just offer its extensive line of GeForce graphics cards; there's also its Quadro range. Where GeForce cards are designed and marketed primarily for gaming, Quadro cards are built for professional applications like scientific computation, 3D rendering, and to a lesser extent, video editing.

The graphics card hardware in the Quadro A4000 is almost identical to that of the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti, which carries an MSRP that's around 40% cheaper than the A4000. However, with prices of GeForce cards currently being so over inflated, the cost difference between the two cards is actually much less. 

Even so, why pay more for a Quadro? Well, for video editing, the vast majority of users will be fine with a GeForce card. The Quadro range gets you several processing benefits that are mostly of use to scientific and 3D rendering work, but the primary benefit for video editing are Quadro-specific video card drivers carefully optimized for popular video editing programs to ensure top-notch reliability.

If you're going to be editing mission-critical footage and system stability is therefore absolutely paramount, the Quadro RTX A4000 is an excellent graphics card and it's actually very well priced for a Quadro card (flagship Quadro cards can set you back over $10,000!). However, if you don't need total driver reliability, the similarly fast GeForce RTX 3060 Ti (number two on our list) is still the better – and cheaper – buy.

Product shot of the Nvidia RTX 3050, one of the best graphics cards for video editing

(Image credit: Nvidia )

6. Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050

Another good budget choice

Specifications

Memory (VRAM): 8GB

Memory bandwidth: 224GB/s

Boost clock: 1777MHz

Shader processors: 2560

Power consumption: 170w

Reasons to buy

+

Affordable price

+

Suitable for video editing

Reasons to avoid

-

Not the highest specs

-

May be hard to find

Launched this January, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 sold out super-quickly, and remains difficult to get hold of in many regions. But if you can get hold of one from a mainstream retailer (ie, not marked up to silly money on a second-hand site), you'll find it does a pretty good job for video editing. That's certainly what we found when we reviewed the Acer Predator Helios 300 laptop, which features an 3050 as standard.

Admittedly, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 isn't the highest specced graphics card. But it's good enough for most video editing and rendering purposes, and at its recommended price, it offers good value overall.

How to choose the best graphics card

It used to be that video editing software relied solely on your computer's central processor (CPU) to process and export video. But even with four, six, eight, or even more cores, a CPU simply can't match the incredible power of a graphics card, which can contain thousands of processing cores. It's actually rather more technical than that, but the upshot is a graphics card can export video a whole lot faster than even a top-end CPU.

However, while spending top dollar on the very best graphics card will get you extra encoding performance, you really don't have to. Even a lower-mid-range card will give your editing rig a serious speed boost, with pricier video cards only yielding marginally superior performance. 

Providing your editing software supports hardware video acceleration (pretty much all popular editing packages do, with apps like DaVinci Resolve being heavily reliant on graphics card hardware) upgrading your computer's graphics card can give you a worthwhile performance boost when video editing.

With all that in mind, here are the main things you should take into account when choosing a graphics card.

If you're editing on a Mac Pro 2019, you'll need a graphics card made by AMD, not Nvidia. That's because macOS only supports AMD cards, and AMD's current RX 6x00-series graphics card range is only supported by macOS Big Sur 11.4 and newer. If you're prepared to use Windows via Boot Camp on a 2019 Mac Pro, a Nvidia graphics card can be fitted, albeit not in PCIe expansion slot 2.

If you're editing on a PC, you've got a lot more graphics card choice. Virtually any graphics card using a Nvidia or AMD chipset should work just fine, providing you first check these criteria:

1. Make sure there's enough space inside your desktop tower. High-end graphics cards tend to be quite long, which can mean they won't fit inside smaller tower cases. They also tend to be fitted with a bulky cooling heatsink and fan assembly, which will require plenty of space directly below the PCIe slot that the card is plugged into.

2. Ensure your PC's power supply unit (PSU) is up to the job. Fitting a powerful, power-hungry graphics card could overload a puny power supply, at best resulting in system crashes, or at worst, a puff of smoke out the back of your computer along with a blank monitor and, well, swearing. The current generation of graphics cards use much less electricity than a few years ago when you needed a thumping great 1000 watt power supply to ensure a top-end graphics card was adequately powered. Nowadays a card like the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti is rated to draw 200w of power, so a good quality 500w PSU should be adequate to power the whole PC. AMD cards, however, are less power efficient, requiring more juice and therefore a slightly higher PSU wattage.

Most graphics cards are powered via a socket on the side or back of the card, and this could take the form of a 6 pin, 8 pin, or dual 6 pin connectors. Fortunately almost all modern PSUs will be fitted with the necessary plugs to suit all these connector variants, and if not, your graphics card is likely to come with an adapter in the box.

3. Ensure your PC's motherboard is compatible. This almost certainly going to be fine. Graphics cards have been using the same physical PCI Express 16x data connector for well over a decade, so unless your motherboard is seriously archaic, you should be able to plug in a modern graphics card into your PC without issue, providing points 1 and 2 above are followed.

Finally, credit to Puget Systems (opens in new tab) for the video encoding performance stats we've use in the above buyer's guide. Graphics cards are almost always judged solely on their gaming performance, so we are very grateful for Puget's comprehensive and continually updated analysis of graphics card performance when accelerating image and video editing software.

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Ben is the Imaging Labs manager, responsible for all the testing on Digital Camera World and across the entire photography portfolio at Future. Whether he's in the lab testing the sharpness of new lenses, the resolution of the latest image sensors, the zoom range of monster bridge cameras or even the latest camera phones, Ben is our go-to guy for technical insight. He's also the team's man-at-arms when it comes to camera bags, filters, memory cards, and all manner of camera accessories – his lab is a bit like the Batcave of photography! With years of experience trialling and testing kit, he's a human encyclopedia of benchmarks when it comes to recommending the best buys. 

Related articles

Does Premiere Pro work on AMD?

With Premiere Pro 14.5 including both GPU-accelerated encoding and decoding, however, AMD is able to show what they are capable of when on a level playing field.

Does Premiere Pro work better with Intel or AMD?

Overall, the best CPU for video editing is the Intel Core i9 12900K. In rendering tests using Premier Pro, Puget Systems saw as much as a 25 – 40% performance lead with Intel, against AMD 5000 series processors. Further, when using popular codecs such as H. 264 and HEVC, Intel has significant benefits over AMD.

Which GPU is best for Premiere Pro?

For higher budget systems, we recommend the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti. For ultimate performance, we recommend the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090.

Can Premiere Pro run on AMD Ryzen 5?

Your Ryzen 5 3500U can run Adobe Premier Pro and Adobe After Effects.