NVIDIA RTX graphics cards for video editing in DaVinci Resolve Studio 21 and Premiere Pro

Which GPU for video editing: Blackmagic's and Adobe's own lines

For video editing, Blackmagic and Adobe publish plain memory lines. Blackmagic's readme for DaVinci Resolve Studio 21.2 asks for a GPU with at least 4 GB of VRAM, for 12 GB if background rendering is used and for 16 GB for the advanced AI tools. Adobe's requirements page for Premiere names 4 GB of GPU memory as the minimum and 8 GB as recommended. Among the NVIDIA cards we supply, the 4 GB NVIDIA RTX A400 reaches the minimum lines, the 8 GB NVIDIA RTX A1000 reaches Adobe's recommendation, and two 16 GB cards, the NVIDIA RTX 2000 Ada Generation and the NVIDIA RTX PRO 2000 Blackwell, reach every memory figure on these pages.

Memory is the first of three questions. The second is which formats the card encodes and decodes in hardware. The third is how many encoders and decoders it has. This guide answers all three for eight cards from 4 to 32 GB, and the only speeds in it are published measurements with their source.

DaVinci Resolve Studio 21.2: 4 GB to start, 12 and 16 GB for two functions

The current release is DaVinci Resolve Studio 21.2; its readme is dated 4 November 2026. Version 20 is no longer current, and figures quoted from the 20.x readmes, among them a lower driver number, are out of date.

Blackmagic Design, readme "About DaVinci Resolve 21" for DaVinci Resolve Studio 21.2, updated 4 November 2026, re-read 10 November 2026.

Blackmagic ties none of these figures to a resolution. A sentence such as "Resolve needs 8 GB for 4K" has no basis in the readme. The readme we read is the one for the Studio version; we did not read a readme of the free version for 21.2 and say nothing about it.

Two further documents fill in the picture. The feature list for version 21.1 of September 2026 marks several image-processing GPUs as a Studio feature, along with 10-bit viewers on Windows and Linux and timelines above UHD; a maximum number of GPUs is not published. The codec list of the same month describes AV1 on Windows as GPU accelerated for decoding and encoding, and on Linux as accelerated on NVIDIA graphics. For H.264 and H.265 it names GPU acceleration as part of Studio. It adds that accelerated encoding and decoding is subject to hardware support and refers to the hardware maker's documentation, which for these cards is NVIDIA's support matrix below.

Premiere, After Effects, Photoshop and Lightroom Classic: Adobe's figures

Adobe's current requirements page is titled for Adobe Premiere, the product still widely searched as Premiere Pro, and carries the date 10 November 2026.

Adobe technical requirements pages for Premiere, After Effects, Photoshop and Lightroom Classic, read 10 November 2026. Photoshop has a second row, "Video RAM", with 1.5 GB minimum and 2 GB recommended.

Premiere's page names Windows 11 24H2 as the minimum operating system and recommends 32 GB of RAM or more for 4K media. Adobe's page on GPU and driver requirements for Premiere lists what the GPU accelerates: decoding for playback, rendering of the timeline for playback and export, encoding for export, and functions such as scene edit detection and transcription. On hardware encoding and decoding Adobe speaks of H.264 and HEVC and gives details for Intel platforms only. The words NVENC and AV1 do not occur on the five Premiere pages we read, and 4:2:2 decoding of 10-bit HEVC is named for Intel platforms. Which of a card's engines Premiere uses is therefore not something Adobe's pages settle.

Two statements on several graphics cards point in opposite directions: Adobe's recommendation page for Premiere says that multiple GPUs speed up export and rendering, and its Photoshop page says that Photoshop does not take advantage of multiple graphics cards.

What each card encodes and decodes in hardware

The engines are a property of the card, documented by NVIDIA in its datasheets and in its Video Encode and Decode GPU Support Matrix.

NVIDIA datasheets of the eight cards; NVIDIA's Video Encode and Decode GPU Support Matrix of 16 October 2026 for AV1, 4:2:2 and the number of concurrent NVENC sessions.

Three lines separate the generations. The RTX A400 and RTX A1000 carry seventh-generation NVENC; their datasheets list AV1 for decoding only, and the matrix limits them to 8 concurrent encode sessions. The Ada cards add AV1 encoding, and the matrix lists their sessions as unrestricted. The Blackwell cards carry ninth-generation NVENC and are the only cards in the table for which the matrix lists 4:2:2 encoding. Blackmagic introduced GPU-accelerated H.265 4:2:2 encodes and decodes "on supported Nvidia systems" with Resolve 20.0, together with support for Blackwell GPUs, by its readme of 27 May 2025; which systems count as supported is not in the lines we read.

The session limit matters for transcoding stations more than for a single edit suite; our article on NVENC session limits explains it. For one suite or a whole post-production floor, we supply these eight cards across the EU: tell us the editing software, the camera formats and the number of suites, and you receive a written quote within one business day.

From 4 to 32 GB: which card for which suite

What follows is our reading of the makers' lines and of the table above, one kind of suite at a time.

Photo editing, ingest and review

The RTX A400 reaches the 4 GB minimum of Premiere and Resolve and Photoshop's 4 GB line for 4K displays, and those are the seats we would use it for: photo editing, ingest and review. NVIDIA's datasheet gives a maximum power consumption of 50 W and names no auxiliary power connector, in a single slot at 2.7 in of height. Order page: buy the RTX A400.

Editing on Adobe's recommended memory

The RTX A1000 has the 8 GB that Adobe recommends for Premiere and After Effects and that Lightroom Classic names for full GPU acceleration, with a second decoder in the same 50 W single slot. In Resolve the card lies below the 12 GB line for background rendering and the 16 GB line for the AI tools, and it does not encode AV1. Order page: buy the RTX A1000.

Resolve with background rendering and the AI tools

Sixteen GB is the smallest size in this guide that reaches all of Blackmagic's memory lines. The RTX 2000 Ada and the RTX PRO 2000 Blackwell both offer it on 70 W without a power cable, as half-height cards that take two slots. The Blackwell card adds 4:2:2 encoding, GDDR7 at 288 GB/s against 224 GB/s and DisplayPort 2.1b. Our comparisons RTX PRO 2000 Blackwell vs RTX 2000 Ada and RTX A1000 vs RTX 2000 Ada and RTX PRO 2000 go into the choice. Order pages: buy the RTX 2000 Ada, buy the RTX PRO 2000 Blackwell.

A second encoder and decoder

No line of Blackmagic or Adobe on the pages we read asks for more than 16 GB. The reason for the 24 GB class is the second encoder and decoder, and memory in reserve above the 16 GB line. The NVIDIA RTX PRO 4000 Blackwell offers both in a single slot at 145 W, the NVIDIA RTX 4500 Ada Generation in two slots at 210 W. Order pages: buy the RTX PRO 4000 Blackwell, buy the RTX 4500 Ada.

Grading, effects and AI tools in one session

The 32 GB cards have twice the memory of Blackmagic's highest line, for suites where grading, effects and AI tools run side by side. The NVIDIA RTX PRO 4500 Blackwell Workstation Edition draws 200 W, the NVIDIA RTX 5000 Ada Generation 250 W, both in two slots. The comparisons are RTX PRO 4000 vs RTX PRO 4500 Blackwell and RTX 5000 Ada vs RTX PRO 4500 Blackwell. Order pages: buy the RTX PRO 4500 Blackwell, buy the RTX 5000 Ada.

Generating video with AI models is a different load from editing it, with memory figures of its own; our articles on the AI video workstation for marketing and on video generation GPU requirements cover that side.

Studio driver in the requirements, RTX Enterprise driver on the card

Blackmagic and Adobe both word their driver advice with the name of NVIDIA's Studio driver: Blackmagic as the minimum versions in the table above, Adobe as a recommendation to install the latest Studio driver, with a link to the Studio driver for RTX and Quadro GPUs. The professional cards in this guide run on the NVIDIA RTX Enterprise Production Branch driver. NVIDIA's download page for release 621.14 says that Production Branch drivers also contain the features and enhancements of the Studio drivers of the same version number.

Blackmagic's 581.57 is a Windows driver number, and its Linux line names 580.119.02. By version number, every current release lies above the minimum of its platform: 621.14, 597.30 and 582.99 on Windows against 581.57, and 620.70.06, 595.112.07 and 580.196.07 on Linux against 580.119.02. All eight cards are listed in these releases. The CUDA line needs one remark, because datasheets of older cards print "CUDA 11.6" or "CUDA 12.2": that row is the version at launch and no ceiling. The CUDA version follows the driver; CUDA 13.0 pairs with the R580 branch, 13.2 with R595 and 13.5 with R620. Our article on the NVIDIA RTX Enterprise driver for Windows 10 and 11 describes the branches.

Published measurements: Puget Systems' roundup of December 2025

Puget Systems tested the Blackwell cards against the Ada cards of the same number in its content creation roundup of 18 December 2025, on a Ryzen 9 9950X3D with After Effects 25.6, DaVinci Resolve Studio 20.3 and Topaz Video AI 7.0.2. Premiere was left out of that round. The text of the article gives relative gains only.

Puget Systems, "2025 Professional GPU Content Creation Roundup", 18 December 2025; one test system, percentages from the article's text.

For the RTX PRO 2000, Puget also reports 25 % more in the LongGOP test of DaVinci Resolve than the RTX 2000 Ada. Across the Blackwell generation it puts the overall Resolve score about 25 % above Ada, the GPU effects part 70 % and the AI effects part about 20 %. These runs used Resolve Studio 20.3, the major version before the current one, and Puget's roundup did not include the RTX A1000 or the RTX A400.

Screens, HDMI and a second card

Every card in this guide has four DisplayPort outputs, full size on the 24 and 32 GB cards and Mini DisplayPort on the smaller ones, version 2.1b on Blackwell and 1.4a on Ada and the A-series. None has an HDMI output, which matters where a client monitor is fed over HDMI.

A second card is worth planning only where the software uses it: Resolve Studio lists several image-processing GPUs as a feature, Premiere's recommendation page speaks of faster export and rendering, Photoshop uses one card. The single-slot RTX PRO 4000 Blackwell leaves the most room for that step. The eleven cards of this series, from 4 to 48 GB, are laid out in our NVIDIA RTX workstation GPU guide. If you are equipping several suites, describe the formats you cut and the functions you use in Resolve or Premiere, and the quote names a card per suite.

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