You've got a decent system, very similar to the one I built in 2014 for editing; but things have changed a lot in the CPU realm since then and I think that's where your biggest chance to improve performance lies.

Here's a comparision chart showing your current CPU, the one I upgraded to 2 years ago and the one I have now.

To do a major CPU upgrade you'll also need a new motherboard, but you should be able to use your existing 32GB of RAM and all your hard drives. You've already got a nice SSD for your C: drive, but if you wanted to get the quickest boot and app load times I'd suggest using the M.2 slot on your new motherboard as it's 10x faster than SATA.

The good news is that you can also keep your GTX 960 as long as you're going to be producing to AVC/H.264 because hardware encoding is supported by that card.

If you think you'll be producing to HEVC/H.265 and want to use hardware encoding, you should upgrade to at least the GTX 10xx series. This nVidia chart is a handy reference and you'll want to scroll all the way to the right to see the full NVENC capbilities of each card.

In the meantime, you should update your video driver as the one you have installed dates from July 2019. You can get the latest Game Ready version from a couple days ago or the latest Studio Driver whcih may or may not make a difference when using PD. In my experience it's best to only install the video driver rather than all the components the installer wants to include (unless you're a gamer).

On the nVidia Installation Options page, chose Custom (Advanced) then select only the Graphics Driver.

YouTube/optodata

DS365 | Win11 Pro | Ryzen 9 3950X | RTX 4070 Ti | 32GB RAM | 10TB SSDs | 5K+4K HDR monitors

Canon Vixia GX10 (4K 60p) | HF G30 (HD 60p) | Yi Action+ 4K | 360Fly 4K 360°

Hello

Thank you very much for your reply - it is very interesting what options I have. I'll take a look at the CPU charts, as I'll have to balance off performance with $$$

Would a fair trade off be the 3900x, or even the 3700? And what motherboard would you recommend with a Ryzen, e.g. a B450 or B550, or would I need to go for a 570?

Forgive the likely stupid question - but when you say I'd need a GYX 10xx series card to get hardware encoding of HEVC/H.265 files - is that something that will only affect the rendering performance? So I'd still be able to produce H.265 with my existing GTX 960 - it would just take longer? Given our iPhones are basically all taking H.265 would it make sense just in terms of viewing and handling these files if we upgraded the GPU at some point anyway?

Thanks!

Quote You've got a decent system, very similar to the one I built in 2014 for editing; but things have changed a lot in the CPU realm since then and I think that's where your biggest chance to improve performance lies.

Here's a comparision chart showing your current CPU, the one I upgraded to 2 years ago and the one I have now.

To do a major CPU upgrade you'll also need a new motherboard, but you should be able to use your existing 32GB of RAM and all your hard drives. You've already got a nice SSD for your C: drive, but if you wanted to get the quickest boot and app load times I'd suggest using the M.2 slot on your new motherboard as it's 10x faster than SATA.

The good news is that you can also keep your GTX 960 as long as you're going to be producing to AVC/H.264 because hardware encoding is supported by that card.

If you think you'll be producing to HEVC/H.265 and want to use hardware encoding, you should upgrade to at least the GTX 10xx series. This nVidia chart is a handy reference and you'll want to scroll all the way to the right to see the full NVENC capbilities of each card.

In the meantime, you should update your video driver as the one you have installed dates from July 2019. You can get the latest Game Ready version from a couple days ago or the latest Studio Driver whcih may or may not make a difference when using PD. In my experience it's best to only install the video driver rather than all the components the installer wants to include (unless you're a gamer).

On the nVidia Installation Options page, chose Custom (Advanced) then select only the Graphics Driver.

Quote Forgive the likely stupid question - but when you say I'd need a GYX 10xx series card to get hardware encoding of HEVC/H.265 files - is that something that will only affect the rendering performance? So I'd still be able to produce H.265 with my existing GTX 960 - it would just take longer? Given our iPhones are basically all taking H.265 would it make sense just in terms of viewing and handling these files if we upgraded the GPU at some point anyway?

It is possible that you may not need a current 4th or 5th generation nvidia gpu. See the nvidia chart for the new features. I just tried nvenc encoding on an iphone 3840 x 2160/60p mov file. Using the profile analyzer/custom profile, it takes 35 seconds to produce a 34 sec. Mp4 file ~ 0.97 to 1 ratio. If your gtx 960, a 2nd generation gpu can do that or better then you can just keep what you have.

Quote Would a fair trade off be the 3900x, or even the 3700? And what motherboard would you recommend with a Ryzen, e.g. a B450 or B550, or would I need to go for a 570?

I don't have any specific recommendations, and in my opinion there really isn't any driving issue with all competing specs other than to get the best CPU speed with whatever motherboard supports it for the best price. In other words, I don't think there are any bad choices with a high end CPU system 👍

The only reason to get a new GPU card is to reduce producing times for HEVC clips. As tomasc points out, you can do a quick test now and then when you get your new system. If the new system can do the producing quickly enough for your needs, there's no reason to upgrade your GPU (which you're free to do at a later date anyway).

Thank you all for your help/input here. So the main takeaway is that Power Director will perform better the more cores/threads I throw at it as it uses that architecture rather than leveraging the GPU.

I've watched a few clips of different video editing platforms which show that the GPU takes the majority of the load both when navigating the timeline etc, and producing.

The producing time is less of a problem to me - but if I can speed up the timeline and editing experience that is the main motivator here.

So a Ryzen 3rd gen processor looks like the winner - just need to trade off which one against $$ (am guessing the newer 5000 series are going to be too $$$ - but who knows).