None of them. Get a GTX 950 or a GTX960, they have the latest hardware NVENC video encoder (becuse they are Maxwell 2 generation), and those are well used by PowerDirector.

I noticed the GTX 960 was popular for powerdirector, but it seems as if I would be going backwards and not getting the best card for my money and future, I noticed if you use older drivers for the 970 that NVENC still seems to work, just not sure if there is a usage hit in pw. So what you are saying is the newer cards won't help even if I use them for other purposes (gaming). I am not a huge Nivida fan at this point they may change my mind in the future but right now I was looking at AMD R9 series, but again my main purpose is video editing time. Just don't want to have to upgrade the gpu soon because I went with >2 year old gpu

Quote: I noticed if you use older drivers for the 970 that NVENC still seems to work, just not sure if there is a usage hit in pw.

Bad info, wherever you heard that. NVENC is the newer encoder, post CUDA cores, and requires somewhat current drivers, at least 344.xx or newer depending on OS. Older CUDA drivers won’t work with this GPU and PD14. Essentially the same postition as 950 and/or 960.

Quote: I am not a huge Nivida fan at this point they may change my mind in the future but right now I was looking at AMD R9 series, but again my main purpose is video editing time. Just don't want to have to upgrade the gpu soon because I went with >2 year old gpu

Here is a look at R9 380 experience with PD14. http://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/45474.page#234931 The new Crimson Edition drivers or PD14 r2302 make no improvements to the bitrate issue mentioned in the above thread. Not a good PD14 editing choice until issues are corrected, and then marginal as no H.265 support.

Jeff

GTX 960 is only 1 years old.

you can not use older drivers for the GTX 970. it will not work.

i just got GTX950 from newegg and the older driver 347.25 didn't work.

i've loaded 358.5 and is working great.



so far GM206 is both hardware encode & decode HEVC H.265.

GTX970, GTX980, etc GM204 doesn't. HW decode only.



my pick will be, if i stay with GTX 970 then i'll change the CPU to SkyLake.

i7-6700k, i7-6820hq/hk... they do HEVC H.265 HW decode & encode.



happy happy joy joy.

PepsiMan

'garbage in garbage out' 'no bridge too far'

Yashica Electro 8 LD-6 Super 8mm
Asrock TaiChi X470, AMD R7 2700X, W7P 64, MSI GTX1060 6GB, Corsair 16GB/RAM
Dell XPS L702X i7-2860QM, W7P / W10P 64, Intel HD3000/nVidia GT 550M 1GB, Micron 16GB/RAM
Samsung Galaxy Note3/NX1

JL_JL
So are you saying the gtx 960 would still be better as sonic67 says or the gtx 970. again I just want to be somewhat future proof, (I realize you can't be 100% future proof with technology, I didn't go skylake, but still feel my 4790k will still get me into the future with what I am doing especially since I got it for less than $250 (I must have misinterpreted the info on NVENC vs CUDA on older drivers)
If you were going to get a new GPU in the +-300 range what would be the best for mostly PD and some gaming.
thanks your help

Pepsiman why did you go with the gtx 950 and not the gtx 960, Price?, I was thinking the gtx960 4gb would be the best in this range. thanks for your response

Quote: JL_JL
So are you saying the gtx 960 would still be better as sonic67 says or the gtx 970. again I just want to be somewhat future proof, (I realize you can't be 100% future proof with technology, I didn't go skylake, but still feel my 4790k will still get me into the future with what I am doing especially since I got it for less than $250 (I must have misinterpreted the info on NVENC vs CUDA on older drivers)
If you were going to get a new GPU in the +-300 range what would be the best for mostly PD and some gaming.
thanks your help

The benefit of the 950 and/or 960 is they support full hardware decode, the 970 does a hybrid GPU/CPU decode which is still fairly good. Decode, not encode, a big difference in editing appeal. I have both, a GTX970 and GTX960. However, my experience has been that PD14 did not utilize decode of timeline playback for some high end formats, that was discussed here http://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/25/45503.page#236759 so from a timeline playback perspective with most common consumer compressed video formats, the CPU is most important for editing playback performance or for playback editing fluidity one can modify source clips to a more raw uncompressed codec but that causes about a 10-15x increase in filesize. Maybe in the future PD14 will correct, maybe not, maybe PD15. My PD crystal ball says these items an other throttle control points should have been fixed many versions ago.

I don't see hedging for some future that beneficial with PD, I'd simply go the GTX950 route for low cost and encoding. For gaming, refer to those sites.

Jeff

Thanks Jeff
I am trying to decide between the 950 and 960 now as my primary goal is PD but I may still do some gaming (not a topic for this site but still part of the decision) Since my budget was +-$300 and these cards are well under that, I can put the money toward more HDD space, always a good thing.

Thanks for all the responses and links, I did a search for gpu and found a few of the links but not all of them so that was very helpful. Still not a Nivida fan but since it seems to be the best for what I am doing and why I came here for advice I will take that advice since it seems very sound.

Quote: Pepsiman why did you go with the gtx 950 and not the gtx 960, Price?, I was thinking the gtx960 4gb would be the best in this range. thanks for your response

i have both MSI GTX960 2G 120W-240W & MSI GTX950 2G 90W-180W.

main PC with PD14, i went with GTX950 to save some electricity.

my system, the grasshopper is the bottleneck.

by the way, GTX960 4GB is also Julien's pick, too.



check out the Datasheet link on this link -> http://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/46135.page



happy editing

PepsiMan

'garbage in garbage out' 'no bridge too far'

Yashica Electro 8 LD-6 Super 8mm
Asrock TaiChi X470, AMD R7 2700X, W7P 64, MSI GTX1060 6GB, Corsair 16GB/RAM
Dell XPS L702X i7-2860QM, W7P / W10P 64, Intel HD3000/nVidia GT 550M 1GB, Micron 16GB/RAM
Samsung Galaxy Note3/NX1

I have the GTX960 2GB and it plays also any new game at 1080p full details without any problem. Maybe for 4K monitors the 4GB one would make a difference, but I don't have a 4K monitor anyway.


That's just a bonus for me, I bought it mainly for the video editing capabilities.

Hey Jeff,

When you say:

"However, my experience has been that PD14 did
not utilize decode of timeline playback for some high end formats, that
was discussed here http://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/25/45503.page#236759
so from a timeline playback perspective with most common consumer
compressed video formats, the CPU is most important for editing playback
performance or for playback editing fluidity one can modify source
clips to a more raw uncompressed codec but that causes about a 10-15x
increase in filesize."

Is this what the 'Magic+PD' does (the project Optodata and Al and a few others worked on a few months ago)? I think that converts clips to AVI, I think but I'm not certain. I think the intent with that is that the AVI clips do not produce the 'jump in the timeline marker' issue - that happens in the preview window when editing now and then in PD13 (at least)- I've experienced it some too but I'm hesitant to do the AVI conversion stuff I guess. I just think it should be fixed with an update form Cyberlink of in the new version of PD.

CS PD13 Ultimate - Build 3516, WIN 8.1, 64 Bit, 16G RAM, Intel Core i5 4460, CPU @ 3.2GHz, NVIDIA GeForce GT720, Graphics Memory(total avail.)-4093MB
LG WH14NS40 Blu-Ray Drive