Pinnacle 23 on a new high end PC - Is the uplift in performance I've seen about right or not?

stevefromleeds
New Member

Posts: 2

Pinnacle 23 on a new high end PC - Is the uplift in performance I've seen about right or not? Apr 5, 2024 14:30:14 GMT

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Post by stevefromleeds on Apr 5, 2024 14:30:14 GMT

Hi everyone and thank you for creating this new forum. I was gutted to see what had happened to the old one (RIP) but am so pleased to see it resurrected here with some familiar names

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I bought my most recent version of Pinnacle (23 Ultimate) in 2019 and loaded it on my 2014 Lenovo laptop with a i7-4700 2400Mhz 4 core CPU with integrated graphics card. It wasn't too bad with 1080 footage, was naturally very slow with 4K to the point where I decided it was time to upgrade. So I've just taken the plunge and upgraded my PC to a new Windows 11 watercooled desktop with Intel i7-14700 3400Mhz 20 core motherboard, 2TB SSD, 64Gb RAM and a Geoforce RTX4060 Graphics card (built by my gamer son-in-law who assures me it is a good machine).

I reloaded Pinnacle 23 onto the new machine using the original installation disc and authentication code and it has loaded OK and upgraded to version 23.2.1.297

The first test I've done is to render and then export (as 4K) a 5 minute 4k clip on the old and new machines to get a comparison as below.

Machine Render Time Export Time
2014 laptop 6 min 26 secs 5 min 0 sec

2024 desktop 1 min 54 secs (30% of laptop time) 1 min 57 secs (40% of laptop time)

So the new machine is definitely quicker but I'm just wondering if...

1. Is this the sort of uplift in speed I should expect.
2. Is there a way to tell if my Pinnacle is using all the graphics/processing power of my new desktop
3. Is P23 OK with Windows 11
4. Are there any other tests I can do to benchmark how well my PC is handling P23
5. Is there anything I can do to improve performance from where it is now.

Please let me know if you need any more information

Thank You
Steve

Bob Keen
Administrator

Posts: 78

Pinnacle 23 on a new high end PC - Is the uplift in performance I've seen about right or not? Apr 6, 2024 6:07:07 GMT

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Post by Bob Keen on Apr 6, 2024 6:07:07 GMT

The processes tab on the task manager (right click at the foot of the screen) should tell you what resources are being used. Perhaps someone else can answer your other points as I have not tried windows 11 with PS23. One thing that I do know is though, that PS23 remains the best version of the programme in many respects but mostly because it can handle complex projects whereas later versions cannot. Welcome to the forum.

Last Edit: Apr 6, 2024 7:23:39 GMT by Bob Keen

Intel Core i7 5960X Extreme @ 3.5 GHz x 8 cores with H60 liquid cooler
16GB DDR4 RAM 2666MHZ
Dual Nvidia Geforce GTX 770 2GB
Samsung 860 QVO 4 TB SATA 2.5" Internal SSD
Windows 10 64 Bit

RicRoller
New Member

Posts: 14

Pinnacle 23 on a new high end PC - Is the uplift in performance I've seen about right or not? Apr 6, 2024 10:54:51 GMT

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Post by RicRoller on Apr 6, 2024 10:54:51 GMT

Apr 5, 2024 14:30:14 GMT stevefromleeds said:

...So the new machine is definitely quicker but I'm just wondering if...

1. Is this the sort of uplift in speed I should expect.
2. Is there a way to tell if my Pinnacle is using all the graphics/processing power of my new desktop
3. Is P23 OK with Windows 11
4. Are there any other tests I can do to benchmark how well my PC is handling P23
5. Is there anything I can do to improve performance from where it is now.

My "2 pence"

1. Speed uplift is probably "about right".

If by "rendering" you are referring to the "background rendering for preview" (the yellow & green that progresses along the top of the timeline) - this is most likely limited by the performance of the (ancient) software MPEG-2 codec used to create the render files - and shows approximately how much "more poweful" your new CPU is than the old for that particular task

Exporting (assuming your are using one of the "H.264/AVC" export presets, and it's a raw clip having no applied effects etc.) will be mostly limited by the performance of the H.264 video encoding hardware in your graphics card. If your CPU and motherboard do support the Intel on-chip graphics and it's available to be used, it might be worth trying the export with Studio's hardware acceleration set to "Intel" instead of "Cuda" to see if Intel's "Quick Sync" hardware is any quicker than Nvidia's "NVENC"

2. With that many CPU cores it's highly unlikely that Studio 23 will be able ever to fully-load your CPU; in most cases it's simply not possible to split up the work into that many smaller pieces that can all run in parallel. Windows "process scheduling" will spread the load around the CPU cores - but you may see in the Task Manager ("Performance" tab) that the cores are seldom fully-loaded. But at least you know that Studio will never be bottlenecked through unavailability of CPU resource

3. No issues here with running under Windows 11

4. You could try rendering or exporting one of your finished projects to see the typical performance gain (when the project includes effects, transitions asnd titles, and isn't just plain clips without anything added to them)

5. If your CPU and motherboard do support the Intel on-chip graphics, letting Studio use the Nvidia graphics for rendering of effects etc., but using the Intel grasphics for video encoding (and decoding) may help as it could spread the workload around more evenly between CPU and GPU. You could also try Studio 26; some aspects of performance have been improved since PS23 - unfortunately others (especially titles) have been made much worse!! But I do second Bob's oipinion that PS23 appears to be the best "all-rounder"

Regards,
Richard

stevefromleeds
New Member

Posts: 2

Pinnacle 23 on a new high end PC - Is the uplift in performance I've seen about right or not? Apr 7, 2024 12:52:18 GMT

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Post by stevefromleeds on Apr 7, 2024 12:52:18 GMT

Hi Bob and Richard

Thank you very much for your help and advice. Good to know I may have the best all round version of PS loaded.
From Bob's suggestion I was able to add the GPU to the Task Manager table and so I can now see if it is being used or not.
I'm going to work through Richards suggestions to compare Intel vs Cuda and will report back.

Regards
Steve