DaVinci Resolve Studio: AMD Ryzen 7000 Series vs Intel Core 12th Gen

Introduction

Earlier this month, AMD announced their new Ryzen 7000 Series desktop processors along with the LGA socket AM5 platform. These processors are marketed as having substantially better performance for content creation applications in part due to their "Zen 4" architecture, as well as support for new technologies like DDR5 memory.

For DaVinci Resolve, AMD has had to fight an upward battle due to the Quick Sync technology found on most of Intel's Core line of processors. Quick Sync is one of two ways that DaVinci Resolve (particularly the Studio version) is able to perform hardware decoding of H.264 and HEVC media, which often makes the difference between a good, and a terrible, editing experience. You can use an NVIDIA or AMD GPU to provide similar functionality, but Quick Sync tends to give greater performance and supports a wider range of codec settings.

However, one of the new features of the AMD Ryzen 7000 Series is the addition of an integrated GPU. This will likely only be a small footnote in most reviews, but for DaVinci Resolve it could end up being a big deal. If the Ryzen iGPU is able to offer the same capabilities and performance as Quick Sync, that would remove the one solid advantage Intel holds for anyone working with H.264 and HEVC media.

Because of this, we are going to have to look at the Ryzen 7000 series processors in two ways: pure processing performance in Resolve, and how well the iGPU is able to handle hardware decoding and encoding.

In this article, we will be using our PugetBench for DaVinci Resolve 0.93.1 benchmark paired with DaVinci Resolve Studio 18.0.2 to examine the performance of the new AMD Ryzen 7000 Series CPUs. As a comparison, we will be including the previous generation AMD Ryzen 5000 Series, as well as their primary competition – the Intel Core 12th Gen processors. While we are including most of the primary models from each of these product lines, note that we are skipping the AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D which features AMD's 3D V-Cache Technology. We have looked at this model in past articles and found that for content creation, it is either on par or slower than the normal Ryzen 7 5800X model.

If you want to read more about the new AMD Ryzen 7000 Series and what sets them apart from the previous generation, we recommend checking out our main AMD Ryzen 7000 Series Processors Content Creation Review article. That post includes more detailed information on the CPU specifications, testing results for a range of other applications including Lightroom Classic, Premiere Pro, After Effects, and Unreal Engine; as well as all the test setup details for both the hardware and software used in our testing.

Raw Benchmark Data

While our benchmark presents various scores based on the performance of each test, we also like to provide individual results for you to examine. If there is a specific task that is a hindrance to your workflow, examining the raw results for that task is going to be much more applicable than the scores that our benchmark calculated.

Feel free to skip to the next sections for our analysis of these results to get a wider view of how each configuration performs.

AMD Ryzen 7000 vs Intel Core 12th Gen for DaVinci Resolve Studio

To start off our analysis, we wanted to look at how the new Ryzen 7000 series compares to the Intel Core 12th Gen processors. The MSRP pricing for Intel and AMD don't exactly match, but in most cases, the comparisons we are making in the chart above are looking at CPUs that have an MSRP within $40 of each other. We have a full breakdown of the MSRP of each of these CPUs in our main AMD Ryzen 7000 Series Processors Content Creation Review article if you want to get into the specifics.

Interestingly enough, for DaVinci Resolve Studio, AMD and Intel are almost a perfect match in terms of the overall score, with only the Ryzen 7950X scoring appreciably higher than the Core i9 12900KS.

However, this is only looking at a complete summary of every aspect of DaVinci Resolve that our benchmark tests. Something we have been doing more and more is to break down the results based on the type of codec tested – namely longGOP, intraframe, and RAW. Unfortunately, this isn't something our DaVinci Resolve benchmark does natively at the moment, but it is coming in a future release. For now, to get a similar breakdown, we can take the geometric mean of the results based on the codec type, and use that to compare the performance between the AMD and Intel CPUs for specific families of codecs.

If you switch to chart #2, we are looking at the geometric mean of the tests using H.264 and HEVC as the source codec. For this, Intel scores slightly higher than AMD, but not by a significant amount. This may be a surprise given how we have talked about the importance of Quick Sync for these types of codecs, but something to be aware of is that the "flavors" of H.264 and HEVC we are currently testing are supported by both Intel Quick Sync and the NVDEC decoder found on our NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 GPU. For DaVinci Resolve, the big deal with Quick Sync is not as much performance as it is support for a wider range of "flavors" of HEVC. A prime example is HEVC 10-bit 4:2:2, which is growing in popularity as a common codec used by many of the latest cameras.

For our intraframe ProRes tests (chart #3), there isn't much to talk about as AMD and Intel are almost exactly on par. Only the Ryzen 7950X was significantly faster than its Intel counterpart.

The RAW tests (chart #4), however, show just what the Ryzen 7000 series processors are capable of. The Ryzen 7600X and 7700X were only on par with the 12600K and 12700K respectively, but the higher-end models were much faster than Intel. The Ryzen 7900X came in at 22% faster than the Core i9 12900K, while the Ryzen 7950X was a massive 35% faster than the Intel Core i9 12900KS.

AMD Ryzen 7000 vs AMD Ryzen 5000 for DaVinci Resolve Studio

In the previous section, we saw that the new AMD Ryzen 7000 Series processors are often either on par or faster than the Intel Core 12th Gen models depending on the type of codec tested. But what it doesn't show is just how much of an improvement that is for AMD compared to the previous generation Ryzen 5000 processors.

We went ahead and provided the same four charts as the previous section, but the results are consistent enough that we really only need to talk about the Extended Overall Score in the first chart. In short, the new AMD Ryzen processors are anywhere from 10% faster on the low-end, to 16% faster on the high-end. This isn't as large of an increase as the ~30% gains we saw in applications like Photoshop or After Effects, but it is still very respectable.

Ryzen 7000 iGPU – Does it Work for Hardware Decoding and Encoding?

As we've talked about a few times already, we had high hopes that the iGPU included on the Ryzen 7000 series would be able to function similarly to Quick Sync on the Intel Core processors. By itself, Quick Sync has long been one of the main reasons we tend to lead with Intel over AMD for the majority of users that work with HEVC media. Unfortunately, we had some major GPU driver issues that prevented us from being able to use the AMD iGPU for decoding.

To be clear, we fully expect the issues we saw to be fixed fairly quickly with an updated AMD GPU driver. But, with what we had available pre-launch, we were unable to get hardware decoding or encoding to work in DaVinci Resolve Studio with the Ryzen 7000's integrated GPU.

For decoding, we were able to select it as an option for hardware decoding in DaVinci Resolves preferences, but only got "Media Offline" errors when trying to play an H.264 8bit 4:2:0 clip (the most basic and common format).

And for exporting, it was a valid choice under the encoder options, but trying to export resulted in a "Render Job Failed as the current clip could not be processed. Cannot find appropriate codec for encoding the video frame." error. Exporting that same clip with software and NVIDIA encoding worked fine, which confirmed that the issue was with the AMD encoder on the iGPU.

We will note that this issue did not adversely affect the benchmark results shown in this article. Performance was identical with and without the iGPU enabled, so the decoding and encoding issues did not lower the performance. Once the iGPU is fixed, it could result in an increase in performance, but DaVinci Resolve was good about using the NVIDIA decoder/encoder rather than trying to use the iGPU and messing up the results.

We saw similar issues in our Premiere Pro testing (although hardware encoding did work in Premiere Pro), which is why we are fairly confident that this is an underlying driver issue rather than a problem with DaVinci Resolve. Hopefully, we will get a fix soon, as it is entirely possible that having the iGPU available and working could increase the AMD's performance when using LongGOP codecs like H.264 and HEVC.

How well do the AMD Ryzen 7000 Series CPUs perform in DaVinci Resolve Studio?

For DaVinci Resolve, both the AMD Ryzen 7000 series and Intel Core 12th Gen processors can be a great choice depending on your workflow. Intel maintains the lead for most H.264/HEVC workflows, while AMD is either equal or slightly faster when working with intraframe codecs like ProRes. The biggest reason to go with the new Ryzen 7000 processors is if you work with RAW codecs like RED or BRAW, where the Ryzen 7900X and 7950X were 22% to 35% faster than the Intel Core i9 12900K and 12900KS respectively.

While we were unable to get hardware decoding or encoding to work with the Ryzen iGPU, we are still holding out hope that this may be a valid answer to Intel's Quick Sync technology. Until it is working, however, we are unable to test it to see exactly what flavors of H.264 and HEVC it is able to support, and what the performance may be. So, as it stands today, Intel CPUs with Quick Sync are a hard combination to beat for anyone who often works with H.264, and especially HEVC, media.

Because of how different the relative performance is between AMD and Intel depending on the type of codec you are working with, we would break down the "winner" between the two product lines based on the following codec families:

• LongGOP (H.264/HEVC) – Intel Core with Quick Sync is the stronger option (unless you are using a flavor without hardware decoding support in DaVinci Resolve, in which case, it often will be bad no matter what hardware you have).
• Intraframe (ProRes, DNx, etc.) – AMD Ryzen and Intel Core should be very comparable at similar price points, with only the Ryzen 7950X showing an appreciable performance lead over Intel.
• RAW (BRAW, RED, etc.) – AMD has a large 22-35% performance lead with the Ryzen 7900X and 7950X. Lower-end models will be comparable between Intel and AMD.

However, it is worth pointing out that Intel is expected to launch their new Core 13th Gen processors sometime later this year, with some sites like Tom's Hardware speculating that they could launch as early as October. We won't know how those upcoming Intel processors will perform until they are released, but given the short timeframe we are likely dealing with, it may be worth holding off on purchasing a Ryzen 7000 (or an Intel Core 12th Gen) processor for a little bit if you can. It will be hard for Intel to catch up to Ryzen for codecs like RED and BRAW, but 13th Gen will likely allow Intel to take the lead for intraframe codecs, and will likely only further their lead for longGOP codecs.

Update 9/27/2022: Intel has officially announced that the 13th Gen CPUs will be available in October.

Keep in mind that the benchmark results in this article are strictly for DaVinci Resolve Studio and that performance will vary widely in different applications. If your workflow includes other software packages, we highly recommend checking out our AMD Ryzen 7000 Series Processors Content Creation Review article which includes results and links to in-depth testing for a range of other applications including Premiere Pro, After Effects, Lightroom Classic, Photoshop, and Unreal Engine.