What is the best AMD CPU for 4K video editing?

Question

ugh i am actually losing my mind right now trying to finish this wedding video for a client and my current setup is just completely choking on the 4k 60fps footage from my a7siii. it takes like five seconds just to move the playhead and i am literally screaming at my monitor because i have a deadline by next friday here in chicago and i am nowhere near done. i thought my old i7 would hold up but it is just pinning at 100 percent usage and thermal throttling like crazy.

so i was thinking of finally making the jump to amd because everyone says they are the kings of productivity now but i am honestly so confused by the current lineup. my logic was that i should just grab the most expensive thing i can find but then i see people saying the 7950x is better for rendering while some other people swear by the 7800x3d but then i heard the x3d cache is really just for gaming? i dont care about gaming at all i just need premiere pro and after effects to stop crashing every time i try to add a simple color grade or a transition.

i have about 600 bucks set aside just for the processor and i am looking at the 7900x or the 7950x but then i saw some rumors about the new 9000 series and now i dont know if i should wait or if that is just gonna be a waste of money for marginal gains. i need this fixed like yesterday and i dont have time to watch twenty different youtube benchmarks that all contradict each other.

budget is max 650 for the cpu

using premiere pro and a bit of davinci resolve

strictly 4k h.264 and h.265 files

needs to be stable because i cant afford more blue screens

is the 7950x still the king for this or is there some other amd chip i am overlooking that handles 4k encoding better? i just need someone to tell me what to buy so i can get back to work without wanting to throw my pc out the window...

jewjrwhhwh · Accepted Answer

Man, I feel your pain... those Sony a7S III files are absolutely brutal on a system. If you are sticking with AMD, you definitely want the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X 16-Core 32-Thread Processor. It is a beast for rendering, but I gotta warn you to be careful here. AMD chips dont have the hardware decoding for 10-bit 4:2:2 H.265 files that Intel has. You might still get some stuttering in the timeline unless you use proxies. A couple of things to watch for:

Stick with the 7950X, ignore the 7800X3D since that cache is just for gaming.

Grab a massive cooler like the Noctua NH-D15 Premium CPU Cooler because these chips run hot.

Dont wait for the 9000 series; the gains wont save your deadline. Honestly, the 7950X is the workhorse you need. Just be prepared for the heat... and maybe keep using proxies for the smoothest experience.

JasonKep · Answer

agree 100% on the 7950x being the top dog, but in my experience, the AMD Ryzen 9 7900X 12-Core 24-Thread Processor is actually the smarter move if you want to stay under budget. i have spent years benchmarking these rigs and premiere hits diminishing returns pretty fast once you go past 12 cores for live playback and scrubbing.

better value: you save enough cash to pick up a faster scratch drive like the Samsung 990 Pro 2TB NVMe SSD which helps way more with those heavy sony files than 4 extra cores would.

stability: definitely grab a solid ram kit like Corsair Vengeance 64GB DDR5 6000MHz CL30 to avoid those blue screens. those 4k files are memory hogs and you dont want to skimp there. tbh the 7900x is a beast and it stays slightly easier to cool than its bigger brother. just make sure your bios is current and you should be totally fine for that friday deadline.

wqyvfdqrxh · Answer

> the AMD Ryzen 9 7900X 12-Core 24-Thread Processor is actually the smarter move if you want to stay under budget I definitely agree that saving some cash is smart, but honestly, I have the exact same issue with those specific 4K Sony files and even on my high-end AMD setup it still chokes. I have been dealing with this lag for like two months now and nothing seems to fix it. As someone who has built editing rigs for years, it is incredibly frustrating to be stuck like this without a clear solution. You might want to be careful before dropping cash on a new CPU because it might not even solve the decoding bottleneck. Still trying to find a real fix myself...