Which Radeon Graphics Card Is Good for Adobe Premier Pro?

You don't need to invest in a FirePro workstation to take advantage of Adobe Premiere Pro. AMD's consumer-level GPUs can be used to access Premier's professional video editing with the same all-purpose PC or Mac that you use for day-to-day business. However, video demands serious graphics processing power, and just because a Radeon card is officially supported doesn't mean that it's always the best choice. You'll get better performance from a Radeon card equipped with a faster GPU, more memory and the most up-to-date features.

Unlike FirePro cards, which are all AMD-branded, Radeons are manufactured by AMD partner companies such as XFX, ASUS, Sapphire, Diamond, HiS and others. Adobe does not distinguish between manufacturers or specific consumer products, simply providing a list of supported AMD GPUs. Each manufacturer generally offers a range of products covering each of AMD's GPUs. Although you'll find individual features such as cooling hardware and interface options, the differences between manufacturers often come down to their reputation for build quality and customer service.

While older versions of Adobe Premiere Pro concentrated on the local workstation, more recent incarnations have utilized Adobe's Creative Cloud. Moving to a cloud-based workspace offers many benefits in terms of portability and collaboration but requires a video card with parallel processing capabilities to make the most of the enhancements. Fortunately, many Radeon cards support the OpenCL framework, including GPUs as far back as the HD 6000 series.

A general rule of thumb is that each successive generation of hardware provides better performance than the last. However, each of AMD's generations consists of several GPUs designed to suit the spectrum of consumer needs and price ranges. You'll often find that the previous generation's top-end card outperforms more recent low-end and mid-range cards. For example, you may get better performance in Adobe Premier by using a Radeon HD 6900 series card than you would with a newer HD 7800, or any lower-numbered 7000 series card.

Adobe Premier Pro is extremely demanding on the GPU, so you'll get the best results when you use a graphics card based around a GPU with more stream processors and a higher core clock. Memory performance is also crucial, so you'll want to focus on cards equipped with at least 4 to 6 GB of GDDR5 and a 384-bit or better memory interface. Ironically, upgrading to PCI Express 3.0 from a previous PCIe version will give you a more noticeable performance increase in Adobe Premiere Pro CC than it will for many other graphics tasks, due to the improved OpenCL implementation.