Every few weeks someone asks us which is better for video editing, Premiere Pro or DaVinci Resolve. We understand why they ask. Both are excellent, both get used on real productions, and most comparison articles will happily give you a feature table and a verdict. We are not going to do that here.
The more useful question in 2026 is not which editor is better. It is which editor you are actually going to use, because that choice now has a direct and quite specific effect on what your PC needs to look like. Premiere Pro and DaVinci Resolve have started asking very different things of your hardware, and treating them as interchangeable once you have "a good GPU" is where people end up disappointed.
Premiere Pro 26 leans hard on Nvidia
Adobe has been pushing Premiere Pro forward with genuinely useful additions. Premiere Pro 26 introduced AI Object Masking, a Generative Extend feature, and a new GPU accelerated Premiere Color Mode. That last one is the detail worth paying attention to.
Premiere Color Mode is specifically RTX accelerated. It is built to take advantage of Nvidia hardware, and its best performance depends on having an Nvidia GPU in the system. If you are committed to Premiere Pro and want to actually use these newer features properly, rather than watch them limp along, the sensible choice right now is an RTX card. This is not a brand preference on our part. It is simply how Adobe has built the feature.
DaVinci Resolve 20 has become a VRAM problem
Resolve has taken a different path entirely. Blackmagic Design has been explicit about this, not vague marketing language, actual guidance: Resolve 20 wants 24GB or more of VRAM for comfortable 4K work. Push into 6K or 8K and the recommendation climbs to 32GB, with Blackmagic citing figures as high as 96GB for the heaviest work.
This is not a nice to have or a future-proofing suggestion. It is a practical requirement Blackmagic itself is putting in writing. Resolve leans on VRAM in a way Premiere Pro simply does not, and if your GPU does not have enough of it, you will feel it in the timeline, not just in a benchmark chart somewhere.
So the calculation splits in two
Put those two facts side by side and the buying decision stops being one decision and becomes two.
- Premiere Pro editors: the priority is having Nvidia hardware in the machine at all, so the RTX accelerated features actually run the way Adobe intended.
- DaVinci Resolve editors: the priority shifts to capacity. How much VRAM you can get becomes at least as important as raw GPU speed, especially once you are working above 4K.
Neither of these is about one editor being superior to the other. They are simply built differently under the bonnet now, and that has consequences for the parts list.
Why this matters before you configure anything
The mistake we see most often is someone speccing a machine first and deciding on software afterwards, as if any well specified GPU will suit any editing workflow equally well. It will not. A card that is perfectly matched to Premiere Pro's RTX accelerated tools might be short on the VRAM headroom a heavy Resolve timeline wants at 6K. Equally, a high VRAM card chosen purely for Resolve is not automatically the best pick if your real workload lives in Premiere Pro.
Your software should inform your hardware spec, and your hardware spec should be chosen with your software in mind. It works both ways. Decide what you are actually editing in, at what resolution, and let that decision drive the build, rather than bolting your workflow onto whatever GPU sounded impressive at the time.
How we approach this at Create PCs
This is exactly why we do not spec workstations on a one size fits all basis. We build machines configured specifically around Premiere Pro and, separately, machines configured specifically around DaVinci Resolve, because the two workflows now pull hardware requirements in different directions. Tell us what you actually cut in, and at what resolution, and we will spec around that reality rather than a generic idea of "a good editing PC".
Build it with us
Have a play with our PC configurator, or just get in touch and tell us how you actually use your machine. The team's happy to talk through it either way. Every system is hand-built to order here in our Stevenage workshop, stress-tested before it ships, and backed by our 5-year warranty.
