Best video card $600 budget PC-land?

[Kalani Prince]

Starting to budget out a system that will be able to smoothly edit Scarlet fixed R3d's at the potentially highest bit rates..

Right now I have a Zotac sumn' or other that does fine with 5D2 footage but is close to choking every now and again..

I was thinking : ZOTAC AMP! ZT-40102-10P GeForce GTX 480

It's around $500 as I post this, would you get something different?

much love, Kalani-

[David Stewart]

Depends on what editing software you are using. CS5 runs R3D files natively. Adobe gives their stamp of approval on 2 Nvidia cards with Cuda last time I checked - the GTX 470 and the Quadro FX5800. I got the 470's. Quadro's are a bit steep.

[Benoît-Joan Clariana-Roig]

Yep no GPU support with a GTX480 unless you hack CS5. I got a Gigabyte SOC 470.

[Kalani Prince]

thanks for the information, I do have CS5 and can't wait to fill it with R3D's : ) Wow, that Quadro card is the price of a used Civic.

[Bastien Tribalat]

Here is the actual list of nVidia video cards certified by Adobe :


I think anyway that Adobe will shortly release an update to make it more compatible with the new GPUs (the GTX580 seems to be a BEAST).

[David Dwyer]

Here is the actual list of nVidia video cards certified by Adobe :


I think anyway that Adobe will shortly release an update to make it more compatible with the new GPUs (the GTX580 seems to be a BEAST).

As said the GTX 580 would be the one to go for and its easier on the PSU compared to the 480.

GeForce GTX 285
GeForce GTX 470
Quadro CX
Quadro FX 3800
Quadro FX 4800
Quadro FX 5800
Quadro 4000
Quadro 5000
Quadro 5000M
GeForce GT 445M

Amend list to support CUDA magic, from

c:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Premiere Pro CS5\cuda_supported_cards.txt

[Fabricio Morato]

Hi, I wouldn't go with the gtx 480.. right now you can get the gtx 570 for way less ($349)and it's almost the same or go with the gtx 580 for $499 (newegg).. and then do the little trick in CS5 to have GPU enabled (easy to do, and even on the adobe forum people recommend doing it) the only thing is that if you get any bugs you can't get support if you say you did this...
And if building a new system the 2nd gen of intel processors are amazing and cheap...
hope this helps

[Kevin Olsen]

I'm really surprised the Quadro 2000 isn't on the list, given it's similar, if not better, performance over the Quadro 3800.

Ultimately, I was hoping to combine my CAD requirements with CS5 GPU accelerating card and not spend a fortune of course. It's either the Quadro 2000 + GTX 570 or a single Quadro 4000 at this point.

[Kalani Prince]

Would daisy chaining two $300 cards make sense or is that more for gaming?

[Stivan Widick]

Absolutely the GTX 580.