The "I need a new PC to edit RED" Myth

[Carter Cammack]

Is there any advantage to running dual midrange workstation cards instead of a single high-end?
I got to play around in Maya and Cinema4D on a friend's rig and I was impressed at the performance. The system is a year-old I7-960 with dual ATI FirePro 580s, not crossfired. The cards are $379 each, so the pair costs about the same as a single Quadro 4000.
It's possible it won't affect RED footage as much as 3D, as it is more demanding of CPU than GPU.
Anyone have any insight?

[Subhadip Sen]

Is there any advantage to running dual midrange workstation cards instead of a single high-end?
I got to play around in Maya and Cinema4D on a friend's rig and I was impressed at the performance. The system is a year-old I7-960 with dual ATI FirePro 580s, not crossfired. The cards are $379 each, so the pair costs about the same as a single Quadro 4000.
It's possible it won't affect RED footage as much as 3D, as it is more demanding of CPU than GPU.
Anyone have any insight?

It completely depends on the software you use. Some don't scale beyond a single GPU (Premiere Pro CS5.x) while some heavily utilize multiple GPUs (Davinci Resolve). As for RED footage - the debayer is completely CPU driven unless you use a Rocket. Again, depending on the software, some elements of the playback process may be GPU accelerated.