Best video cards for Windows Workflow

[Wesley Scoggins]

Planning on upgrading some Windows editing systems, and I was wondering if anyone had done any benchmark tests on what are the best cards?

I was going to be working with more than just Red footage, so I wanted an all around good card (instead of just diving into the Red Rocket pool, which would be the easiest solution), I am working primarily in Adobe CS4, so I was thinking of upgrading to some Quadro cards, but i've heard some things like the rendering speed improvements you get aren't as dramatic as you'd expect for how expensive they are.

Thanks all.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Generally speaking, your video card does not provide any acceleration to rendering tasks. Buying the most expensive quadro card will not allow you to render video clips (or 3D CG frames, etc..) any faster than a lowly $50 nVidia GT120.

A couple exceptions are that some applications do use the GPU to accelerate some video effects and transitions for real-time previews. Also a handful of cards do offer some acceleration for certain video codecs, which does translate to faster renderings. An example of this would be the nVidia Quadro 4800CS card. It provides acceleration for H.264 encoding within the Adobe suite. Unfortunately, the quality of the accelerated coded isn't very good and depending on the specs of the system its in, can actually be slower than simply encoding on the CPUs!

99% of the time, rendering speed improvements seen with Quadro cards are not just less dramatic than expected, but rather any improvements are purely imaginary. This is not the reason why you would buy a Quadro card. If you have to ask why you would need a Quadro, then chances are you don't need one.

In a PC workstation, for general video card, I would recommend an nVidia GeForce 200 series card with 512MB memory or more. The 265 is a solid card with good all around performance. The 285 is about 25% faster overall and you pay for it. Then there's the 295, which is even better still. There are SLI options to use multiple cards in tandem for further increased performance, but at this time it's something that really only applies to gamers and in a few special instances to 3D artists.

I guess the big question here is what type of systems (specs) are you updating?

As for other video capture / accelerator cards such as the AJA cards, RED Rocket, etc.. These are more of what you would be looking for to accelerate your editing workflow. As of right now, the only card that accelerates R3D is the RED Rocket and there's currently no software available for it on Windows. Hopefully soon. The AJA Xena cards will accelerate other formats and would be something to consider, depending on which formats you intend to work with. However, in CS4, it's best to edit R3D content natively, which means RED Rocket CS4 support is the best solution if/when that happens.

 

[Wesley Scoggins]

They are 2.9 ghz 64-bit quad-core, with 8 GB of memory, running Vista-64.

Planning on going ahead and upgrading to 12gb, getting a faster HDD, and getting a better video card as far as upgrades are concerned right now.

 

[Scott Miller]

YMMV... But:

The 275 NVidia seems to be the sweet spot price wise, or at least was a couple of weeks ago. Speed vs. Cost. I picked up one from NewEgg for $175 and I saw them listed in the SV Frys ad for about $150 after rebate!

I am running same/similar specs to your listed machine right now and very happy in 3D Max and CS4.

(In short, agreeing with Jeff )

 

[mikeburton]

FYI - I just dropped the NVidia FX 4800 card in my pc and am loving it! Not sure about editing but for DI it smokes! Testing SpeedGrade XR right now with .cine Phantom HD 1080p files which Iridas has optimized to take advantage of the GPU and I get realtime 24fps with files playing off 1 internal sata drive, and core 2Duo 3ghz machine.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Funny thing is, the GTX 295 still smokes the FX4800 card. But you need the Quadro if you want the SDI add-on board option and a few other oddball features.

Which brings up a good point for workflow on the PC. The software you run will have some influence on which video card will be the best choice. If you intend to run Scratch, SpeedGrade or Lustre, you will want a Quadro.

Based on the description above of the systems being upgraded, I think the nVidia 275 would be a good choice as Scott suggests. The 285 is a bit faster, but it's also double the price.

FWIW, Speedgrade rocks on the nVidia GTX285, it just doesn't have the SDI option like the Quadro cards.

 

[Scott Miller]

Funny enough I just got an email today from AutoDesk with 50% off deals on the Quadro's. So the FX4800 for $999. Still a lot more than the 285, but not insanely more.

 

[mikeburton]

Hey Scott,

Sacramento I see? Good to see another Sacramento RED guy here. Check ebay Scott. I got my card brand new in the box for $510.00 including shipping from a guy on ebay. There are a lot of them that pop up and sell for much less $$ than advertised.

Jeff, haven't had a chance to test the GTX 295 card. The FX 4800 seems to do the trick for what I need/want it to do. I don't even use the SDI board as I am going display port to HDMI adapter into my Panasonic Plasma 1080p 42' TV and DVI to a 24' Dell.
BTW - I really am loving SpeedGrade. Took a few days of really diving into it to figure out how to get in and out of projects successfully and I would say that's a bit more of a learning curve than with other software products but for reviewing Phantom .cine files and R3D files in the same project is awesome! I love having all the control of the RAW based imagery in SpeedGrade and their support team is awesome as well.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Mike, If I were running SpeedGrade, the 4800 would be right at the top of my list for video cards. It won't break the bank like the Quadro 5x00 will and it's more flexible in some ways than an ordinary Geforce card. I don't own SpeedGrade myself. Just play with it here and there.

BTW, what did you ultimately do for a RAID? Just curious if you went with that Sansdigital SAS enclosure. I'm thinking of picking up one of those myself.

 

[Peter Moretti]

I just wanted to mention that Avid Media Composer is spec'd to run on a Quadro. So a lot of the advice here may be less applicable to those who use MC.

 

[Wesley Scoggins]

Well I want a card that will take advantage of CUDA, because everything i've heard is that CS is going to focus more and more on utilizing CUDA and GPU's to do a lot of the heavy lifting.

Using TMPG Encoder for some stuff, and it can take advantage of CUDA, and after I optimized it for my card, it just burned through rendering out HD video for me to TIFF's.

Right now the few bottlenecks I am running into is that i'll get some sluggish playback after imposing looks or doing a lot of CC work, and my render times can be a bit slow after doing a lot of tweaking. Not a HUGE deal, just it can be an issue when working with HD footage, and I just want to work a little quicker.

Right now after reading some of the suggestions and reading up some more, I am thinking of getting a few GTX's and putting them in SLI mode, and that should be more than enough GPU power for the foreseeable future for me.