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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

New Mac Pros... which video card?

Jeff Kilgroe said:
No, you're looking at the numbers backwards... I process 4fps. If you're looking at 24fps footage, that's 1/6th of real-time.

1 hour of 24fps footage is taking approximately 6 hours to process.
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I twisted maths to my needs... :) :)

Even 1:6 it's not that bad for 4K and RAW format!
 
Jeff, my 8 core 3.0Ghz comes tomorrow, have you tried playing back the 2k proxy QTs on your machine? Do they play in realtime? I chose the standard ATI 2600 expecting to have to get an X1900XT. Should I hold out and get an Nvidia 8800?

Also I'll PM you about the ram.
 
Evin Grant said:
Jeff, my 8 core 3.0Ghz comes tomorrow, have you tried playing back the 2k proxy QTs on your machine? Do they play in realtime? I chose the standard ATI 2600 expecting to have to get an X1900XT. Should I hold out and get an Nvidia 8800?
Click to expand...

I can say that the 8800GT seems to be a good decision. Everything runs great, I've been doing quite a bit of modeling in Modo (this is mostly what I've been doing on the system since I've received it). No problems.

REDCINE performance on this system is also rather good (compared to anything else). I can play back 4K 2:1 in REDCINE at real-time with ample CPU cycels to spare when set to half-res medium. half-res high almost works at 24fps, but sticks here and there, so close.

I am having some REDCINE issues, but they don't appear to be directly related to the 8800GT as I'm experiencing all of the same problems on my Macbook Pro w/ ATI X1600 GPU. If I kinda help it along and don't push it too hard, don't run anything else while using RC, it usually behaves.

Taking 1000 frames of 4K 2:1 and outputting to 2K 2:1 DPX files, it takes just less than 2 minutes when writing to a pretty fast RAID-0. So about half of real-time.

The same 1000 frames out to 4K 2:1 DPX files sometimes tends to make REDCINE misbehave. But when it does work, it takes almost 7 minutes.

Anyway, enough of the review. I don't know how much difference the 8800GT card actually makes in REDCINE vs. the ATI 2600. But I do know that the 8800GT is significantly faster for my other 3D apps and that's what I based my purchase decision on.

Oh, as for 2K proxies, yes they play just fine except for the QT stutter issue I'm having. But played smooth when I had QT 7.3.1 installed -- other than QT causing the system to crash or hang. I wish you luck with the QT issue. FWIW, the _F proxies play too and other than the stutter look like they would play smooth! Kinda cool loading up a clip that almost spans clear across two 30" displays.
 
8800GT Color?

8800GT Color?

I also would like to know which card has better color representation for the RED (8800GT or the X1900XT). If anyone has noticed a difference in their tests, please post the results here. Thanks!
 
I haven't had a chance to really try everything, but Color seems to work great on this new Mac Pro (8x3.2GHz, 16GB, 8800GT video). In fact, it runs well enough that I'm re-thinking my opinion of Color. I have so far been able to do grades on 1080p Pro-Res sequences out of FCP and playback the grades and FX in real-time. But like I said, I haven't had a chance to really dig in. ...On my G5 quad w/FX4500 , it was so slow and klunky that I never gave Color much of a chance.

The problem nVidia cards with Color were the 7300 and 7600 cards. 7800GT and FX4500 work good. I would presume the Q5600 works great as well.
 
daveb said:
How much faster rendering is the FX 5600 over the Geforce 8800 GT any one know for sure ?

thanks,

Dave
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I have spoken to friends at Apple about this and have this feedback. I have not verified this myself but act as a messenger for what I've found.

Although the 8800GT and FX 5600 cards can display bit depths greater than 8bits, Both the Geforce 8800 GT and the FX 5600 are 8 bit only for our purposes and at present will not render 10 bit media back to the internal bus, I dont know about bit depths greater than 10bits (12, 16bit etc). It is unclear if this is a driver issue of a hardware limitation. The 5600 is not significantly more performant than the 8800 card for this type of render work.

The current best card is still the ATI Radion X1900XT card which definitly works in the previous generation Intel machines. This card will render 10 bit media. They are not expensive. UK £ 250 or there abouts. It is an Apple only product.

There are conflicting reports as to weather the X1900XT will run in the New generation Penrhyn/Harpertown Machines. Google searches reveal users who say they have X1900XT's running well in new machines and some who say not.

My guess is it will be a driver issue and the various searches are do not indicate OS build and so forth.

I am told that there is a new generation of ATI cards that will render 10 bit media on their way but no indication when.

Dave Blackham
UK
 
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