Quadro or GTX for PremierePro?

[Rudi Herbert]

Gentlemen,

I'm in the process of building a couple of workstations to run CS5 and was wondering what would offer more bang for the buck, Quadro or GTX? I've used Quadro in the past for my other computers but looking at the specs of newer cards, the GTXs have more cuda cores, which would make them more suitable for the Mercury engine? I would want a card with a display port if possible, to feed a 10 bit Dreamcolor for grading, but that is secondary, I need good, stable RT performance and, if possible, would prefer not to go into the $thousands if I can stay in the $hundreds, preferably the low hundreds. This is not my main system, which is Rocket equipped.

 

[Johnny Friday]

Rudi,
Sure you want to go DC route? i had one for a few years now and was fine just to get by....you should check out Flanders monitors --- 3g capable with the 24" modle and super affordable and to have your real time graphs on the monitor is so much nicer. Anyway, something for thought....AND, i've got two DC monitors at my place that need homes...one completely untouched.....the other used for last year.


.....that said, interesting to know best "all round card" not only for cuda performance...but also back in FCP to run all.....

 

[Steve Dent]

The GTX don't have 10-bit (dual-link), I think, only the Quadro.

 

[David Rasberry]

For 10 bit color you need the Quadro's . If you run any 3d graphics apps like Maya you also need the Quadro as the GTX series doesn't offer drivers for hardware support.

 

[Brian Robbins]

Quadro

 

[Rudi Herbert]

Johnny,

I remember when you were thinking about the DC, I think we talked on the phone and I recommended it to you? Anyway, I will check out the flanders, and in the meantime, before you do anything with your DCs, let me know, I might take one or both off your hands, maybe I'll come by to pick them up and finally do some whaling together

Isn't the GTX 590 10 bit capable through mini-display port? It also has 1024 cuda cores, the highest of any other Nvidia card. It sells for around $700, which is about what the mid range Quadros, like the 3800, are going for nowadays, but this Fermi seems like so much better. newer technology...

 

[Subhadip Sen]

Isn't the GTX 590 10 bit capable through mini-display port? It also has 1024 cuda cores, the highest of any other Nvidia card. It sells for around $700, which is about what the mid range Quadros, like the 3800, are going for nowadays, but this Fermi seems like so much better. newer technology...

CS5 can only access 512 of the 1024 shaders, and those 512 are clocked at 75% the frequency of the GTX 580. Furthermore, GTX 580 has official support for CS5.5, making it the best choice.

However, going in for 10-bit monitoring, Quadro 4000 is a good choice, it is based on the Fermi architecture and can be had for less than $700. It is certainly more than adequate for CS5 - the bottleneck will always be in the CPU/HDD/etc.