REDCINE Windows doesn't play with Fire GL? - Update

[Jeff Kilgroe]

OK,

I've had a few email conversations with some people looking for help with REDCINE on Windows. And with those conversations and with posts I'm seeing here on the forums, I'm jumping to a conclusion...

The ATI FireGL cards do not work well (not at all, in many cases) with REDCINE.

Does anyone have REDCINE running on a PC with a FireGL card?

I don't have a FireGL card to test. I don't know if RED has done any testing with FireGL.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

This isn't 100% confirmation, but looks pretty convincing to me...

I keep seeing lots of reports of people having problems REDCINE on Windows and a significant number of them have ATI video cards. A friend of mine is building a new workstation and was seriously considering a FireGL, so we decided to play with one and see what we found.

Test system #1 / control system:

AMD Dual-Core 2.4GHz, 2GB RAM, WinXP Pro, nVidia 7800GTX 512MB
- REDCINE runs fine on this system.

We pulled the 7800GTX and swapped for a FireGL V7600. Upon doing that, we had glitches and other anomalies with a few applications, including but not limited to: REDCINE, Modo, Messiah:Studio.

REDCINE showed glitches during playback on occasion. It was worse at 1/2 res medium and above, which this system can't do in real-time.

Output gave us various glitches, strange colors, pixel anomalies and often it just crashed.

Swapping back to the 7800GTX cured the issues.

Test System #2

SuperMicro X7DWA-N motherboard, dual quad-core xeons 3.0GHz, 4GB (for this test), WinXP Pro, FireGL V7600, fresh install of OS and all components.

Same results. REDCINE crashing on output, stuttering on playback, only got black frames or unreadable frames on output. Installing the 7800GTX video card swapped from the other system. Everything worked fine.

We will have an 8800GTX (768MB I think, one of the faster ones available from EVGA) here in the next few days and will do some more testing.

For now, we have concluded that the FireGL card is junk. A lot more expensive and performs no better than the 7800GTX card and in a few cases causes problems - ie: REDCINE.

 

[Alfredo Gonzalez]

Hello, I tested Asus V9750 with NVidia GeForce FX5700, 512 MB, and frames are black, not images.

 

[BASSAM MSSALATIE]

The ATI FireGL cards do not work well (not at all, in many cases) with REDCINE.

.

THANKS Jeff it is important note for ATI FireGL .thanks hope your test with
an 8800GTX (768MB) in the next few days show up soon .
i am tired waiting OTHER GUY'S tests .which he promissed to do it soon on those cards and never show up .:angry2:

 

[Kevin Halverson]

While not an identical configuration, I can partially confirm the behavior that Jeff had experienced. I went from an ATI X1300 to a Nvidia 8600 GTS (512 MB) and it solved nearly every RED CINE problem that I was having on a Intel core duo (3.0 GHz) machine running PX SP.

Kevin Halverson

 

[Andrew M.]

Jeff, RED mentioned few times by few people that ATI is working fine on Mac and NVIDIA on PC.
So no surprise here.
I am looking forward to the 8800GTX test, so far NVIDIA Quadro is well tested since both developer and RED QC team is using this one.
GeForce 8700M GT doesn’t work properly with REDCINE build 82 so far I tested.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Guys, sorry about the delayed update.

The EVGA card we tested is the 8800GTX 768MB SuperClocked model. It ran flawlessly. This card is very nice, very fast. Not as fast as the Ultra models, but it still screams.

REDCINE ran just fine with it. I'm thinking that people who are having trouble with REDCINE under windows and cards like this are running into issues with conflicting softwrae, possible hardware glitches, configuration errors, etc..

Which brings me to add another puzzle into the mix, another system we tested along the way is having black frame issues and other problems intermittently. (single Core2 Quad 2.6GHz, 4GB RAM, nVidia 8800GT 512MB, WinXP Pro). Going to try and work with this one over the weekend.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Jeff, RED mentioned few times by few people that ATI is working fine on Mac and NVIDIA on PC.

Yep, they have said that... But they said that performance would be better with nVidia, not that it wouldn't work with ATI. I noticed that many people who were complaining about issues with REDCINE we're running ATI cards and a number of people discussing parts for new workstations to process R3D files were considering FireGL cards. I decided to test the FireGL after a friend of mine really wanted to buy one. He is (or I should say, was) an ATI fan. I also wanted to test because after I said the FireGL was crap here in one of the PC building threads, I had several people take offense to that and try to tell me how ATI has really improved their drivers, blah, blah, blah... Sorry to those who still prefer ATI, but ATI still has the same crappy approach to their drivers and many of the same issues they had 3 years ago. Their cards look great on paper, but in reality, their driver software just plain sucks. For a "pro level" card, the FireGL had too many issues with pMG, Modo and XSI in just our day of testing.

Anyway, the 8800GTX is running great in this new system. Most of the late Quadro models should all work fine too (FX4500 and newer) as that's where SCRATCH typically resides. I can understand potential issues with an 8700M chipset, it's rather crippled. ...But issues could be related to other problems with that system. Like I said, we have a PC with an 8800GT that should work just fine, but it doesn't and we'll have to sort that out. It's not my system, so I'll have to go through it and see what's up.

Keep in mind, there are also a lot of little bugs and issues to cause instability within REDCINE. It's very much beta software, sometimes it still seems like it should still be considered "pre-beta". I'm not going to rule out the possibility that some systems will just not get along with REDCINE in its current state, no matter what is done with the OS and installed software.

We didn't do any specific benchmarks with the 8800GTX. As far as REDCINE rendering goes, I don't know if it's any faster than when we had the 7800 card installed. But it ran great when we installed it. Processed several clips with REDCINE, no issues there, mostly sending to DPX and TIFF. Tested other software... We don't have our REDs yet, so won't be working too much with R3D clips just yet.

 

[BASSAM MSSALATIE]

Nvidia 8600 GTS (512 MB) and it solved nearly every RED CINE problem that I was having on a Intel core duo (3.0 GHz) machine

THANKS KEVIN this is really good news for pc users.:tongue:

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

One more reason Apple needs to release quality Nvidia drivers if they want people to take bootcamp seriously.