What's better? RED Rocket or 2nd Quadro 6000?

[Zack Birlew]

Basically the subject line. I'm looking at post options for primarily MX footage and we're debating the costs and benefits of getting a Rocket v1 (maybe 2 of them) or just getting a second Quadro 6000 since they're both around the same price these days. A Rocket X seems like it would be helpful but it's just too expensive. What do you all think? If it helps, editing and post are going to be done in Adobe applications and Davinci Resolve for color correction.

 

[jussi rovanpera]

Rocket will help you with uncompressing and debauering the r3d's, uncompressing is normally the bottleneck that slows the processing, as it's done on the cpu. So a second Quadro won't necessarily speed things up at all, but it depends on what you're doing (transcoding, grading, rendering) and what kind of system do you have. I see used Rockets going for 250-400 USD, so that's a pretty good deal.

 

[Zack Birlew]

Dual 8 core Xeon, 48gb of RAM, 2x 480GB SSDs for OS and applications, and 2x 2TB drives for storage and work. It's an EVGA SRX-based system so I think I can only top it at 8 or 12 core if I want to fiddle with EVGA's buggy BIOS "updates" (which is a different story) and, of course, I'm using an nVidia Quadro 6000 and I may add an AJA Kona 3G for added video editing features. I have several free 16x PCIE slots but I use the system for 3D as well but, again, I don't know if I'll see any benefit in a 2nd Quadro 6000 with that either. If a RED Rocket will help, then I'm all for it but I also wondered how 4K monitoring goes with it now that inexpensive 4K screens are out there. Do I need that breakout box too? If not then I could save the money and get another Rocket or the Quadro if that's ultimately better. As for how we'll be working with RED footage, we're wanting to keep everything at the highest quality possible for VFX and compositing.

 

[Simon Dunne]

My knowledge is a little dated, but i thought it was cheaper and better, to daisy chain a tesla card onto an existing Quadro, then you get better performance as opposed to having dual GPU's and it's cheaper too!

 

[Christoffer Glans]

A rocket card for MX shouldn't be too expensive to come by. Using uncompressed 5K is not really that heavy on the processor because there doesn't need to be any calculations, codecs or decoding while playing or working with it. The same principle for why uncompressed TIFF sequences seem to playback without any problems in AE while a H.264 that is a fraction of the size and a fraction of the resolution clogs up the system instantly.

The thing you need for uncompressed 5K is very very fast drives and buffers. You need to be able to stream tremendous amounts of data, but if you manage to get to those speeds you won't have a problem other than manage the pure size of all the material.