Cards: ATI vs. Nvidia

A

alp001

New member
Anyone know about ATI cards vs Nvidia.

Ive heard that ATI wont work for premiere cs5 but Ive used premiere cs5 with a mac pro with ATI card and it worked fine but idk if im overlooking some tiny spec that makes it work. im not techy enough to know

I want to buy a new computer (budget of about $1500) and ive looked into the new iMacs. I want to run premiere cs5 with it but they only come with ATI cards and im not sure what will happen when i go to edit for the first time. Can someone help me out or lead me to a better option

Thanks
 
ATI cards do not support CUDA/Mercury playback, and in my experience, with a 5750 1GB ATI card vs a 9800+ GTX OC 1GB card (with cuda support turned OFF) on the exact same q6600 2.4GHX quad core PC with 8GB of RAM, the much older Nvidia card renders about 15% faster, with MPE enabled it renders nearly twice as fast, so i would skip ATI if you are going with CS5.
 
before CS5, there was not much difference

on CS5, nvidia gives you CUDA acceleration, ati does not; get a geforce card with at least 1GB of GDDR5 memory and at least 96 shaders (for example, a GTS 450), apply the hack (it's a very easy thing to do), and premiere performance is on a completely new world, up to 10x higher depending on the task

on CS6 and onwards, I'd hope adobe switched from the propietary CUDA language to OpenCL, so both brands could be used...
 
I switched over from an ATI 5770 to a gtx 460 in order to get hardware accelerated playback. That was only after testing it and being amazed at its power on my laptop that has a laptop version og the 260gtx.

I have been an ATI (now AMD) fan for years and I have always chosen AMD over Intel as well but it looks like the times they are a changing.

Outside of Adobe CS5 however ATI does make some faster cards. They just released the 6000 series that will make your head spin but if you use CS5 don't bother...
 
i have a gtx260m with cuda on my laptop and its pretty good, is there anyways i can make it faster when i plaay back my hd footage from my hpx on vegas pro? I have it set to full quality but it is very choppy.

windows 7 64bit
6gb ddr2
2.5ghz intel core2 duo
 
I have the GTX 470. Awesome card on the mercury playback engine. Always plays back real time without a hiccup. Also the Cyberpower GXI109 is a great pc for the money I have one, cyberpower sells it through walmart as well. Great pc, very powerful. After effects wishes it had more ram though (it only has 12 gb from the manufacturer)
 
If you ever plan on adding Avid to your NLE line up they only support Nvidia. So if there is a chance you could use it down the road Future proof with Nvidia
 
Are you set on going with a Mac? CS5 is available on Windows and using a Windows machine will allow you to throw drastically more proccesor power, RAM, and nVidia card into it. All the other are right, so thats all I have to say.
 
just one thing... before you start getting into trouble with a super-big-and-hot-but-now-not-so-expensive GTX-470 or something like that...

read this thread:
http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/adobe-creative-suite/484577-any-gts-450-tests-yet.html

from someone who has tested a lot of different cards:
"right now the 450, 460, 470, 480 all perform pretty much the same with Premiere CS5 (when tested on the same computer, an AMD X4 and X6 systems.) Who knows about the future if Adobe starts using more CUDA cores."

as I said before, you need a geforce card with at least 1GB of GDDR5 memory and at least 96 shaders; once you meet those numbers, it won't matter if it's a cool and quiet card with 96 shaders or a hot monster with 512, it will run just the same

I'd go for a GTS 450 (latest generation, 192 shaders, 1GB GDDR5, 120eur), even a GT 240 (one generation old, 96 shaders, 1GB GDDR5, 80eur) if you're on a very tight budget (it'll be just as fast as the 450, just make sure it's the 1GB GDDR5 version, 512MB won't accept the premiere hack, GDDR3 makes premiere run half as fast as it could with GDDR5)

in any case, keep in mind that models for desktop and mobile are different: a desktop 260 has 216 shaders at 576MHz, while a mobile 260 has 96 shaders at 550MHz, not even half the horsepower
you can look here for detailed specs
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Nvidia_graphics_processing_units#GeForce_200_Series
 
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I'm Avid so it has to be Intel / Nvidia.
Having said that I had to have the Nvidia FX7900 256 MB graphics card on my laptop (Running MC3) replaced, and the only thing available was an ATI card with 128 MB. MC runs, but not as well as it did before.
Dave
 
THey just came out with a gtx560 or something... liquid cooled... getting a lot of buzz the last couple of days... but, it's like 500 something bucks.

That gtx260 looks like a pretty decent card to me... 200 bucks. solid performance. CUDA (if you are a premiere user).

If you edit with premiere, you will likely want a cuda enabled nvidia card as it will yield much better performance (from what I've heard... my 295 isn't "officially" cuda supported, and I've only piddled with a trial of premiere...)
 
@JasonRamsey

that would be the GTX580 (512 shaders, 300 watts, 500 eur); by GTX480/GTX470 results, I'd bet it's not any faster than a GTS 450 (192 shaders, 120 watts, 120 eur)

even if I had money to burn, I wouldn't go any higher than a GTX460: those nearly 300 watts from GTX 470 / 480 / 580 mean a lot of problems, and a lot of noise; I like my cards passively cooled, thankyouverymuch
 
Just a note regarding Avid. Nvidia QUADRO cards are supported. Not the consumer Geforce cards. I know the Quadros are supported on CS5 as well.
 
alp001 said:
So is there a mac (within the $1500 budget) comes with nvidia that runs premiere cs5?
Click to expand...

actually, I think not

but my only source for such answer is what I've read on this (absolutely great) build-a-hackintosh guide:
http://nofilmschool.com/build-a-hackintosh/

"As far as video editors were concerned, I also wondered why they no longer offered nVidia graphics cards as an option, despite (or because of) the fact that Adobe Creative Suite 5 uses nVidia cards to get drastically higher performance when editing video"

it may be only talking about mac pros

edit:
actually, it seems there are some macs with nvidia graphics, but:
* it's just macbook pros and mac minis
* they only comes with very very low-end solutions: 330M for the macbook pro (48 shaders, 512MB GDDR3) and gt 320M for mac mini (48 shaders, 256MB GDDR3)
with so little memory, the hack won't work --> no CUDA love there

but it's clear the "no longer offering nvidia graphics cards" assertion is not completely accurate; I think you should ask at a mac store...
 
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