cs5 and graphics card question for sys builders

[Ed Kishel]

First, this is what I use now:
CORE2 QUAD Q9450
3 GB DDR3
GEFORCE 9600GT 1GB
GEFORCE 8600GT 512MB
1 500GB SATA SYS DRIVE
2 1TB SATA MEDIA DRIVES
750W POWER SUPPLY
WINXP 32

3 MONITORS (left for media bins, center for timeline/editing, right for full screen previewing)

Now I'm thinking of going to Win7 64 to take advantage of CS5 Production Prem. I don't want to do a complete rebuild- so I am going to make some minor upgrades to take advante of a 64bit OS and NLE.

I am going to keep the CPU, but bring the ram up to 8GB DDR3 and add a GTX 460 video card for the CUDA needs of the Mercury Engine.

Currently I use these three monitors to work. The center and right screen are run by the 9600GT (editing/previewing), and the left screen is run by the 8600GT (media bins). Since I can't find an affordable Adobe CS5 certified GPU that supports more than 2 monitors- I have to use two video cards. I want to do this instead:

Pull the 8600GT and toss it on ebay. But I will continue to have 2 GPUs in the new machine: A GTX 460 to run the center and right screen, and the 9600GT to run the left screen for the media bins.

OK, so on to the real question. As my PC stands now, I only need one driver to run these 2 Geforce cards. If I do what I am proposing- I will need a driver for the current 9600GT and one for the new GTX460 in Win 7. Will this work? And if so- what will Premiere choose as the GPU to run Mercury through? I want it to use the GTX as the main GPU for editing and monitoring, and the 9600 as an extra screen for bins only.

Do GPUs work like ram, where your graphics will only run as fast as the slowest card installed? Sure, the easiest fix is to have 2 identical GTX cards in the machine- but for cost, power req, space, and heat issues I don't want to have to buy 2 GTX cards.

thanks

 

[WpgCameraMan]

I run something similar to this. My 460 came up as a 'Standard VGA' device. For whatever reason, there's no automatic Windows 7 driver. Run the setup software that comes with the card, all the goodies will be installed.
Windows 7 will probably find the 8600 or 9600 , but I would still install legit drivers.

As for Mercury, it's only going to use the 460.. it picks the best of the two. You have to figure out which is the better card to use for the 'bin' monitor. I've got a GTX 460 1GB and a 8400GS 256mb... the 8400 is a bottleneck from what I can tell, since it's a slower card, it takes longer to move the display data to it. So a faster card helps for data transfer and SOME overall speed, but there's no Mercury advantage, and I doubt if any Cuda advantage either.

I do think that the 'bin' monitor is a good choice to display with the second video card, there's very little movement or things changing on it, light load for any graphics card.