Graphics Cards - Quadro CS

alwayslearning

alwayslearning

Well-known member
I am in the process of choosing parts for a new (PC) editing system. I'm going with an ASUS P5Q-E at least 8GB DDR2, Vista Ultimate 64 bit, core 2 quad 12MB cpu ....... I will be using the Adobe Master Bundle CS4. Now I am using my system I built 7 years ago come March. Back then, I just bought the fastest processor I could and the most/fastest RAM I could - 1GB RDRAM. It has served me well these past years but it is time to move on. Whew ... things have changed in the hardware world! Especially the graphics card world. I have spent WAY too much time on just that. I read and read and read on the Adobe forums ... probably too much because now I am confused more than when I started. I am dumping, for me, a lot of bucks into this and it has to be right with CS4. I THINK I am going to go with the nVidia Quadro CS card.

I would be very, very grateful if anyone is able to see the above and point out any flaws in the system I want to put together but ESPECIALLY in regards to the graphics card .... graphics sub-system I guess some call it.

Thanks. Any and ALL advice welcome.
Larry
 
I truly appreciate your reply ESTEBEVERDE. I am hoping someone here has used this card, especially with Adobe and even more especially with CS4 and might have some yea or nea input.

Thanks,
Larry
 
Couple of things:

First, Core i7 920. Check out the benchmarks. They're worth it!

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc.aspx?i=3448&p=18

A $300 CPU is besting a $1200 older processor in media applications. That's without overclocking.

Second, I haven't used CS4, so I'm not completely familiar with its GPU hardware acceleration. But, here's the thing about consumer vs. workstation cards:

>The hardware can be virtually the same, with the only difference being driver support. The other difference is price.

I would think long and hard about getting an expensive Quadro if you're not working directly with 3d apps where GPU stability is sometimes questionable.

However, if you are serious about this computer, which it sounds like, you might want to look into "softmodding." It's a safe, tested procedure used on relatively recent Radeon cards to unlock most of their siblings' "workstation" capabilities.

That said, I'm not convinced that using the more powerful workstation drivers will actually give you any serious benefit in NLE's or After Effects. I've been looking for benchmarks for awhile, and haven't found direct comparisons. Heck, if someone has benchmarks for editing or compositing with and without good consumer GPUs, I'd love to see them. It's clear that softmodding does improve performance in 3d apps, but beyond that, I just don't have the empirical evidence.

Also, check out this article:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/core-i7-overclock,2117.html

It outlines great builds at three different price ranges.

Let me know if you have any more questions. Sorry I can't help more with CS4's GPU abilities.
 
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Also, on a sidenote, this isn't a benchmark, but is a nice blurb:

"The addition of the Quadro CX will deliver unmatched performance with Adobe Premiere Pro CS4, including the ability to encode H.264 videos up to 4 times faster. Specifically, what used to take 10 hours to encode a one hour Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 project to H.264 on a Dual-Core CPU, now takes two hours and 35 minutes."

Unfortunately, no comparison is given with Firepro cards or consumer-level discrete graphics cards.

Also, here's a quick link to a softmod thread that mods a HD3870 to a FireGL:

http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?p=1079435

The 3870 is sub-$100, so it isn't exactly the latest technology. However, it's a proven resource. And it's only a matter of time until the 4850 and 4870 are softmodded as well into the very impressive FirePro line. Unfortunately, nVidia laser etches their current cards, preventing softmodding.

Edit: Also, sorry, forgot to mention that you currently can't softmod with Vista. Both XP32 and XP64 have working drivers though.
 
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