Mercury Engine/Supported cards... straight from the horses mouth.

Mike Harvey

Mike Harvey

Veteran
Found an interesting post on the Adobe forums regarding the list of cards supported. Shouldn't be anything really new, but it's interesting to hear it from an Adobe engineer.

Long story short, if it 's not on the list it isn't supported. New cards will be added when they're added. And if it's not on the list, then you get *ZERO* CUDA benefits...

http://forums.adobe.com/message/2739509#2739509
 
That sucks, they've crippled the gtx 285 to only 3 streams of realtime playback. They could have least have added another one for multicam.
 
The 285 gtx has the same specs as their top of the line quadro card. There isn't much difference in these cards apart from firmware which was evident in the ability to softmod the older geforce cards into quadro cards. I'm pretty sure it has everything to do with protecting nvidia's quadro line of cards.

The lower spec quadro cards that are supported don't have anywhere near the performance of the gtx 285 so if these can handle more than 3 streams, no doubt the 285 should be able to.
 
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Sorry, I just find that very difficult to believe. I know some people think companies are always out to screw their customers, but most of the time, it's just not the case. Why would Nvidia purposely cripple a capable card, just to "protect" higher-end cards, rather than blow the competition away at the 285 price point, and make the high-end cards even higher-end? It makes no business sense whatsoever. In fact, it's a waste of resources.
 
Its perfect business sense actually. The 285 gtx is $400, the Quadro FX 5800 is $2000.
The difference, apart from the extra ram in the quadro is the open gl optimizations in the firmware of the quadro that allow it to render open gl in 3d software more quicker. The GTX 285 is optimised for rendering game graphics. For more info on softmodding your geforce into a Quadro go here http://www.techarp.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=539 (at this time, the latest card that can be modded I believe is the 9800 GT)
The hardware is the same, same chip, same amount of cuda cores, the gtx 285 actually has more memory bandwidth than the Quadro FX 5800. The only thing the Quadro has over the GTX is it comes with 4gb of ram max while the GTX 285 comes with 2GB max which is still more than the lesser Quadro models.
Once again, only difference is one is optimized for 3d cad/modeling work, the other is for games. Quadro FX users will tell you that gaming performance is rubbish but 3d max display performance is 2-5x as fast as a geforce, vice versa the other way.
 
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It makes no sense whatsoever. David's analogy is exactly spot on.

Has anyone dissected a Quadro FX 5800 and a 285 GTX, to see if they're the exact same card with the same components?

For my own, I'm hugely disappointed that the MPE doesn't support mobile cards of any type. I was aiming for a Lenovo 510, with a Quadro FX 1800, but that's not on the list, so ... now what? (and the answer is, EDIUS 5.5). Sorry Adobe, you'll have to add some mobile support sooner rather than later.

But I do applaud them for taking the "pro" word seriously. They're certifying that their program will absolutely work if you use those cards, and guaranteed functionality is important in competing for professionals' business.
 
The power usage of the Quadro cards goes like this

FX 3800 - 108W max
FX 4800 - 146W max
FX 5800 - 189W max

GTX 285 - 204W max
Minimum System Power Requirement - 550W Supplementary Power Connectors needed 2 x 6-pins.
“So you need to make sure your power supply is up to the task or your computer could crash during a render.

Maximum GPU Temperature - 105C
So make sure your case doesn’t get to hot on the inside. You “might” need more fans in the case.

The GTX 285 is OpenGL 2.1 where as all 3 FX cards are OpenGL 3.1

I’m not going to explain the difference’s there, you can look for yourself.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opengl
 
Phil vG said:
The power usage of the Quadro cards goes like this

FX 3800 - 108W max
FX 4800 - 146W max
FX 5800 - 189W max

GTX 285 - 204W max
Minimum System Power Requirement - 550W Supplementary Power Connectors needed 2 x 6-pins.
“So you need to make sure your power supply is up to the task or your computer could crash during a render.

Maximum GPU Temperature - 105C
So make sure your case doesn’t get to hot on the inside. You “might” need more fans in the case.

The GTX 285 is OpenGL 2.1 where as all 3 FX cards are OpenGL 3.1

I’m not going to explain the difference’s there, you can look for yourself.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opengl
Click to expand...

Gamer cards generally do "HEAPS" more work than a quadro card. They render entire 3D scenes at more than 60fps at resolutions more than 2560x1600 at hours on end. The Quadro cards would be lucky to work at 100% for more than a few minutes at a time as most are used just for viewport acceleration, not rendering. Therefore they require less power and can run alot cooler, therefore they are alot quieter.

The new geforce cards can no longer be softmodded as Nvidia have finally come up with a hardware lock that prevents it. The difference is entirely in the firmware and drivers.
 
This whole new combination of GPU card and software combo situation looks too fluid to me.
I think I'll wait for CS6 1.2 or so for the mix to mature.

Buying anything now will have you hitting your head against the wall as Adobe and Nvidia dribble out newer and newer incarnations of products.

Say what you want about cards and firmware, marketing trumps all.
 
phd said:
Can I use my Quadro FX 1800 to CS5?
Click to expand...

No you need at least an FX 3800 or the GTX 285.

Makes me wonder why the GTX 260 wasn't supported as it is hardware identical to the FX 3800. Since the new geforce cards can't be softmodded, I wouldn't be surprised if some talented hacker will figure out how to get Mercury to support more cards. It could be as simple as how you get the Final Cut eos plugin to work with the 550d. But probably not

I mentioned perfect business sense in that they are making extra profits without wasting costs on developing different hardware. From a business facts and figures point of view. I think decay described it best. People forget these are corporations with shareholders. Corporations have only one goal in this world.
 
Here is the thing with a GTX 285 and why you "might" need a new PSU for it.
With the GTX 285 you don’t get a choice of whether or not you want to plug in those other power plugs, you have to plug them in, or the computer could crash just starting up a word document. You even get a popup window saying it’s underpowered if you bump the computer and one of the plugs comes out.

I’m only talking about using a GTX 285 here. Even if you have to buy a new PSU for safely running the 285 it’s still cheaper than a FX 3800!

My friends PC (with a GTX 260) crashed sometimes a couple of minutes after he turned it on, just while surfing the net, because of a “crap” 750W PSU. It had “nothing” to do with playing games!

A FX card, because of its lower power requirements “may” not need a psu that reliable.
I used to get by on a Generic unit! I used it for Lightwave and 3Dsm no problem before I got my GTX 260. Not compatible :furious3:
 
More cards will be added to the list next month when the final version is available. Right now all that's out there are beta builds. Having played with it, I hope it improves A LOT before final release.
 
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Xian Messerschmidt said:
More cards will be added to the list next month when the final version is available. Right now all that's out there are beta builds. Having played with it, I hope it improves A LOT before final release.
Click to expand...

What problems do you still see? All the reviews I've seen around the net have been nothing but glowing praise.
 
The build I tested is now several months old and was running without the CUDA boost. From what I could tell, there isn't much, if any, performance benefit without a supported nVidia card. It seems to be more of a requirement than a recommendation.

I won't make a final decision on whether to upgrade until the final version is released but I'm starting to think that all this "glowing praise" was based on the app running on high-end systems and may not represent a realistic view of the end user experience. I guess we'll know for sure in a month or so.
 
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