What is the ultimate GPU for CS5?

Wilbur Eddings

Wilbur Eddings

Well-known member
Been looking at Quadros so far. Is the 6000 the best option or possibly dual gaming cards with the hack?

I 've been reading all over the net and I can't get a strong enough answer anywhere to make a final decision.

Definitely going with CS5 on Win7 64!

My buddy just ditched FCP (After a million years of loyalty) and sounds like he is a CS5 evangelist lately.

I'm gonna give it a run on the best system I can.

Evidently the GPU is the big concern here. (Rest of the machine is i7 bla bla bla).

Input would be appreciated.

Side note: Hard drive:
Is there a dramatic enough increase in performance to spend 17 times the amount of money for a SSD than you would for a normal hard drive?

Edit
Keeping reading, interesting finds below ;)
 
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nvidia will be coming out with the quadro 600, looks very promising and affordable
also, the gtx 480 looks good too...
how's your budget?
 
I'm an IT guy first and a Premiere CS5 guy second.

I run CS5 on an i5 w/ 8gb ram + 4gb speedboost (USB Stick used as ram) with a Nvidia 9800 GTX (512mb)

I don't have a lot of experience with the Quadro cards, but they seem pretty spendy and the geforce 470 has the same number of cores, so I think the premium you're paying is for the RAM.

I would say bang your buck, you'd probably get better performance going with a GTX 470 and spend more money on disk. I'd go RAID 10 and get fast drives. You could go SSD for your boot drive (you wouldn't need a big one) and then RAID 10 for editing. Gives you fault tolerance and high performance. SSD has slow writes, so for rendering I'd think RAID 10 would give you better performance.

I'm watching for a deal on a 470 so I can use the mercury engine (my card doesn't have the ram to enable it)
 
Below is an exerpt from the link Frank posted.

( http://www.studio1productions.com/Articles/PremiereCS5.htm )

Some of you may think, “I will go with the GTX480 since it has a lot of CUDA cores and I have a big enough power supply“. You want a very powerful video card, right?

Well not necessarily. What type of CPU do you have? Is it a dual core or quad core? What is the processor speed? These are things you should know before spending money on a video card.

You don’t want to buy a GTX285 or any of the GTX400 series video cards and put it in a dual core system. This will be overkill as the GPU on the video card will spend most of it’s time just waiting on the CPU. If you have a dual core system, one of the lower end cards, such as the GT240, GTS250 or GTX260 will be fine.

If you have a quad core system and your power supply can handle it, then your okay to go with one of the higher end cards, if it is in your budget.

Whether your running a dual core or quad core system, again I don’t recommend any video card with less than 96 CUDA cores. So don’t bother with the 9400GT, 9500GT, 9600GT or the GT220, they just don’t seem to have enough power to be useful to the Mercury Playback Engine on most systems.

One of the systems we tested here at Studio 1 Productions, had an AMD Quad Core processor running 2.9 Ghz. We didn't get a whole lot of increased performance with the Mercury Playback Engine between the GTX260 and a GTX280, even though the GTX280 had more CUDA cores. The reason was, the GPU on the video card was out pacing the CPU.

However, when we tried these same two video cards on another system that was running an AMD X6 (6 core processor) at 3.2 Ghz, we saw a slight increase in performance with the GTX280 over the GTX260, but not enough to warranty spending more money on the GTX280.

While the Fermi video cards, which are the GTX 460, GTX465, GTX470 and GTX480, are more powerful, they offer many more cores, they have a larger memory bus and higher clock speeds, they are not fully utilized in the Mercury Playback Engine. As the Mercury Playback Engine matures with updates from Adobe, you should be able to use more or all of the power of these video cards. Right now, you will get the same performance across all the GTX 400 series of video cards. Right now, the performance is about the same as the GTX260 to GTX 285 video cards.

For the money, you can't go wrong with the GTX 460 if your power supply can support it. The GTX460 with 1 Gb of DDR5 memory is running around $230. This is a great buy.
Click to expand...

No diggidy, No doubt! I'm going for an i7, Gt480 with DDR5 and 4 raid 0 Drives.

From what I am beginning to understand, the Quadros are actually uber performance cards for Game designers and programmers. Buying a Quadro for CS5 would be like buying an entire swiss army knife for the nail file and scissors whereas the GT480 is the nail file and scissors you require.

There is a good chance I am wrong in my deduction as i know less about what makes a computer tick than most.

The FX5000 costs app. $10,500 in my country (compared to $1000 for the Gt480.)

Any thoughts/Corrections?
 
No question about it. GTX 460 1GB. It is available at a bargain price of $210. And unlike the 470/480 it is not a mini nuclear reactor.
 
RAID 0 = You have 1 disk fail, you lose EVERYTHING.

Disk is cheap. RAID 1, or RAID 10, or no RAID. And get a real RAID controller, don't use anything built in unless you're just doing RAID1.
 
Yeah, what noworries said.

I got the 470 and it is lightning fast - best bang for the buck.
Make sure you get one with two fans on the side, or you asking for trouble.


Frank
 
Simon Höfer said:
I made sure to get a GT240 with NO fan on it :D God I hate all this noise. Gotta keep it quiet.
Click to expand...

WOW!
icon_eek.gif
No problems?

Frank
 
noworries said:
RAID 0 = You have 1 disk fail, you lose EVERYTHING.

Disk is cheap. RAID 1, or RAID 10, or no RAID. And get a real RAID controller, don't use anything built in unless you're just doing RAID1.
Click to expand...


We've had about six RAID 0 systems over the past seven or so years -- and every single one of them failed and took stuff (data) with them.
 
Subhandip's logic is solid. Look at the number of cores and their speed vs. cost and wattage. That list makes it easy to see there is little additional bang for your buck beyond a 460. However it would be nice if they also showed their respective memory bandwiths, which gives you an idea of what you are actually getting in terms of memory.

The wattage is also something to look at, since it can not only give you an idea of your $ energy consumption (and eco-friendliness), but also how hot the darn thing will get. 400-s can run hot. You can look up reviews for each card for actual numbers under load if you feel the need.

With all of that in mind, I think I might end up getting a Twin Frozr 460 1GB once I actually need it. They always make the best compact air cooling solutions. They are also the quietest!
 
Ugh, those stupid power pins (on TF 460) are aimed towards the hard drives... it make no sense!

An other thing to check: make sure it will fit. :furious3:

In this case the 470 Twin Frozr might be the way to go... freakin' pins...
 
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