2 ati radeon or 1 nvidia geforce on Mac Pro?

[Laurie Pepper]

Regularity is definitely a plus.
But which one does fcp like best? You didn’t say. I’ve got two monitors.

https://straightlife.info

[Kevin Camp]

i don’t know how much use this is to you, but here are some benchmarks for motion comparing various mac graphics cards and systems. it looks like the new ati 3870 may be a good choice.

i’ve never seen any such benchmark testing for fcp, but i would have to assume that if a it does well with core image testing/benchmarks, it should do well with fcp’s gpu accelerated features.

as far as one or two cards, if you run two monitors off one card, you split the card’s resources between them, so if you do run gpu intensive applications you may be better off with a card for each monitor.

Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

note: i’m not sure if the ati 3870 is offered thru the apple store as a bto option, but you could easily add it if you get the stock ati 2600. use the 3870 as the main monitor and the 2600 for things like palettes and other less gpu intensive drawing…

since they are both ati cards, i doubt that you would see any driver conflicts that you might if you ran an ati and nvidia board at the same time….

Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Laurie Pepper]

Thanks, whew. that made it easier. I just ordered the 3870. I’m getting the default ati with the mac pro. Now I’m just going to stop worrying about it. Thanks again. L.

https://straightlife.info

[David Bogie]

Rumors abound that the next revs of Adobe products and Apple suites for the Intel Macs will be OS10.5-only and will finally take advantage of Leopard’s abilities to shift the Core Media handlers directly to the GPU.

Rumors only but Motion is the only product in the FC Studio to use the GPU muscle. FCP has to get around to it eventually.

OpenGL for AE has always been a dream. Maybe CS4 will make it real.

Any of these rumors come to pass, it won’t matter what card you get today, you’ll need another when the products ship.

You should also know that, regardless how many displays your system can drive (mine can have 8 30″ Cinemas running), Final Cut can only be used with 2. Hooking a third display to any other PCI card disables a bunch of FxPlugs supplied by Motion. They will run in Motion but FCP will not process them (returns red “failed to render screen).
This is another reason to believe FCS3 will improve FCP’s GPU handshaking.

bogiesan

This is my standard sigfile so do not take it personally: “For crying out loud, read the freakin’ manual.”

[Laurie Pepper]

Thanks for the info, bogie.

I wish there were somewhere folks could go to actually compare working systems. I guess, sometimes at expos there’s a chance to really feel what it’s like — in the real world and before spending the money — to have more processors and different video cards in AE.

Interestingly, the benchmarks referred to above did talk about Motion but not about AE and about iMovie but not about FCP. That they DID leave out AE is a clue to all you say. The tech talk often leaves me puzzled, but those little speed graphs are very helpful. L.

https://straightlife.info