CS4 – which video card should I choose?

[William Sticht]

Clint,

I believe you are comparing apples to oranges here. The .896MB XFX GTX 260 Black, 666MHz GPU , 216 Cores, 2300GHz GDDR3 is a video display card and the Matrox is a video capture card. You could probably get both of these into your system. Not sure of any potential conflicts, but I am sure both sites have compatability pages to head off any issues.

Good luck,

Fritz

“If we couldn’t laugh, we would all go insane.” – Jimmy Buffett

[Tim Kolb]

If you’re looking for a display card, I’ve had excellent luck with NVIDIA based cards…

For video editing accelerator cards…I believe that Matrox is the last manufacturer left in the game. I use AJA Xena for I/O, but has no “RT” functionality beyond the base system it’s in.

The disadvantage to a proprietary card is that you use proprietary video codecs that go with the card in order to get the speed and responsiveness. The advantage to a card like the Matrox series of products is that you get the speed and responsiveness and usually a standard “video out” to use with a standard television monitor for color accuracy, etc.

If you’re self-contained in that you edit all your own stuff and it only leaves your shop after the project is complete, the proprietary codec isn’t a problem.

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

[Clint Milner]

Hi Guys,

Thanks for the help. I am the main guy here, and everything is done in-house here.

Seeing that one is to capture and the other is to assist in editing, do you guys think that they would play nicely together?

They both are matched with CS4, is this a common practice? Of course, my system will have enough power to run them.

Thanks,
Clint

[Dave Friend]

Clint,

With the Matrox RT.X2 you will want a very good graphics card because the X2 makes heavy use of the graphics card for certain effects/functions.

If you use After Effects at all you will enjoy a really powerful graphics card. I know nothing about the card you mention but it look very capable. Like Tim I have had good luck with Nvidia based cards. Try to compare the GX graphics card with those approved by Matrox for use with the RT.X2. If the one you are looking at comes from the lineage of an approved card your odds are better that everything will play nice.

Dave