GeForce 6800 Ultra anyone ?

[J]

yes it is faster
even though the ati xt and 6800 both 256 vram , the ati doesnt have the same pipe structure
using both cards in motion 1 and 2 i have seen better/quicker results from the 6800 ultra
both cards are a good choice
but i go 6800
at least for now
just wish it didnt take up 1 and a half slots

[Uli Plank]

Yes, I supposed it would be faster too.

But I’d like to know if it’s supporting 16-bit rendering, i.e. is it just about as fast in 16-bit as in 8-bit or significantly slower like the others?

Plus, does the 6800 support larger sizes than 2048 by 2048, i. e. can you import an image with at least one dimension larger than 2048 up to 4096 ?

It would be very kind if you could check this for me, it’s nearly impossible to get one of these cards here for testing purposes. If the two features I’d like to know about are supported by this card, it could be used for serious cinema work.

TIA,

Uli

Author of “DVDs gestalten und produzieren”, a book on professional DVD-authoring in German.

[J]

While a fast CPU and plenty of RAM is helpful, Motion’s performance is mainly dependent on your graphics card. Things like behaviors and particles use the CPU for calculations, but all the filters, compositing and playback are GPU-based. Don’t scrimp on the GPU, if you can avoid it.

You have two serious choices for the GPU: the Radeon X850 and the Nvidia Geforce 6800GT. They are the same price. In terms of overall horsepower, they are comparable. They both have 256MB of graphics memory. The Nvidia card has two advantages, however:

1. The 6800GT can draw images up to 4K (4096×4096). The Radeon is limited to 2K (2048×2048). While you may not being doing projects at >2K, you will find yourself needing to use images that size (like from any recent digital camera). HD footage can easily get grown to >2K in size.

2. The 6800GT has hardware-accelerated 16-bit rendering. The 16-bit rendering on ATI is quite slow, but the Nvidia board runs 16-bit nearly as fast as it runs 8-bit.

I don’t work for Nvidia, but I see people being quick to plug the X850 — which is a great card — but why not go for the card that does more for the same price? The images we work with get bigger all the time, so why be stuck at the 2K limit?

Either way, you definitely want more GPU muscle than the stock card in the G5. Good luck with your purchase and have fun!

this was posted earlier by another helpful poster

[Doyle Rockwell]

Hey Uli,

As Visual posted, the 6800s (Ultra and GT) can draw textures up to 4096×4096, so you’re good to go. And the 16-bit is a lot faster than on an ATI GPU, but not quite as fast as 8-bit. Hope this helps.

[Uli Plank]

Yes, that helps indeed. Thanks to both of you!

Uli

Author of “DVDs gestalten und produzieren”, a book on professional DVD-authoring in German.