Graphics Card Recommendations

[David Bogie]

We see this question weekly so scroll down a few dozen pages and you will see many similar inquiries.

See the Adobe marketing hype pages for advice on cards.
OpenGL is only good for previewing at the moment.
CS4 is going to change a few things so don’t buy anything based on CS3.

bogiesan

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

[Mark Volzer]

Thanks, I looked at all of the recent posts, but I don’t see anything about whether or not having dual cards would help or not.

[Kevin Camp]

i can’t speak for opengl in cs4, but in prior versions of ae the graphics card will help very little no matter how many you have…

now for your 3d app, it may be different… having a graphics card for each monitor will allow an application to use all the resources of that card to accelerate one display. if you have 2 displays plugged into one card, then the resources get split between the displays. in addition, in the pc world you have sli, where you can have 2 cards joined together for one display, giving you double the power (although not double the vram).

but for ae cs3 and earlier (the vote is still out on cs4), all that power will more or less go to waste.

you should be able to find which cards work better for your 3d software, lots of places do benchmark testing of hardware and software, just google what you are looking for.

Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Mark Volzer]

Thanks for the help. I’ll check out some of those benchmarks.

[David Bogie]

Not much, no.
The power of the GPU is not harnessing the present iteration of AE. No one knows what will happen with CS4 as it ships and is updated.
INvest in cards appropriate to your applications other than AE.

bogiesan

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

[Alex Borisov]

İf you use 3d apps, you will need one nVidia Quadro FX Card. Never buy the GForce Cards, they are game cards not Vfx cards.

[Darby Edelen]

[Kevin Camp] “i can’t speak for opengl in cs4, but in prior versions of ae the graphics card will help very little no matter how many you have…”

OpenGL in CS4 has had some tweaks. It’s still not nearly as fully functional as it could (and someday will) be, but it has had some nice improvements. The newest effects are heavily GPU accelerated (Cartoon, Bilateral Blur, Turbulent Noise), although this is still mostly useful only for previews.

Also OpenGL acceleration is now extended through nested compositions as much as possible. In CS3 only the top level composition could take advantage of OpenGL acceleration and any nested compositions had to be CPU rendered. In CS4 any pre-comps are rendered under OpenGL when possible.

Adobe is definitely taking steps in the right direction. I’m especially excited about the possibilities of Pixel Bender Toolkit being used to develop GPU accelerated custom effects, which would represent a major shift in performance capability.

Darby Edelen

[Darby Edelen]

Wait for CS4 to sink in a bit is my advice. Things could change some.

Darby Edelen

[Mark Still]

I like the NVIDIA Quadro FX 3400. Good price and seems to work well for AE.