Hardware Requirements Purchase

[Dave Osbun]

Just get the Quadro4000 card and enjoy the performance. Who in their right mind would run professional editing software on a system with an integrated GPU?

Now by doing the above doesn’t mean that they’re going to be problem free, since we don’t know what their problem is.

[Jason Leydon]

Well I agree with you there. Unfortunately there are limited funds so I am trying to make sure we can make do. I was quoting the following 3 cards:
K4000 – 768 CUDA
K2000 – 384 CUDA
K600 – 192 CUDA

There are a few computers but this will be added to just one for now and I am hoping some of the issues resolve themselves by doing this (what the issues are, I am not sure – I just know they run into performance issues). My job in this situation is to figure out what we can do to improve performance and before I started troubleshooting the issue I noticed that their video cards were not exactly designed for this.

Sample workstations:
E5700 3GHz + 4GB RAM and Onboard Video
Core i3 2100 3.1GHz + 4gb RAM with Radeon HD 6450 1GB
Core i5 2500K 3.3GHz + 8gb RAM with Geforce GTX 470 1.2GB (best so far)
Core i7 2.8GHz + 8gb RAM with Onboard Video

These are all running a suite of Sony software: Vegas Pro 12, ACID Pro 7, Sound Forge Pro

I am also looking at the M-Audio 2496 as a sound card option rather then onboard sound. There were complaints about audio issues when recording voices and to my knowledge this isn’t wise with an onboard card and not using a mic preamp.

[John Rofrano]

[Jason Leydon] “Sample workstations:
E5700 3GHz + 4GB RAM and Onboard Video
Core i3 2100 3.1GHz + 4gb RAM with Radeon HD 6450 1GB
Core i5 2500K 3.3GHz + 8gb RAM with Geforce GTX 470 1.2GB (best so far)
Core i7 2.8GHz + 8gb RAM with Onboard Video”

Wow, you’ve got very little to work with.

I’d say forget video cards and upgrade some of those processors. The E5700 is ancient. It’s the old Dual Core before Intel came out with Core 2 Duo which was before Core i3. The Core i3 is woefully inadequate for video editing. It is designed for surfing the web and word processing. The Core i5 is really for multi-media consumption and not content creation but at least it’s a quad core which leaves the Core i7 as the only computer you have that was designed for video editing.

If you can only do one thing, put a GeForce GTX570 ($199) on the Core i7. I have a Quadro 4000 so I can’t say how the GTX 570 stacks up but it’s the card that Sony recommends/uses in their benchmarks. If you can also afford to put on on the Core i5 do that too.

The E5700 and Core i3 are just underpowered. There is nothing you are going to do to make them into video editing workstations. They just don’t have the horsepower and will always run slow (i.e., they are beyond GPU help because the CPU wouldn’t be able to keep up with the GPU).

BTW, when you buy a Quadro 4000 it says on the box that minimum requirements are a Core i7 so don’t buy it for anything less than that.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Thayalan Paramasawam]

Hi Sir (Mr.John Rofrano),

Sir in my system i use AMD FX 8350 and my motherboard support gtx and sli mode,can i use QUADRO cards and pls recommend me which QUADRO card is suitable for my motherboard.

My Spec.
Working Station 3) – Motherboard – Asus M5A99X-EVO,Processor – Amd FX 8350 4.0/4.2 GHZ,Ram – 16 GB,Graphic Card – Asus Gtx 650 1GB DDR 5,Blu Ray Writer – Plextor PX-B950SA,Operating System – Window 7 64 Bit and Editing Programe – Sony Vegas Pro 12.

Pls guide me on this matter.

Thank You
Thayalan Paramasawam

[John Rofrano]

Yes, you can use a Quadro with that motherboard. I find the Quadro K4000 to be the best combination of price and performance. One caviat is that Vegas doesn’t take full advantage of the new Kepler cards (K4000) and I have an older Fermi (40000) but I wouldn’t buy the older card unless you found it deeply discounted. The hope is that Sony will add full support for Kepler so buying a new card makes sense for the future.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Thayalan Paramasawam]

Thank You very much Mr.John Rofrano for the adivice……

[Jason Leydon]

Thanks for the advice. Would the GTX 570 really be recommended over something like a Quadro K600? I would think for the purpose that the K600 would fit better for the price point.

I completely understand the benefits of the 4000 but the price isn’t likely to happen.

[John Rofrano]

Well the K600 is 192 cuda cores while the GTX570 has 480 so the GTX has more power but the K600 has stabity. I just don’t think 192 cores of the K600 will make that much of a difference.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Jason Leydon]

How would a GeForce GT 640 2GB perform? 384 Cudas and I figured this would be an easy upgrade for machines with onboard. Better than the K600 and it lists for $89

[John Rofrano]

I’m not sure how the GT’s will perform and if you will see any benefit at all. I wouldn’t use anything less than a GTX but that’s me. I don’t have any data to support this but the GT series is a “budget” card.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com