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Is a Quadro worth the moolah?
Hi,
I have searched the forum and found similar topics but nothing that really addressed my question fully. Would love some advice on the following:
We are putting together an upgrade for a suite at work, mainly used for compositing/editing with the adobe products. I’m fairly comfortable with most the specs, but wringing my hands over a couple of points.
Intel 6600 Quad Processor
4GB Ram
ASUS P5W DH Deluxe Motherboard
NVIDIA Quatro 570
XP Professional
3*300GB Drive (1 For System, 2 for Raid 0)To come in on budget, I can put the base model Quadro 570 card in or a mid-high range “gaming” card. The “gaming” card would save money (which could be used elsewhere), but I realise the Quadro is more customised towards the openGL that I would be using for After Effects Previews and also helps Premiere along.
The question is would the Quadro be worth it? I won’t use it for rendering, but if it it made for signifantly faster previews that would be valuable to us. Or should I just opt for a gaming card that supports openGL 2.0?
Second question, if XP 32bit is limited to 4GB ram, is it worth getting 64bit version and upping to 8GB? I understand there are quite a few driver issues with 32bit so perhaps I have answered my own question but some advice would be handy. Is the best option waiting for Vista64 and associated drivers to be ready?
Thanks heaps for any help.
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21 Replies
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[suspectTV] “Second question, if XP 32bit is limited to 4GB ram, is it worth getting 64bit version and upping to 8GB?”
If you’re going to be using CS3 on this computer then you should definitely consider getting more than 4GB of RAM, even under the 32-bit version of XP. If you enable multiprocessing in CS3 then each instance of AE can have access to up to 3GB of RAM (if you have the /3GB switch set).
As far as the graphics card is concerned, my personal opinion is that a Quadro would be a huge waste of money that could be better spent elsewhere (more RAM/HD space), but I suppose I’d be willing to let other people chime in on this as well =)
Darby Edelen
Designer
Left Coast Digital
Santa Cruz, CA -
Thanks for the quick response.
So with multiple cores, you can utilise over 4gb of RAM? I had no idea about that. Is this only After Effects that does this? (e.g. Photoshop etc?)
We are currently still with CS2, but will be looking at upgrading to get best use of the quad core chip.
Would you (or anyone else) have a suggestion on a suitable video card? From my research the main thing seems to be that it fully supports openGl 2.0 and is on Adobe’s reccomended list.
Thanks for your help.
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as far for ae use, get the cheaper card and spend that money on ram…
in my experience with cs3, the multicore render engine will exceed the opengl render speeds, so you are better off disabling opengl in favor of multiprocessing (you can’t use them both). i don’t even use opengl for interactions anymore.
also, with the new multiprocessing render engine, even a 32-bit os can use more ram, up to 3-4gb per core. it does this by running multiple renderers, as many a one for each core. so each renderer can use as much as 3-4gb of ram.
so for ae, take the ram over the graphics card.
Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
I, for one, concur.
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darby is just killing me on response time today…
:^)
Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
You guys are legends. Cheers. I had no idea about the multiprocessor/ram thing.
Does anyone have any recommendations about suitable cheaper graphics card?
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Wow, I had no idea about the multi core/RAM situation. That’s good to know.
I too am looking to buy a new computer soon.
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correct me if I’m wrong but …
XP32 can only “see” 3.5GB of Ram, so total usage of AE(4cores) will be 3.5GB.
XP64 can “see” 8GB Ram so it can adress 4x 2GB per core (=8GB).
That’s the reason why people switch to XP64, to use more than 3.5 GB.I only used Open-GL in AE 2 times when working on specific 2.5D animations, let’s say 2 out of 100 projects… and it worked great on a Game-Card but it doesn’t justify the money for a Quadro-card.
So save your money, buy an extra Hard disk for your Raid ! Disk throughput tends to be a bottleneck on a Quadcore when using lots of videolayers, especially in HD.I’m running a Quad6600, 8GB Ram, 3x500GB Raid0 and glad to have left XP32 for XP64 🙂
cya,
Jan
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[Jan Sherlink] “correct me if I’m wrong but …
XP32 can only “see” 3.5GB of Ram, so total usage of AE(4cores) will be 3.5GB.
XP64 can “see” 8GB Ram so it can adress 4x 2GB per core (=8GB).
That’s the reason why people switch to XP64, to use more than 3.5 GB. “My understanding is that each 32-bit processor can address up to 4GB of RAM and each 32-bit application can address up to 4GB of RAM (theoretically) but they are limited by the OS. In the case of running AE on a multiple processor/core system you have more than 1 processor available to address RAM and you have more than one instance of AE available to address RAM. So yes, I believe you are wrong… Of course, I’m no computer engineer =)
Darby Edelen
Designer
Left Coast Digital
Santa Cruz, CA -
Interesting…
I’ll simply chime in that I have moved the Quadro 4500 I had been using to the second machine (I run a QFX4500 and a QFX560 for 4 displays) and I use the power for other functions as well (Iridas runs on Quadro).
…so I’ll just stand here by myself and say that since I think the 4500 is worth it (when it was new it was around 2800 USD), I guess I’d say whatever they’re charging for the QFX570 probably is as well as the visual interface planes are handled faster than a gamer card as well…
Just for an opposing viewpoint…
Of course, all the RAM you can afford is always good, regardless of all other system parameters.
TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,Creative Cow Host,
Author/Trainer
http://www.focalpress.com
http://www.classondemand.net
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