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Motion video card advice
I will be buying a new Mac Pro and want to get the right video card for Motion. The current options for a better card than the stock Radeon 2600 are the NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT and NVIDIA Quadro FX 5600 which are available as BTO and the Radeon 1900XT which has to be ordered separately. I looked at barefeats.com which tested the 1900 and the 8800. They said that while the 8800 generally outperformed the 1900 for games the 1900 was about twice as fast as the 8800 in rendering RAM previews in Motion. They also did not recommend the 5600 as it has no better performance than the 8800 for $2,650 more, although it does have 3x the VRAM.
My questions:
1) Do you regularly run out of VRAM with Motion? If so, I might consider the 5600 anyway despite the high price.
2) Would the 5600 also regularly run out of VRAM? In that case, I might get the 8800 now and save my bucks for a faster video card in the future.
3) Other than RAM previews has anyone noticed a performance difference between the 1900 and XT? And does the 8800 have the same overheating problem as the 1900?I really appreciate your advice. While there are reviews of these cards for gaming and 3D animation, I have been able to find very little about how well they work with Motion. There has been some talk in this forum but nothing about the 5600.
BTW, I will be using the card to drive 2×30″ displays.
Chris Paul
POV -
1 Reply
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You may run into some problems driving two 30-inchers with just the one card. It’s going to half the cards RAM between the two monitors leaving precious little left for Motion. I run one 30″ ACD, and when Motion is pushed too hard (which seems to happen very quickly on my X1900XT) you’ll find it extremely difficult to use even with RAM preview. Many times the only way I can actually get decent frame rates while working is to never use the “Best” view. Good luck!
Winston A. Cely
Editor/Owner | Della St. Media, LLC“If God could do the tricks we can do, He’d be a happy Man.” – Peter O’Toole – “The Stuntman”
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