Sorry to start a new graphics card thread, but I’m confused.

[Sonic 67]

Get any Fermi nVidia card – GTX480, GTX670… to work with the MainConcept encoders.

Personally I have a GTX480 modded in Quadro6000 (less memory but more cores) and I cannot max it’s utilization out with a six core i7 (I suspect that my HDD in RAID 1 is not fast enough for it).
Also, a Quadro 4000 was probably expensive and not worth it if bought new three years ago, but now you can find on eon eBay for $200.

I guess ATI card would be fine too, but even if I had a faster card it would not help.
Lack of CUDA keeps me in nVidia court.

[Steve Rhoden]

“unfortunately I came away even more confused!”
That is because it is a confusing subject and sometimes a joke.

“of you professionals in this forum – what graphics card would you buy?”
NONE, For me personally i simply use the everyday off the shelf powerful
laptops. Im not speaking for everyone here, just my personal workflow, i
stay away from all the graphics card mess that it has become, i have had
enough of it. I am a happy trooper with this approach for tons of reasons that
are too many to be listed here.

Steve Rhoden (Cow Leader)
Film Maker & VFX Artist.
Owner of Filmex Creative Media.
Samples of my Work and Company can be seen here:
https://www.facebook.com/FilmexCreativeMedia

[Sonic 67]

[Steve Rhoden] “I am a happy trooper with this approach for tons of reasons that are too many to be listed here.”
I guess time is not money for you. You must be really happy… not to have a deadline breathing down on your neck.

OT: Personally I consider my time the most precious resource. Ultimately… is the only thing that money can’t buy. Not even if your name was Steve Jobs.

[Dave Osbun]

Radeon.

[John Rofrano]

[Brian Tallant] “I’m planning to build a computer, based mainly on John Rofrano’s build, which can be found here”

Not to go off topic but would you like to buy my computer? I’ll let you have it for a very reasonable price, Quadro 4000 and all. I’ve move to the Mac and I really have no need for it anymore. I think I’ve turned it on maybe 5 or 6 times in the last 6 months so it’s just sitting there unused. Contact me via my web site’s about page if you are interested, no worries if you still want to build your own (it can be fun). 😉

[Brian Tallant] “I guess what I’m asking all of you professionals in this forum is this – if you were to build a new computer right now, knowing that your primary software is going to be Sony and Adobe, what graphics card would you buy?”

There is no one card to buy. Sony uses OpenCL and Adobe uses CUDA and AMD cards excel at OpenCL but can’t do CUDA and NVIDIA cards only care about CUDA and are really poor at OpenCL (although they do support it so in that respect NVIDIA has the advantage).

I think that Adobe is now supporting OpenCL because the new Mac Pro’s (and most Mac’s) have AMD GPU’s so they are forced to. I would get an AMD Radeon R9 290x. It will perform well with Vegas Pro timeline editing. It will not, however, be used when rendering MainConcept AVC but that’s the only codec that is negatively affected. Whatever you buy (AMD or NVIDIA) it will work better with one program than the other. If you think you will be using Adobe more get an NVIDIA. My Quadro 4000 has performed very well with Vegas Pro and of course works great with Adobe too.

[Brian Tallant] “John himself used the NVDIA Quadro 4000…however, he has since decided it’s not worth buying”

Just to clarify, what I don’t recommend buying is “workstation class” graphics cards just for video editing. This doesn’t mean that workstation class graphics cards aren’t good for 3D or even After Effects. Just that straight video editing doesn’t benefit from them so you are paying a premium price for little to no benefit. You’d be better off with a consumer graphics card if all you are doing is editing video. Once again, it’s not that they don’t perform well for video editing, it’s just that consumer cards can perform just as good for a lot less money.

[Brian Tallant] “and now recommends AMD Radeon cards as the best option for Sony Vegas”

This is because Vegas Pro uses OpenCL for timeline playback GPU acceleration and AMD cards are better at OpenCL than NVIDIA cards. There have been lots of posts from people who buy the latest NVIDIA cards and are shocked that they their timeline playback hasn’t improved. My AMD Radeon HD 5870 has improved timeline playback significantly.

~jr

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

[Brian Tallant]

John, that’s a very unexpected and very interesting proposition! I would like to consider that.

But before I do, I want to follow up on your suggestion to get a Radeon R9 290x. I have two questions:

1) I use Photoshop in conjunction with just about every video project I do. I guess it’s hard to say which I use more, Vegas or Photoshop…they’re pretty much equal in that regard. You mention AMD cards don’t do CUDA. How would this negatively affect my ability to use Photoshop?

2) When I search NewEgg for Radeon R9 290x I get over 30 results! And from a number of different manufacturers. When I search for a specific model of NVIDIA card I get one result. What’s going on with Radeon cards and how do I know which of these versions to buy?

[Bob Peterson]

I may be out of touch, but I’m having trouble visualizing how Photoshop will benefit significantly from GPU on a video card. In Photoshop, you are working with one image at a time. You will not see any delay in rendering that single image, or a variety of adjustment layers applied to that image. Conversely, Vegas deals with 30 images per second (in my world) with all of their adjustment “layers”. There is no comparison. If there is a significant benefit to GPU, I think it comes on the Vegas side of your processing.

[John Rofrano]

[Brian Tallant] “You mention AMD cards don’t do CUDA. How would this negatively affect my ability to use Photoshop? “

According to this Adobe FAQ about Photoshop CS6:

“The Mercury Graphics Engine (MGE) …delivers near-instant results when editing with key tools such as Liquify, Warp, Lighting Effects, and the Oil Paint filter. … MGE is new to Photoshop CS6 and uses both the OpenGL and OpenCL frameworks. It does not use the proprietary CUDA framework from nVidia.

Your best bet is to get an AMD card because Photoshop CS6 (and I assume CC) supports OpenCL now.

[Brian Tallant] “2) When I search NewEgg for Radeon R9 290x I get over 30 results! And from a number of different manufacturers. When I search for a specific model of NVIDIA card I get one result. What’s going on with Radeon cards and how do I know which of these versions to buy?”

I’m not sure what you are referring to. I just searched Newegg for “NVIDIA GTX 760” and got 83 hits! NVIDIA and AMD create the reference design and then lots of manufacturers make the actual cards.

~jr

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

[John Rofrano]

Well… you did say you may be out of touch. 😉 Photoshop uses OpenGL and Open CL to render quite a few of it’s filters. In fact, one of the benchmarks used to measure GPU performance is the Photoshop Gaussian Blur which seems to be much quicker with more powerful GPU’s.

~jr

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

[Brian Tallant]

Oh, I didn’t realize that’s how it worked with graphics cards…remember, I’m new at this 🙂

I sent you an email concerning your offer, and in it I asked a question which I guess it might be okay to repeat here. If I end up building my computer I will follow your design (one change I will make is to use the ASUS P9X79 WS instead of PRO, because you said somewhere that if you had it to do over again you would use that motherboard to be able to use your case’s firewire port in front). I realize it’s not your job to design a PC for me, but do you have any idea if the Radeon R9 290X would be compatible with either your motherboard (if I purchase yours) or the one I’m considering? Or can you give me an idea of how to find out? Again, I have no experience with this, so even simple matters of whether or not certain parts fit together is new to me.