The connection between rendering and graphic card.

[Matt Doe]

Just picked up a new Mac Pro myself, with the ATI x1900xt 512 mb card, for the minimal price of the upgrade, $250 I believe, if price is not much of a concern you might as well get the better card. I cannot say whether my render speeds are faster because of the card, I am coming from a G4 powerbook so everything is lightning quick for me. But I say if you can afford the extra price of the upgrade, you might as well, especially if you think you may do any work inside of motion. I was able to put atleast 10-15 particle emitters on screen and running within motion and the machine hiccuped for a few seconds and then played everything at once at a full 30 fps, so I think the card is a great upgrade.

[Michael Bloodgood]

Graphic cards use active-matrix and floating-point operation processing which basically translates to they are only used for realtime operations like editing and the FX plugins, during render, that actually use the firmware built into the card to process the data.

That being said, if you use an aquisition card, like Kona, then that setup is far faster in the graphics processing than any other card that you can throw in there. However, the stock card is unable to drive two 30″ screens so it really depends on your integration. If there are a good number of effects in your projects, then the 1900 or the FX are really worth it. Otherwise, render times really won’t be affected.

Michael Bloodgood
Senior Editor, OTD Productions

Ah yes, the laser fields