what is the latest dual Color/Davinci workstation build advice?

[Sean Kapleton]

well right of course that is the first thing we did but heard mixed things about ATI I thought to check what the consensus was – seems that not using ati won’t effect color’s performance and runs way better with resolve?

[Peter Chamberlain]

Resolve 8 supports OpenCL so its you can use the latest MacBookPro and iMac however the deep CUDA processing that Resolve uses in the multi core GPUs is recommended for performance users which is why we recommend Quadro 4000 in the MacPro’s.
Peter

[Sean Kapleton]

Ok great thank you Peter.

Since they already have the 120 i think getting a 285 makes sense.

cheers

sean

[Alex Gerulaitis]

[Joseph Mastantuono] “Why smoke, which I think is built on cuda as well, doesn’t support the 285/470 is a bit baffling.”

Hardware OpenGL is the name of the game for Smoke and many other Autodesk apps. I don’t believe Cuda architecture is used in those. This is why you don’t see any GeForce cards on their system recommendations.

Alex (DV411)

[Eric Fiegehen]

Alex,

CUDA is used in Autodesk 3ds Max, Maya, and a few other Autodesk applications. Even though Maya doesn’t support iray the way 3ds Max does, it uses a CUDA driver for dedicated hardware acceleration, meaning a 2nd GPU is required for many processes. Seems like Smoke is going in this direction, but the number of GPU-accelerated processes is limited at this time, even with the new release.

Eric F

[Alex Gerulaitis]

[Eric Fiegehen] “CUDA is used in Autodesk 3ds Max, Maya, and a few other Autodesk applications”

By these applications directly or by 3rd party plugins? If the latter, shouldn’t there be a qualifier added to the above sentence, such as “Maya does not use Cuda directly, while some 3rd party plugins do”?

(E.g. isn’t iray technically a 3rd party product?)

Alex (DV411)

[Eric Fiegehen]

Alex – Maya 2012 uses CUDA for its Viewport 2.0 feature. Mental Images iray is integrated into 3ds Max 2012, and features multi-GPU support for physically-based rendering.

Eric

[Alex Gerulaitis]

Thanks Eric, I stand corrected.

[Chad Terpstra]

Question about power: I’m looking to get a GTX 470 but have read it needs a lot of power.

Right now I have the ATI 5870. Will the built-in MP power supply handle these two or am I going to need to sell this and get a GT 120 for GUI and the GTX 470 for Resolve? (I have the 5,1 MP)

What is everyone doing for power needs if you’re not using an external PCIe extender? Many thanks!

[Alex Gerulaitis]

[Chad Terpstra] “Right now I have the ATI 5870. Will the built-in MP power supply handle these two or am I going to need to sell this and get a GT 120 for GUI and the GTX 470 for Resolve? (I have the 5,1 MP)”

5870: peak power 188W; GTX 470 – 215W. Apple allows a max of 300W for all PCIe cards, i.e. these two cards will overdraw the PSU under load. Looks like you’d need to replace the 5870 with a GT120 to be on a safe side.

Alex (DV411)