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bentoon · Nov 2, 2005, 10:08 AM

I want to go for a Quad...

But,

I will be doing a lot of HD video, and a friend said I would be better off
to get a great Video card (not that many are made for the Pcie, but a number ae there for the pciX)
with a lot of Memory in an older Dual 2.5 would be the way to go
Since the Intel Trans begins 07

Thoughts?

J

mduell · Nov 2, 2005, 10:16 AM

Do you mean video card as in the card you connect your display to, or video card as in some card that allows you to capture/export video from/to a camera?

If you mean the former, then there aren't any good video cards for PCI-X, but the will be a very good one for PCIe in a couple months.
If you mean the latter, I have no idea *cue bunny/pancake*.

bentoon · Nov 2, 2005, 10:21 AM

Originally Posted by mduell

Do you mean video card as in the card you connect your display to, or video card as in some card that allows you to capture/export video from/to a camera?

If you mean the former, then there aren't any good video cards for PCI-X, but the will be a very good one for PCIe in a couple months.
If you mean the latter, I have no idea *cue bunny/pancake*.

I meant the Latter , for importing, working with HD and exporting...
Cue Bunny/ Pancake?

jamil5454 · Nov 2, 2005, 10:35 AM

http://aja.com/products_kona.html

The new PowerMacs were released a few weeks ago, and these people already have a PCIe video capture card for them. Just wait a little longer and we'll start to see more. Go for the Quad.

mduell · Nov 2, 2005, 11:49 AM

Originally Posted by bentoon

I meant the Latter , for importing, working with HD and exporting...
Cue Bunny/ Pancake?

Blackmagic Design also has a Mac-compatible PCIe HD video card.

Bunny/Pancake

bentoon · Nov 2, 2005, 02:30 PM

Great
The Blck Magic and Kona cards look great - if I get these later on, will I ba able to use the power of both cards by default? Can my work acces both or will one "replace" the other?

Bunny Pancake -- of course...What was I thinking...

Thanks,
J

hmurchison2001 · Nov 3, 2005, 11:15 AM

Bentooon

You'll only use one card. They aren't cheap but they'll handle damn near anything you thorw at them. I'd reccommend the AJA card because they have the closest relationship with Apple and their products rock.

If you're using Final Cut Pro for your app try and get the nvidia 7800 card. Motion and the new Magic Bullet Suite (making your video look more like Filmy goodness) both use the GPU for nigh realtime processing.

Look to move to an external RAID eventually for HD video. Do not futz around with FW800 enclosures. Look at SCSI or SATA based enclosures that can do more than 200MBps writes with 4 or 5 drives.

Get gobs of memory from a 3rd party. THe Quads support ECC memory or Non ECC but you'll have to stick with all ECC or all non ECC. ECC memory corrects small errors in memory that could be benefitial to you if you put in gobs of it.

PCI Express is much faster than PCI-X. PCI Express has duplex 4GBps throughput. Today you're only seeing the surface scratched regarding PCI Express. WHen developers get the hang out of optimizing their drivers you'll see performance improve quickly.

bentoon · Nov 3, 2005, 11:38 AM

Originally Posted by hmurchison2001

Bentooon

You'll only use one card. They aren't cheap but they'll handle damn near anything you thorw at them. I'd reccommend the AJA card because they have the closest relationship with Apple and their products rock.

If you're using Final Cut Pro for your app try and get the nvidia 7800 card. Motion and the new Magic Bullet Suite (making your video look more like Filmy goodness) both use the GPU for nigh realtime processing.

Look to move to an external RAID eventually for HD video. Do not futz around with FW800 enclosures. Look at SCSI or SATA based enclosures that can do more than 200MBps writes with 4 or 5 drives.

Get gobs of memory from a 3rd party. THe Quads support ECC memory or Non ECC but you'll have to stick with all ECC or all non ECC. ECC memory corrects small errors in memory that could be benefitial to you if you put in gobs of it.

PCI Express is much faster than PCI-X. PCI Express has duplex 4GBps throughput. Today you're only seeing the surface scratched regarding PCI Express. WHen developers get the hang out of optimizing their drivers you'll see performance improve quickly.

M. Murchison,
Thank You !
That is a wealth of info. and I appreciate it very much.
( & yes, Magic Bullet Rocks...)

J

mduell · Nov 3, 2005, 11:56 AM

Originally Posted by hmurchison2001

PCI Express is much faster than PCI-X. PCI Express has duplex 4GBps throughput. Today you're only seeing the surface scratched regarding PCI Express. WHen developers get the hang out of optimizing their drivers you'll see performance improve quickly.

PCIe gives you 4GBps in a 16x slot, which the PowerMac only has one of (and it's taken by your video card). So you get 1-2GBps (4x or 8x) for your I/O cards.

I'll second the recommendation for external SATA (either SATA externally or e.SATA) instead of Firewire; despite being much more expensive SCSI doesn't offer any significant advantages.

OreoCookie · Nov 3, 2005, 12:41 PM

I think you'll benefit much more from two additional cpu cores. Encoding won't be faster with a faster graphics card, for instance.

mduell · Nov 3, 2005, 02:12 PM

Originally Posted by OreoCookie

I think you'll benefit much more from two additional cpu cores. Encoding won't be faster with a faster graphics card, for instance.

Unless ATi ports their GPU-accelerated video encoding to the Mac.
For the time being, the video card can only improve the realtime rendering speed, while the CPU handles encoding. Encoding can be done overnight (or on a cheap cluster of Mac minis

), whereas realtime rendering cannot, so I think a faster video card is important for the actual editing/compositing work.

hmurchison2001 · Nov 3, 2005, 02:16 PM

I'd actually move the graphics card to a PCIe 8x slot. I still don't believe the current cards saturate a 8x bus because the trend is to keep increasing the local frame buffers. We're at 512mb and rising now.

I'd slap the Kona PCIe card in the 16x slot and toss the graphics in a 8x and see how that performs.

Quads would surely rock for compressing your video.

mduell · Nov 3, 2005, 03:08 PM

Originally Posted by hmurchison2001

I'd actually move the graphics card to a PCIe 8x slot. I still don't believe the current cards saturate a 8x bus because the trend is to keep increasing the local frame buffers. We're at 512mb and rising now.

I'd slap the Kona PCIe card in the 16x slot and toss the graphics in a 8x and see how that performs.

Both the AJA Kona and Blackmagic cards are only 4x PCIe, so putting them in an 8x or 16x slot won't help; 1GBps/8Gbps is quite enough for any reasonable bitrate of HD video.

OreoCookie · Nov 3, 2005, 05:04 PM

Originally Posted by mduell

Unless ATi ports their GPU-accelerated video encoding to the Mac.
For the time being, the video card can only improve the realtime rendering speed, while the CPU handles encoding. Encoding can be done overnight (or on a cheap cluster of Mac minis

), whereas realtime rendering cannot, so I think a faster video card is important for the actual editing/compositing work.

Since the current line-up only has nVidia cards, this is not so relevant. However, nVidia also has a similar technique available on Windows, at least for decoding. It helps tremendously when decoding h264-encoded hdtv movies.

Also, you can upgrade a video card later, if needed. So a dual dual-core Mac with a 6600 (non-LE) sounds like a good idea. Or if you can shell out the additional $350 or so, you can get the 7800 and be done with it.

tooki · Nov 3, 2005, 06:43 PM

[renamed thread title to correct spellings for clarity --tooki]

Footy · Nov 3, 2005, 11:16 PM

OK I posted this question in the Games Forum last night but it was deleted....

Anyone heard anything at all about the ATI PCIe x1800 card ? tooki?

Seems like they'd like to get it out the door pretty soon. Absolutely no info yet.

Sorry I know... off topic.

mduell · Nov 4, 2005, 03:30 AM

Originally Posted by Footy

Anyone heard anything at all about the ATI PCIe x1800 card ? tooki?

Seems like they'd like to get it out the door pretty soon. Absolutely no info yet.

Supplies of the X1800 XT chip for the PC are rather constrained, while the 7800GTX is in ample supply... I think an upgrade from 7800GT to GTX (or the upcoming higher clocked 512MB 7800 card) is more likely than seeing X1800XT. Perhaps we'll see X1800 XL in a few months, but that doesn't offer much of a performance difference from the 7800GT.

Footy · Nov 4, 2005, 11:49 AM

Thanks for the info mduell.

I actually perfer ATI because of the ATI control panel mostly, for those games that don't have Anti Aliasing build in I can still get AA up and running.

nerd · Nov 9, 2005, 12:12 AM

We just got a new Leitch Nexio HD server where I work so I'm pushing for a Kona card to go with a new Quad G5 were going to buy. I see no problems with the LH card right now. As long as we can see at least 1 text track, one graphics overlay and a transition in real time then it's plenty of speed for us. We're a TV station, not much content is longer then 30 seconds. Anyways, FCP was doing realtime before Core Video came out so I would think you would see more speed from the Quad G5. ??

Can anyone comment on what exactly the Kona card's HDV and DVCProHD Acceleration does?

Brad