a big dillema

[woosh]

hi all ...
Im an art student, who found himself working as a video artist.
looking to buy a new video card. currently Im using a little out of date card- I work with Gforce 4, 128 mb.
I am not looking for improving gaming... Im explicitly looking for a video card
that will improve my editing and rendering and cache capabilities, at least as strong as the radeon 9800 pro but not an editing card for lods of cash. are there any cards out there...
your opinion will be appreciate

 

[spontayo]

I'm selling my MSI 9800 Pro for $80.

 

[Heyyou27]

Yeah, Geforce 6 and 7 series are better for HD.

 

[ikjadoon]

Hm... I don't think I can help, but this site might help:

http://www.tomshardware.com/2004/03/23/opengl/index.html

The X2-256t is based on the 9800XT. It retails about $500... If you want better than the 9800XT, maybe the X3-256. It is considerably faster, yet outrageously priced at $700. I don't mean to assume, but I think these might be too expensive. I mean, a 9800XT (not the FireGL X2-256t) retails about $200.

The Nvidia offering, the Quadro series, seem to be better. I honestly don't know much about professional GPUs, but the site above might help...

~Ibrahim~

 

[cleeve]

From one computer artist to another:

You will experience NO DIFFERENCE between various cards if you're using 2d tools like Photoshop or Video tools like Adobe Premiere.

Just pick the cheapest card you can with decent display quality. The 9800 PRO would be just fine.

The only time you need a heavy hitting card is for 3d work like CAD or visualization stuff, like 3dsMAX. Then a good 3d card is useful, like a 6600 GT or even a quadro.

But for video and 2d graphics, get the best cheap card you can find, like a 9200, X300, X1300, etc.

 

[woosh]

thanks all, i really appreciate your help
i think i will go ewith 9800pro

 

[fishquail]

Are you sure about that cleeve?
Ive heard that many new 2D apps like Premiere, after effects, Ultra 2, ect, are using GPU power to excelerete realtime previews and rendering... Not sure how much you get out of it, but ive heard thats true. Premiere Pro 2 has special video effects that are GPU accelerated. These effects seem to have some 3D aspect to them however.

 

[jeremy_pro]

IMO the X1300 is what you are looking for.

 

[cleeve]

Yes, premiere pro (even the first one) specifically will use a 3d card, but it's not the end of the world if you don't have one. Plus, I haven't noticed a difference in Premiere Pro using different 3d cards, low end and high end. So I'm not sure it takes advantage of more 3d power, or just a bare minimum.

And since there are many video editing tools out there, and Premiere Pro is the only one that requires 3d processing I know of (After Effects doesn't, either) a 9800 PRO should be just fine.

As someone mentioned above, the X1300 is a good choice, too... it has some nice video rendering (encoding) acceleration to boot.