Best card for Avid xpress pro HD. Is it a quadro?

[ripvanmarlowe]

Hi, I recently bought Avid Xpress Pro HD and am in the process of building a new PC to try and get the best out of it. Now on Avid's website : http://www.avid.com/products/xpresspro/specs.asp
they recommend the nvidia quadro range but i've read so much about them just being the same cards as 6800's and 7800's i'm wondering is it worth all the extra cash you'd pay? People are saying that editing is just a 2d operation and so any decent gaming card will be just fine as long as its got a fast cpu to go with it, can anyone tell me if this is the case (coz i love my gaming too! ).

For example do you think a geforce 7800GT would do the job just as well as a Quadro fx3450?

I'm not bothered about how much it costs i just want to get the best performance out of the app (although i'm not planning on spending more than £300!/$550). I'm planning to run it with an X2 4800, 2 gigs of corsair ect . if anyone could suggest what they think might be a good choice then any feedback would really be appreciated. If anyones running xpress pro HD maybe you could let me know what you've got powering it? Thanks everyone!

 

[theaxemaster]

Go check out the wikipedia article on the Quadro series. Looks like similar cores but different utilizations on the drivers to maximize benefit in CAD and other things like that. Plus you get lots of Dual-link DVI action if you're interested in big displays.

 

[MarkG]

Best is any supported card, because then you can hassle them if it doesn't work.

Second-best is any nvidia card, but you need the right drivers. I believe that Avid won't work with 80-series drivers prior to 84.21.

Works OK with my 7800GS and the latest beta drivers (84.43?).

 

[ripvanmarlowe]

yeah i checked out the wikipedia article (thanks axemaster) which led me to a PNY comparison article and all it seemed to talk about was autocad and maya etc - all 3d applications but hardly any mention of video editing and the avid programs they did use to test the quadro cards on were softimage and xsi which are Avid's 3d design programs. i was looking on ebuyer where they're selling a geforce 7900GT with 512 memory for under £300 and i'd be getting more memory bandwidth than a fx 3450 and nearly the same fill rates (i presume this is good!?) + it's got dual link dvi for my 2 X-black 19 inchers! so i'm thinking go for a good compromise, get rock solid gaming and get good performance with Avid? I'm not a pro editor (yet!) and i'm just using it for training basically to learn the tools but obviously it would be nice to not have to wait a minute each time i have to render something. Thanks for the replies guys so i'm thinking of going with the geforce model. any objections speak now or forever hold your peace! Very exciting!

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

Wise choice.

No objections, just to allay your fears, the Quadro recommendation is more of a certification thing (for professionals who require ISO certification, etc) than a requirement, it'll work just fine on Geforce and Radeon cards. The GF7900GT though is a great card, and you should get alot out of it, especially if you planned on even light gaming as well.

Enjoy!

 

[MarkG]

it'll work just fine on Geforce and Radeon cards.

Unless something's changed in the last couple of months, Avid don't support ATI cards at all: 3D effects are disabled unless you have an nvidia card.

Not that I've ever used any of the 3D effects anyway .

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

Unless something's changed in the last couple of months, Avid don't support ATI cards at all: 3D effects are disabled unless you have an nvidia card.

Well not according to their own literature which has FireGL and Radeon and Xseries products amojnst their support;

http://www.avid.com/products/xpresspro/specs.asp
http://www.avid.com/products/xpressStudio/3d/specs.asp

So I'm not sure if that's still the case, all they mention is tested on and certified 'avid stations' for the Quadros over the FireGLs.

Not that I've ever used any of the 3D effects anyway .

And while I wouldn't recommend that route either, if he wants all in one then that's something to consider, so definitely worth a trip to their forums to be sure.