Which GCard for Video Editing?

lconvoy

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Aug 28, 2003
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I am buying a new system and need to decide amongst graphics cards. I am not interested in gaming at all but want to be able to do extensive VIDEO EDITING. Are there major performance differences amongst cards re: video editing?

The system I am eyeing features a GeForce FX5600 with 256mb. For about the same price I can have a choice of this or GF4 Ti4800, Radeon 9600 Pro, Gainward FX5600 (256), or MSI FX5600. Alternatively, I can save $80-$100 by downgrading to any of the following ASUS V9520(128), Radeon 9000 Pro, Gainward FX5200 (256), or MSI FX5200.

What are people's thoughts?
 

cleeve

Illustrious
If you never play games, then even the FX5600 is overkill.

3d features are completely useless in video editing.
All a video card is going to give you for video editing is a crisp display, and Ati radeons are quite a bit better than Nvidia Geforces for this type of application.

Downgrade to the Radeon 9000 PRO.

And if you're serious about video editing, get a used Matrox RT2000 off of ebay for under $300 bucks. It is a very cheap but very fast prosumer capture/editing card that will allow you to edit video in real time like a professional video editing system.
Can't be beat for the price. Comes with a video card too, so you can sell your 9000 PRO and get some money back, even. :)


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Radeon 9500 (modded to PRO w/8 pixel pipelines)
AMD AthlonXP 2000+
3dMark03: 3529
 
Ditto Cleeve.

The Matroxes will give you GREAT visual quality and their Editiing cards are VERY good (although new they are about $1000, so if you can grab one off e-bay for an older model at a cheap price then it's a real solid choice). However if you don't NEED real-time, it's a little bit of overkill, but really if it's for the price you're talking about, overkill is just fine.



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ufo_warviper

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What about the AIW 9800 Pro, don't AIWs provide some additional video editing features?

My OS features preemptive multitasking, a fully interactive command line, & support for 640K of RAM!
 

cleeve

Illustrious
All the AIW's provide is a capture card and a TV tuner.

Video editing is the same as it would be with any video card. When the 9700 came out they talked about using the pixel shader to speed up video rendering (which would have been MUCHO awesome) but as far as I know that never materialized.

The RT2000 is a dedicated video editing card for the prosumer market. Comparing video editing on an All-in-wonder to an RT2000 is like comparing 3d graphics on a Rage PRO to a Radeon 9800.

The Matrox is in a completely different league. Ati doesn't even offer a competing product.

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Radeon 9500 (modded to PRO w/8 pixel pipelines)
AMD AthlonXP 2000+
3dMark03: 3529
 

TheRod

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People gives you good advoce on this thread... If you want REALTIME go with a dedicated product... If no real time needed, get a cheap Radeon and spend more money on HDD/RAM/CPU. These will be your bottleneck, not the video card. Compressing and converting video stream is hard on RAM/CPU/HDD, not on graphic card.

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lconvoy

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This seems to be an issue of real-time editing vs. rendering. Does anyone know of other cards out there that offer real-time editing? Preferably for under $500.