Re: best video card?

I know this has probably been asked and answered a thousand times here but...what's the best video card to run Motion with (and is the next must have card right around the corner)? The next question being, should I wait for it?

(Dual 2 G5, 2 soon to be 4GB of Ram)

- Ken

the X800 from ATI is the best I think
then the 6800's from nVidia
then the 9800's from ATI
the 9600's from ATI and the 5200's from nVidia are at the bottom

atleast thats what I think



David at Movies Rock in Toronto
[www.tofcpug.com]

Both the nVidia 6800 and ATI 800XT are best of the bunch at the moment. The X800 is smaller, easier to install, doesn't eat up a second slot, and superb all round, but won't run 2 30" monitors. The 6800 will run 2 * 30" monitor, but you loose a slot, so if you're trying to run say, Decklink, fibre card etc., you've only got one spare slot, and using the 6800 will make you loose that spare slot. That might not be an issue for you, but it's worth considering.

Graeme



[www.nattress.com] - Plugins for FCP-X

Ken,

[www.apple.com]

Graeme's right about the "losing a slot" issue. If you don't NEED a 30" monitor (2 - 23"ers is spectacular IMHO), the ATI Radeon X800 XT Mac Edition is the best for Motion at this point in time.

Who knows what's around the corner?

- Joey

Ken,
I may be preaching to the choir, but don't forget that Motion is relying on more than just the video card to make magic. The processor speed and RAM are also very important to the program. Before picking up a 2.7 G5, I was able to ran Motion on a Dual 1.25 G4, 2 GB Ram, Mac Special Edition 9800 and still was able to get things done. Having a G5 with a recommended card to run Motion will be fine, but fill that baby up with RAM. I believe Motion 2 can make use of 8GB of RAM. Hello Crucial.com. I would opt for the X800 to save the slot and we really don't need to be running two monitors with Motion open in the first place. Regardless of the video card strength performance will suffer with two monitors juicing out pixels.

I will like to get my G5 2.3 from Apple with the video card built in it... So my options are the ATI 9650 and the nVidea 6800, so I am thinking on getting the nVidea 6800 as they don't offer the ATI X800.

So the question is, Nvidia 6800 better then X800 performance wise? I really don't care about loosing the slot. I am looking at getting the best performance and best for my money. I like to get everything from Apple as they would replace anything that goes wrong under the 3year extended warranty.

Thanks.

I don't know about "Best performance for the money"... I have never paid (nor would I pay) $600 for a video card. IMHO, the other 256 meg cards have gotten great reviews from all the artists I have spoken to about it.

- Joey

ATI Radeon X800 XT Mac Edition versus GeForce 6800 Ultra and Others:

[barefeats.com]

Howdy from chilly Finland.

I have a question regarding ATI X800 256MB: Do I need to do more than just install the card and upgrade drivers & ROM?

I just installed one to my system (G5 dual 2G, 4GB RAM, MEDEA RAID, AJA i/o, FCP 4.5, Motion 1.01, os 10.3.9) and notice hardly ANY improvement to Motion. I ran a few simple text&particle tests with the old card (9600 Pro 64MB), installed the X800, and... It was the same. RT hung around 12 fps in Motion.

And for Motion: After a few minutes, sometimes in a matter of seconds, Motion gets, well, slow. It practically freezes (shouldn't be THAT cold in Finland), and after that, usually crashes. 15 times last night while I was working with titles.
I used an uncompressed clip for general timing, then removed the clip from the project altogether, and after a while... Tar! Frozen OJ! You name it.

LAFCPUG has a great "Troubleshooting FCP" page by Larry Jordan. Anything in the making for Motion? I heard someone say that upgrading to Tiger will dramatically improve Motion's performance andd stability. Really really?

Any comments are welcomed. br...jb