Hardware question - Intel 17 third gen HD graphics

vicmilt wrote on 9/1/2012, 12:08 PM

At the suggestion of my comrades here - I have purchased a new box featuring i7, 16gig ram, NO striped drives, second drive 7200 Seagate Barracuda.

Question 1 - anything else?
Question 2 - Intel HD Graphics 4000 vs dedicated Nvidia 620 card?

Your thoughts (if you actually know this stuff - I can guess, too :>)) )

Comments

john_dennis wrote on 9/1/2012, 2:49 PM

Stop, don't pass go, don't collect $200! This is a must read with this chipset.

I have the i7-3770k and have decided to give the internal graphics a try for a while. It looks and works OK but there is currently no rendering assistance in Vegas Pro 11 using that hardware. I suspect over time there might be support for OpenCL on the hardware. There is also currently no support for Intel's Quick Sync but there are other applications that can get it done if you want to use it.

My particular motherboard allows the use of both the HD4000 graphics and a plug-in card. Since I render to the Sony AVC codec frequently, I'll likely buy an nvidia card (570, etc.) or move the lowly GTS450 from my old machine to improve render times. I've been somewhat focused on other things right now so I haven't spent as much time as I need to on the subject.

Tim20 wrote on 9/2/2012, 5:08 AM

An i7 with graphics installed in a newer ASUS motherboard can take advantage of Virtu MVP software technology which will boost performance of certain video cards. The GTX 570 being one of them. I have found that GPU accl in Vegas can cause crashes with certain codecs AND it is occasionally slower rendering than the i7 can do. The other day I just compared a 10 minute video render to WMV, and the i7 was 3 times faster than the GPU accl.

diverG wrote on 9/2/2012, 2:23 PM

Tim20
You may be able to get the benefits of QuickSync without using Virtu. If you have onboard graphics ie Z68,77,78 based MB and say a nVidia graphics card you connect both monitors to the nVidia card. Now most monitors have multi inputs eg DVI, HDMI or vga. The trick is to connect one monitor to both the graphics card and the onboard graphics. The onboard graphics 'monitor' simply fools the onboard graphics into thinking it is in use. Use bios to set igpu on. Occasionally you may get a ‘hang’ because the dummy onboard graphics screen is displaying a message that requires a user response. The safest way is to use a third monitor. I’ve not experienced a hang but have read about it. It is easy however, to switch the onboard graphics monitor input to active and clear the message.

Have fun.

Tim20 wrote on 9/2/2012, 3:20 PM

Interesting. Yes my monitors have DVi/VGA. I will have to look into that. Thanks