OT: Best Graphics card for Vegas?

2G wrote on 9/8/2010, 1:15 PM

My NVidia card is acting up and looks like it may be failing soon. So I'm going to probably be in the market for a replacement.

I would like recommendations on the best video card with dual monitor support for use with Vegas. First question, is there any card with a GPU that Vegas will utilize for render assist? Of is render assist completely off the table?

I am not a gamer. So I haven't spent much time keeping up with the super high powered graphics cards that are popular for gaming. I'm not looking for power for the sake of power unless it's going to help with with my editing workflow. But I want the best card for:

1) Screen resolution
2) Allow color calibration for the secondary monitor
3) Render assist if possible

Recommendations? (Specific models or specs)

Thanks.

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Comments

JohnnyRoy wrote on 9/22/2010, 5:53 AM

> What worries me is the choice in outputs, DVI, HDMI or Display Port. Obviously it has to marry up with the monitors but hells bells, if I decide to upgrade my monitors at some time after I upgrade the video card I'll not be too happy if I've also got to fork out another couple of thousand dollars on the exact same video card with different connections.

Go for the Display Port. A Display Port to DVI adapter is about $20. Everyone I know who has the new MacBook Pro's use them and they work fine.

~jr

JohnnyRoy wrote on 9/22/2010, 6:03 AM

> Is the difference between the two cards mentioned worth $650?

That is the million dollar question that will never be answered. The nVidia guys will tell you about how much better the Quadro drivers are and you get better support, and they are tuned for the applications, etc. but at the hardware level, they are practically the same card. I soft-modded one of my older nVidia GeForce cards into a Quadro 1700 and it worked great. They have since patched the soft-mod hole in recent card designs but that just goes to show you that you are paying a whole lot more for the same hardware with better drivers.

So far... I have not justified the extra price to myself. Since Vegas doesn't require a Quadro card like Adobe does, I would love to see side-by-side comparisons of Quadro vs GeForce for Vegas GPU rendering on the same chipset.

~jr

Jay Gladwell wrote on 9/22/2010, 6:48 AM

Thanks, Johnny. You pretty well confirmed my suspicion.

megabit wrote on 9/22/2010, 7:33 AM

As I said in my post - if Vegas Pro 10 implements CUDA in a similar (i.e. not scalable) way to for instance PowerDirector, a GeForce line card will probably be enough.

I'm myself a slightly "special" case, as apart from video, I'm dealing professionally with CAE so the Quadro 4000 is in fact a good common platform for both.

Jeff9329 wrote on 9/22/2010, 2:39 PM

Piotr:

I use AutoCAD 2000 (for backwards compatability) and 2010 to prepare and edit 2D A&E drawings. For me, I have found all the recent NVIDIA gaming variety cards to have excellent performance.

The test here:
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/nvidia-quadro-5000_7.html#sect1
would seem to show the Quadro 5000 way above the GTX470 (a super fast card). However, in 2D AutoCAD, I dont see how there could be an improvement. For that matter, I use AutoCAD every day and I dont even know what the "hidden" and "conceptual" tests they refer to are.

Anyway, the Quadro 4000 would be an excellent card except for the steep price. I went with GTX