Graphics Card advice for A Video Editing Ivy Build

Hi. I'm selecting components for an i7 ivy bridge build to use for FCPx video editing and also possibly After effects and Resolve Color Correction and am having trouble deciding on which NVIDA graphics card to get despite reading for days . Am thinking about a GTX 560 but am unsure how to tell which models are reference cards and which will be a future headache. EVGA seems to get good marks on reliability. Will a 2GB card like this give better performance for editing, or is that more for gaming?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814130683

Do any GTX 560 cards work out of the box or do all require tweaking?

Thanks!

I'd suggest waiting for the next release of OS X which should see full support for the 600-series of cards and Nvidia is rumoured to out the 660-series cards potentially later this month.

The 500-series cards will only give you 1024x768 OOB, so you'd have to install an enabler due to lacking device IDs. Apparently the 500-series cards will work better in the next release of OS X as well.

As for getting more memory, I'm not sure, it depends on several factors, but I don't think you'd gain much from it for video editing, as the GPU is only aiding in some specific tasks, it's not as if you're loading the video into the graphics card memory. It does seem like faster memory makes a difference on slower cards, as does a wider memory bus, if you have a look here http://www.studio1productions.com/Artic ... ereCS5.htm
Admittedly that's in Windows, but CUDA is CUDA and it shouldn't work any differently on a Mac.

Thanks so much! I guess I'll sit tight for a week or two till mountain lion is out.

thelostswede said:

I'd suggest waiting for the next release of OS X which should see full support for the 600-series of cards and Nvidia is rumoured to out the 660-series cards potentially later this month.

The 500-series cards will only give you 1024x768 OOB, so you'd have to install an enabler due to lacking device IDs. Apparently the 500-series cards will work better in the next release of OS X as well.

Click to expand...

Not the case. Numerous users across the forum and beyond are using 500-series NVidia cards at native resolution with full QE/CI/CL, myself included. The only fix needed to get these cards running flawlessly under Lion is the OpenCL-enabler patch found in Multibeast. That aside, the NVidia 6xx series of cards are actually significantly worse than the 5xx series when it comes to video editing and other GPU compute (CUDA/OpenCL) tasks, since the new line is geared almost exclusively for gaming performance. In other words, the 6xx cards are actually a downgrade from the 5xx cards for what the OP's intending to use it for.

OP: As someone who uses FCPX on a daily basis, I'll be the first to say that a powerful graphics chip makes a world of difference when it comes to editing. After upgrading from a 8600GT to a GTX 285 earlier this year, our render times have improved by a factor of four. FCPX and certainly Resolve are designed from the ground up to use every ounce of GPU power you can throw it. I'd say your best bet would be to invest in a high-end 560 (448-core) or a GTX 570. You certainly won't regret having the extra power.

Please learn to read.
He's asking for OOB experience, which you don't have with a 500-series card compared to something like a Radeon HD 6870 which doesn't require you to do anything to work.
I also mentioned you need to install an enabler and although this is a minor thing, it's no OOB support.

Apparently Mountain Lion should bring improved support for the 500-series, but it's not clear as to which cards that will be supported (which I also mentioned if you bothered reading my post), so we'll simply have to wait and see. Maybe I wasn't clear enough on the part that the cards will work just fine once the enabler is installed, but if you read the OP you'll see him asking if the cards work OOB or not.

If you'd actually bothered clicking on his link, you would've noticed that he was looking at a 560Ti, which is the model you suggested. Instead of being aggressive on here, try to read the entire thread before posting.

On a different note, it's interesting that it makes such a huge difference in FCPX, I guess Apple has implemented some serious Cuda support which is kind of funny considering they went all AMD last year...

I went for the GTX 580 1,5GB.

The memory is enough for editing. Only when doing very high resolutions like 4K you're gonna benefit from more mem. In my case I'm doing HD 1080p mostly so I'm fine.

I also got the GTX 560 Ti 2GB that I now use as a second GPU for Resolve. When Resolve v9 drops later this month, I think I'll take it out, cause v9 will have an option to optimize performance with one card, and hopefully the GTX 580 can do a proper job by itself.

If you got the budget, get a 580, it's the best choice right now. Get a 560 Ti and you end up like me, buying a GTX 580 three months later.

Sorry to jump in, but I'm not sure why everyone is so eager to get the latest gcards for editing - surely if your editing 1080p or higher you will just use lower res proxies for the first passes and then when you are on your final grade then switch to full res... that'd be a bigger workflow time saver than any graphic card would offer.

A workflow timesaver? Working with proxies? I cannot think of a slower workflow then a offline/online workflow.

With today's hardware you can easily skip the whole proxy hassle and just edit natively in HD, which has a huge 'what you see is what you get' benefit.

I've been editing tv programs for about ten years and I haven't worked with proxies since 2002. The only time I encountered such a workflow was when I was editing with RED 4K material, but I don't think that's very common.

Not only is proxy use more time consuming, it also has the danger of things getting messed up when you are linking back to the original files. Using HD full res is simple and fast and with a GTX 580 for instance you can do amazing stuff in realtime.

I usually edit high frame 2k RED files and DSLR footage and always use proxies at 720. I've never ever had a problem with aligning files and there is no reason to if you are organised as a professional editor should be.

I'd certainly argue that proxies work much better for me on 10 minute to feature length projects.

I'd agree proxies on a quick turn around and short media length would be a bit pointless.

Good points, I agree a little... Especially on RED footage. But RED footage cannot be viewed realtime unless you got a RED Rocket crad (4.500$) by any other graphic card so that counts as an exception I think. RED footage needs to be processed by the computers CPU which can dramatically influence your systems performance, so yes, proxies are a good thing in that situation. But it might be my field of work, Dutch broadcast mainly, where I find myself working with other codecs most of the time, like pro res or DNxHD.

But what if you got a reasonably cheap card that doesn't need the proxy workflow anymore? It saves time, disk space, effort and possible errors.

Plus, nowadays I find myself doing a lot more in an NLE then just editing. I'm doing titles, motion graphics, effects, audio etc etc. And because technology makes this possible, clients also demand this when their sitting next to you. Saying: "oh this is just a proxy, it will look better later when I relink" doesn't cut it for many directors, once they experience working with online resolution. And eventhough you can be very well organized, not all things you do with your footage on the timeline will translate well when relinking. Last point, you dont need to render everything all over again when working full res. You build it and you're done.

(interesting discussion by the way!)