video card acceptable?

[merrick61]

I am currently having a system assembled and a GeForce 8600GTS 256MB GDDR 3 was recommended. Will this be acceptable for Edius in HD/Explode and Vitascene??

I question because my other system has a GeForce 7950 GT512MB GDDR3 256bit...I have no problems --is the 512 to 256 MB drop going to cause me a drop in any performance??

Thanks
Merrik

[STORMDAVE]

Your 7950 should be a bit faster than the 8600GTS...but you won't notice the hit that much.

Does your 7950 work with Xplode?

If you really want Xplode capability, I recommend an earlier non DX10 ATI card.

[merrick61]

yes my 7950 works with Xplode but obviously there is some rendering involved. Will the 8600 still be able to handle HDV Ok?

[STORMDAVE]

Doubt it. The newer the cards, the worse Xplode performance gets because the RT renderer has not been updated for a long time and will not be updated either because Xplode is discontinued.

I'd rather use nVidia cards, and I was going to get an nVidia card if I built my machine, but since I bought a Mac Pro, it already had an ATI card in there (Could get nothing better but an expensive Quadro).

Stick with ATI if you want RT Xplode...maybe an ATI X1950XT off ebay or something. You can upgrade to a better card later on since it will be PCIe, and by then Xplode Pro might not even work with Edius 5 and beyond.

[merrick61]

Ok but I was actually asking if you think that HDV editing (w/out explode) would be Ok with the 8600 card..--just standard 3d effects, rendering etc...Sorry for the confusion

[STORMDAVE]

Oh yeah, it should be perfect. Edius does not use GPU hardware acceleration at all...only for the overlay (4.5 and above).