Question about NX Card

[Philip]

I have an opportunity to get a used NX card from someone that switched to Matrox. He has it laying around unused with a break out box. I believe he initially had a Canopus Turnkey system built.

He is looking to sell it to me but I had a few questions first. I have been using Edius in OHCI mode for a year or two now on a AMD x2. When editing HQ files it does pretty well but not earth shattering for RT. Will the NX card enhance any RT or just give me RT output to a monitor?

I believe I remember reading awhile back that all the NX card does is give you output to an external monitor but doesn't have hardware based acceleration of Canopus filters like the Storm card had in DV. Is this correct?

I have been editing without an external preview monitor for over a year and don't really miss it. My level of work doesn't dictate absolutely perfect colors so I have not really missed an external monitor. If I would get any extra RT from the NX I would be all over it though.

BTW....I am pretty confident my motherboard is compatible. WHen I built the computer a Canopus tech even told me to get this MB cause something new was coming from Canopus that would be compatible with my MB....a few weeks later NX came out.

[tingsern]

Canopus NX card do contain the hardware DV codec. As opposed to just pure OHCI - the NX card does accelerate some functions used by EDIUS. I don't believe the Storm card accelerate any of the filters ... same as NX. All filter functions are handled purely by the CPU.

Canopus argument is - CPU processing power is always going up. If they incorporate hardware acceleration in their card, in just 1 year's time, the CPU on motherboard will match that (and possibly more).

If you have the PCI-e version of the NX card, as opposed to the older PCI-X (64 bits) card, the component video card does come with the MPEG2 hardware encoder - so, you can encode an MPEG2 output in "real time".

TS

[Laxdoc]

Great question GV/Canopus!

[GrassValley_MD]

There is not hardware acceleration in the NX card. There is a little help with the fact that it takes the overlay and external monitor playback away from the CPU's but that is not going to show up as a huge boost in realtime. :)


Mike

[GrassValley_KH]

What Mike said is true, when talking in terms of HD editing. For DV editing, it's like a Storm - the onboard DV codec chip will free up ~700Mhz of CPU power, since it's producing the realtime DV output stream.

In today's world of computing, this DV advantage isn't quite as noticeable as it once was.

[Philip]

If you have the PCI-e version of the NX card, as opposed to the older PCI-X (64 bits) card, the component video card does come with the MPEG2 hardware encoder - so, you can encode an MPEG2 output in "real time".

TS

The one someone wants me to buy is the older PCI-X card not the express model and includes a breakout box. WHat is the going rate for a setup like this? When it is the PCI-X card does it fit in the standard PCI slot or a special PCI slot? I may have to find out if my MB would even work with it. I have the ASUS A8N SLI Deluxe MB.

[tingsern]

It must be a PCI-X 64 bits slot for the NX card, and a normal PCI 32 bits slot for the component output card.

[mattmatt]

Why would anyone go from NX to Matrox???? Thats a few steps back IMHO ;)

[STORMDAVE]

Why would anyone go from NX to Matrox???? Thats a few steps back IMHO ;)

They are probably after the GPU accelerated page peel effect? :P

[mattmatt]

Hehehe...I still have a folder on my hard-drive from Matrox that is impossible to delete.... I think I need some cleaning software or something.

[STORMDAVE]

Hehehe...I still have a folder on my hard-drive from Matrox that is impossible to delete.... I think I need some cleaning software or something.

Boot under recovery mode from XP disc, login as admin, then delete away :)
It let's you access the NTFS drive from a command prompt.

If you remember basic dos commands, it'll be easy....

del
deltree
ren
cd
cd..


etc

[mattmatt]

I miss DOS :( I even miss unzipping in dos...You pretty much had to write a book ;)

Thanks for the tip, I'll give that a go :)