Avid Workstation Videocard Question

[Funkertosh]

I?ve been looking into making a friend of mine a video-editing box for his home. He is in school and I really think he can make it. He wants to be able to cut and edit at home so he doesn?t need to drive to the lab at his school all the time. I looked into it and he is using Avid Media Composer. A quick glance at the specs shows it using a nVIDIA Quadro4 980 XGL card. This is one of those pricey workstation cards. So I am wondering, what is the difference between a mid-priced gaming card like a 9600xt or a FX5700 and one of these GL specific cards? Do they work that much differently? If they are that much different, how well would they run OpenGL games such as Doom3?

Link to Avid specs:
http://www.avid.com/products/composer/specs.shtml

Thanks for any help!

 

[JonnyBlaze]

id say its overkill for video editing. id rather have a matrox w/ 3 monitors anyways.

JB

 

[Matthias99]

Generally speaking, video editing has nothing to do with your video card. A few programs can use DX9 cards to do special effects in real-time, or use DXVA video rendering to lower CPU loads, but neither of these are generally necessary for standard editing functionality (and most effects can be rendered in software offline, as long as you don't need it in real time).

Workstation cards are pretty lousy at gaming, and vice versa. That said, the latest generation of "desktop" cards are still probably faster than the last generation of "professional" cards even at most 'workstation' tasks.

 

[JonnyBlaze]

Originally posted by: Matthias99
That said, the latest generation of "desktop" cards are still probably faster than the last generation of "professional" cards even at most 'workstation' tasks.

until you open too many opengl windows one advantage the real workstation cards still have

JB

 

[Funkertosh]

I just found this page that says you can mod a Radeon card into its equivalent FireGL card. It involves flashing the bios and patching the drivers. Interesting read.

http://www.rojakpot.com/default.aspx?location=3&var1=105&var2=0

They must not be that different at all.

 

[JonnyBlaze]

ill give that a mod shot when i get home on my 9800pro

JB

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: JonnyBlaze

Originally posted by: Matthias99
That said, the latest generation of "desktop" cards are still probably faster than the last generation of "professional" cards even at most 'workstation' tasks.

until you open too many opengl windows one advantage the real workstation cards still have

JB

Yes, there are a few things that the workstation cards do a LOT faster (mostly because of drivers built around workstation apps). And depending on the exact cards, there may be certain hardware features (such as antialiased line drawing) that are painfully slow or not available on the 'desktop' cards (or at least not without a BIOS flash). For a dedicated 3D modelling workstation, you want a 'professional' OGL card (or a modded desktop card), for better application compatibility and those few things that the desktop cards do badly or not at all.

For someone who toys with this stuff on the side, or doesn't do anything too strenuous, today's 'desktop' cards are plenty fast (and half the price, or less, of a comparable 'workstation' card).