Best video card for video editing in Win 7

[Arkaign]

Does that mean that I will have a lesser (non-gaming) experience in Windows 7 if I only have a DX9c or DX10 card?

No, DX11 and DX10 don't do anything outside of 3d that's meaningful. If you don't game, and aren't rendering 3d outside of just Windows Aero desktop environment interface, there's no point.

 

[Cogman]

From where you stand you have no access to Adobe's site, it seems - they already support GPU-accelerated features in several apps incl. Premiere, Photoshop and they already said they will support OpenCL in CS5.

So from here, where I sit, Sir, your recommendation makes the least sense for the long run, sorry.

Sigh...

Please do a little research before spitting out bolded trash.
http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/404/kb404898.html
http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/405/kb405745.html

As for CS5 using OpenCL, Um, no. They have stated that they will be using Cuda http://www.brightsideofnews.com/news/2009/12/14/adobes-mercury-playback-engine-for-cs5-is-cuda-only!.aspx .

If you had read those two articles, you would have realized that the GPU acceleration the Adobe is touting comes in the form of a prettier UI. That's it. The UI advancements that they are using are as old as dirt. Which means that any graphics card younger then ~8 years will be compatible with Adobes GPU acceleration.

You can't point to a single GPU accelerated Video editing tool, because, there isn't one. And I don't mean just some cheap "We use Opengl to render our pictures, so we are accelerated!" I mean someone that ACTUALLY uses the GPGPU capabilities of a video card for video editing. And, if you had read my post, there is good reason for that. There hasn't been a standard GPGPU language. The recent creation of OpenCL is the changing factor for that, however, it is a fairly new and infant language. It will take a good long time before we put it to any good use.

And what are the benefits of a fast card? Most of the accelerating features are in the lines of "We added a video processed physics engine to flash!". Perhaps if the OP is planning on doing some flash stuff, it might be worth it, but the actual video processing can be done without it. The majority of the functionality is going to be CPU and memory bound, not GPU bound. The benefits of a fast CPU in this case is useful in all applications vs a GPU that might be helpful and might not depending on the OPs work load (and even if he gets CS5)

 

[T2k]

Does that mean that I will have a lesser (non-gaming) experience in Windows 7 if I only have a DX9c or DX10 card?

Not really. I was simply going by your original requirements which called for full W7 support - today that is ATI-only.
That being said it doesn't mean you miss a lot if you go with a DX9/10/10.1 card if you don't play games... OTOH newer architectures generaly are much faster and you don't know what other stuff you end up using (eg GPU-encoding) so it's worth to think ahead a bit.

 

[T2k]

At the moment? No, Aero and Co work perfectly fine with almost every card, if you don't game there's absolutly no reason to get a more powerful card because of Win7. You should be a little bit careful with T2K and wreckage.. they aren't known for theír impartiality.

And you'd be... I'm sorry, I missed your nick - perhaps because I didn't have the chance to ever notice it...?

Video encoding is a mixed bag of things, at the moment the quality of GPU encoded videos are noticably worse compared to CPU encoded ones.

You guys really don't get it: you can accelerate other things on the GPU as well and this is the general direction things are moving in the NLE market. Typically they slow at first but then suddenly everyone picks up the feature - think of it as a bullet point for the next version...

No idea if that's something they can fix in software, though I think so.
In the long run OpenCL surely isn't a bad idea, but on the other side you could get a really cheap last gen card right now and get a cheap DX11 card in a year or so, if there's any software on the market that benefits from it.

Not from DX11 but from its faster architecture, yes.

Once Nvidia has fermi out of the door, the prices should get a good bit down.

In the high-end, perhaps but even there it's a pretty wild guess as Fermi is hot, very expensive to make and has horrible yields - no way it will come at a competitive price to mount pressure on ATI's prices.
And even if it will, that means literally zero effect in the ~$100 segment.

 

[Voo]

You guys really don't get it: you can accelerate other things on the GPU as well and this is the general direction things are moving in the NLE market.

You can "accelerate other things" as well, but none of them are in any way of the word stressful for the GPU.. just look at the current GPGPU support in CS4 - some neat features for the UI.

Not from DX11 but from its faster architecture, yes.

Which he will probably use for.. nothing - if Adobe and Co implement OpenCL support in a feasible way, if they fix the quality problems, then a DirectX11 card would be helpful. I don't think that will happen in the next few months, especially since Adobe wants to use CUDA and OpenCL according to some of their blog posts..


Just get a cheap last gen card that does everything you need for now and update once there's anything interesting on the market - overall cheaper then buying a new card because maybe you could use some of its features in a year.

 

[Cogman]

And you'd be... I'm sorry, I missed your nick - perhaps because I didn't have the chance to ever notice it...?

Everyone starts posting and one time or another, don't be an ass just because they aren't a lifer. I could make the exact same comment about you, mister 1k posts.

You guys really don't get it: you can accelerate other things on the GPU as well and this is the general direction things are moving in the NLE market. Typically they slow at first but then suddenly everyone picks up the feature - think of it as a bullet point for the next version...

I think you're the one not "getting it" I've never stated that GPGPU programming won't be big or influential, it has the potential to be. What I'm stating is that isn't today and won't be for a while. GPU's are able to do a lot of work on independent data, whenever there is branching or dependency, however, GPU's start to choke. Thats part of the reason most video card encoders suck compared to their CPU counter parts. They would become slower if they did the stuff CPU encoders do because good encoding has some pretty dependent data.

Specifically referring to CS5, and what it can do with the GPGPU. There are effects that the video card can do, that isn't all of them, but some of them.

The GPU is never going to take out the CPU for general processing, It can't, it would have to gain all the baggage that CPUs have had to deal with for years, and once it takes on that baggage what do you gain? Not much really.

Yes, I know you are currently on a 3 week vacation, but I thought I might as well respond.

OP, the cheapest current/last gen video card is what you want. There isn't a good reason now, nor will there be for several years (as pertains to video editing) to get a faster video card.

 

[pushpa de silva]

Hi
I am looking for a best (PC) computer configuration to run Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 Master Edition software(which includes all Adobe products like After Effect, FireWorks, Dream weaver, etc., Etc.,). Any experience with Dell systems would be much appreciated. or any other type also do not mind.
Thx
Pushpa
Australia

 

[Cogman]

Hi
I am looking for a best (PC) computer configuration to run Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 Master Edition software(which includes all Adobe products like After Effect, FireWorks, Dream weaver, etc., Etc.,). Any experience with Dell systems would be much appreciated. or any other type also do not mind.
Thx
Pushpa
Australia

fast CPU and lots of ram is what you want. Video card is meh.