video editing card?

[coinz]

My friend is planning to use Avid and some other video editing stuff on his new comp he just told me to ask around so i'm posting here. Would the normal vid cards be fine for this? I was telling him he might not need to spend $660 (CAN) on a ATI x850xt which he was planning to buy could someone tell me. thanks

 

[Matthias99]

Uh, yes. You can just use any video card with a video editing program. The card does *nothing* for you, unless you are running a program that can use a DX9 card to do real-time effects. And even then, it's ONLY for that.

 

[coinz]

ah thanks

 

[gsellis]

A good question to ask your friend is "which Avid". I just looked at the requirements for Xpress Pro HD. OpenGL performance and nVidia Quadros are listed Pro HD

But have him check out Avid's system requirements page. Avid leans towards nVidia cards on their system req lists and those should be considered over ATI. There is a lot of advantages to sticking with the cards the NLE recommends. It can mean the difference between not working and working in some cases (Avid has a note on a Quadro 280 not being suitable for one of the NLEs.)

If it were Pinnacle, ATI is preferred of nVidia (Studio 9 and the Liquid series are the DX users that Matthias hinted at - an 850XT would be wasted on S9, but met requirements for 1080i HD in Liquid Edition 6).