Workstation video card recommendations

[alizee]

my friends and I are starting a film production company and I'm going to be building a workstation for editing video on Avid Xpress Pro HD. I'm not sure what kind of graphics card to get. We are going to get a motherboard with PCIe x16, not AGP. Should we get a professional workstation card or should we get a consumer card. Other apps that we might be using, but on a more limited basis, are Combustion, After Effects, ProTools, and Maya.

Should I get a specifically workstation card like the QuadroFX or FireGL, or should I get a consumer card? I know that Avid isn't incredibly graphics intensive, but would it be worth it to get a workstation card? I know Maya would benefit, but it wouldn't be worth the extra money for one app, especially Maya seeing as how we won't be using it very often.

What models should we be looking at? I'd like to keep the video card under $1000, preferably closer to $600. I would like to have one dual-link DVI port, two would be nice, but if it doesn't happen it's ok. Do the high end consumer cards have Dual-Link DVI?

Thanks a lot.

 

[JonnyBlaze]

quadro cards will do nothing for video editing. look at a matrox card.

 

[alizee]

do you have any suggestions on the models? Matrox's site is pretty cofusing and not very well laid out, and they're product specifications are pretty lacking. Thanks for the suggestion, though, I really think you're right, it looks like Matrox has some pretty awesome stuff

 

[AnnoyedGrunt]

I would personally buy a consumer card.

First, you get almost all the power of a Quadro card.

Second, you can have something that is good for games if needed.

Third, the price would not be too bad.

I run Pro/E @ work on a quadro 3400, and I've run it at home on a GF 1 SDR and a GF3 Ti200. I tried an ATI FireGL card at work, but the drivers were crap for Pro/E and got so badly corrupted that we needed to reformat the HDD.

I use an X800XL at home now but haven't tried Pro/E on it.

I'd probably get a 7800GT for as close to $300 as possible and go with that (I got the X800XL because at the time they were the best deal for $300). The next thing I might try would be a 6800GS because they have a high clock speed with a good amount of vertex power (good for Pro/E) and they are quite a good deal. I'm not too familiar with the Avid program, so as Mr Blaze said it may not matter anyway.

-D'oh!

 

[Dubb]

in addition to matrox, the quadro 540 video edition might be a cheaper alternative, depending on what features you need.

http://www.pny.com/products/quadro/fx/540PciExV.asp