Any thoughts on a good LAPTOP video card for Premiere? I´m thinking of replacing mine.

Depends on the laptop...

LG A520, Core i7-230QM CPU @ 2.00GHZ, 6GB RAM, 64bit, GeForce GT540M

Nobody?...anyone?...Bueller?

What is wrong with the one you have ? :)

I´ve been reading so many good things about the new graphic cards out there and how much Premiere can benefit from them...

Your nvidia card seems to be able to do the cuda acceleration too. Have you tried to enable it ?
http://www.studio1productions.com/Articles/PremiereCS5.htm
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/adobe-cs5-cuda-64-bit,2770-3.html

Hey, thanks for the tip. I´ve just added my card to the supported list :)

One thing to note, I just bought a notebook with nVidia's top-of-the-line GTX680m card. Now I find that AE doesn't (yet) support the Kepler-type of cards for ray tracing; and the card is new enough that only the manufacturer-supplied (and in my case, crippled, with no monitor calibration function) drivers are available. nVidia says they are working on the drivers for Windows 7. Yippee. You'd think they would have drivers ready when the card is released. As of this moment, anyway, you might want to not jump into this pretty expensive card, although up the road it will probably be great.

My flavor of driver, however, does support video playback calibaration and Premiere Pro CS6 seems to thrive upon it. 1300-and-something CUDA cores, it is amazingly fast. It just isn't fully compatable with AE, and the lack of screen calibration makes it currently unusable in Photoshop.

Have you tried adding the line:

GeForce GTX 680M

to the file: raytracer_supported_cards.txt

in the C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe After Effects CS6\Support Files directory ?

@ Harm, yes, thank you, I've done the hack and AE recognizes the card. A message came up somewhere along the path that the 600 series cards are not yet enabled by AE, as they have a new architechture (which you would understand and I don't) that needs an update to fully utilize the card. I have no other information; I think I have tricked AE into thinking the card is enabled, but I am unable (just getting my feet wet in AE) to determine what if it's working or not.

With the PPro hack, however, this sucker flys.

The 600 series did require extensive modification to the code both in AE and in PR. With the 6.01 update, this was completed for AE and that is the reason the 680 is officially supported for AE. At this moment the 680 is the only 600-series card that is supported and the reason that all other 600 models need the 'hack' to work. For PR there is not yet any 600 card supported, but in our benchmark we currently have 25 systems with a 600 video card, the 660, 670 and 680. They all work flawless.

There is one further remark of a more general nature. If you have applied the 'hack' for AE or PR, be aware that with each update the text files are overwritten by the installer and you need to reapply the 'hack' after an update.

@ Harm, great news, thanks. My card is the 680M, which apparently needs a different driver and was not on the 6.01 "list." NVidia say they "are working on a driver," great news for a nearly $500 card with only a crippled OEM driver to work with...the GTX680 desktop driver will not install....


Question on the "hack": would it not work to make a backup copy of the text file and just re-install that when the update changes the "fixed" file, or is it necessary to do the hack routine again?

The 'hack'-routine is pretty easy:

Just open the file 'cuda_supported_cards.txt' with notepad. I use an older 480 currently and that card is not in the list. What I do is modify the second line in the txt file, which at this moment reads:

'GeForce GTX 470' and modify the 7 to an 8, so it reads 'GeForce GTX 480' and then save the file.

In your case you could change the numbers '470' to read '680M' and save it. You are done. I guess that beats restoring the original file from a backup disk and replacing it.