Question about mulitple video card setup? (not a which one should I buy question) at DVinfo.net

Jeff Troiano · December 6th, 2010, 09:45 PM

I'm blueprinting a new system for myself, and I've been out of the computer, and editing loop for more then a few years. Built many systems for use as DJ night club music systems, and only 1 editing box, back then. Any how, as I said before, I am blueprinting out a new system and I was wondering about the following.....

Is the purpose of multiple video cards simply to run multiple monitors? Or with the new GPU stuff for video editing,CS5 specifically.(At this point I don't yet know all the terminology, so I'm sorry if I am using the wrong term for something else), do multiple cards spread the work across all the cards, to allow faster work (again don't know if my terminology is correct)?

Thanks for the help,
Jeff

Randall Leong · December 7th, 2010, 11:58 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jeff Troiano

I'm blueprinting a new system for myself, and I've been out of the computer, and editing loop for more then a few years. Built many systems for use as DJ night club music systems, and only 1 editing box, back then. Any how, as I said before, I am blueprinting out a new system and I was wondering about the following.....

Is the purpose of multiple video cards simply to run multiple monitors? Or with the new GPU stuff for video editing,CS5 specifically.(At this point I don't yet know all the terminology, so I'm sorry if I am using the wrong term for something else), do multiple cards spread the work across all the cards, to allow faster work (again don't know if my terminology is correct)?

Thanks for the help,
Jeff

Right now there is no reason to buy a second video card for video editing: Although a second video card is useful to add a second monitor if the primary video card is limited to single-monitor use, most current video cards can handle two monitors simultaneously. And Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 does not currently support more than one single GPU at all for GPU acceleration.

Panagiotis Raris · December 7th, 2010, 07:53 PM

Randall is correct; for editing with CS5, applicable or hackable GPU's with 1GB+ of ram (MOST if not all of these cards can run 2 monitors) accelerate GPU enabled effects and speed up rendering times (export is still a matter of debate but it is minimal if at all) and enable the Mercury Playback Engine which is MUCH faster than software render alone.

You only need one CUDA/MPE enabled card to get the acceleration out of CS5; multiple cards are not supported. I doubt we will see this feature until CS6 (which is a shame, because if they could render and use graphics cards' DDR5 ram and insanely high core counts and clock speeds, we could have MUCH better performance with say 4 2GB DDR5 CUDA/Fermi cards doing the work versus even the venerable i7 980X 6 core (12 with HT enabled).

December 6th, 2010, 09:45 PM	#1
Jeff Troiano Major Player Join Date: May 2003 Location: Nashville TN Posts: 480	Question about mulitple video card setup? (not a which one should I buy question) I'm blueprinting a new system for myself, and I've been out of the computer, and editing loop for more then a few years. Built many systems for use as DJ night club music systems, and only 1 editing box, back then. Any how, as I said before, I am blueprinting out a new system and I was wondering about the following..... Is the purpose of multiple video cards simply to run multiple monitors? Or with the new GPU stuff for video editing,CS5 specifically.(At this point I don't yet know all the terminology, so I'm sorry if I am using the wrong term for something else), do multiple cards spread the work across all the cards, to allow faster work (again don't know if my terminology is correct)? Thanks for the help, Jeff

December 7th, 2010, 07:53 PM	#3
Panagiotis Raris Major Player Join Date: Apr 2010 Location: Reading, PA USA and Athens, Greece Posts: 269	Randall is correct; for editing with CS5, applicable or hackable GPU's with 1GB+ of ram (MOST if not all of these cards can run 2 monitors) accelerate GPU enabled effects and speed up rendering times (export is still a matter of debate but it is minimal if at all) and enable the Mercury Playback Engine which is MUCH faster than software render alone. You only need one CUDA/MPE enabled card to get the acceleration out of CS5; multiple cards are not supported. I doubt we will see this feature until CS6 (which is a shame, because if they could render and use graphics cards' DDR5 ram and insanely high core counts and clock speeds, we could have MUCH better performance with say 4 2GB DDR5 CUDA/Fermi cards doing the work versus even the venerable i7 980X 6 core (12 with HT enabled).