Nvidia GeForce 8800GXT ?
 

I am wanting to edit HD footage and run Adobe's AE 7, Premiere 2, encore, audition, PS2, and wontertouch particle illusion. particle illusion and AE 7 need the open GL and i would like a card that can compliment that for editing HD. Is the Geforce 8800GXT overkill, not enough, or just about right, or the wrong card all together?

I'm building a new PC and need some advice... i was thinking about the Quadro fx 4500 but its way out of my price range. around $500ish is about what i am willing to spend on a new GPU.

any help would be awesome!

thanks,
Cody

for agp, im using an nvidia 6800gs, which has had the pipelines unlocked, so now its a cross between a GS and a GT.. cost $280 AUD, works perfectly with everything, even allows for multiple screens of openGL generated material (ie particle illusion across 2 screens)

for PCIe the 7800 should work fine

i will be using PCI express and im looking to get the intel core duo 6800

Do the editors even use the high end features of the graphics cards, such as the shader engines ? Unless you're using 3D games or modeling apps, I don't think that most software makes use of the higher end features (rendering pipes). Of course, there are advanced high definition video acceleration features, but again, I don't think that the apps are using them. Please correct me if these issues have changed within the last few years.

I'd get a basic but new card with good video acceleration for high def playback, but not the most amount of memory. I think that graphic chip manufacturers should be more power conscious as those huge nVidia and ATI chips just increase your electric bill and pollute the air with all of the coal burned to make that electricity.

As for a system, AMD should have put out their latest generation of energy-saving dual core processors in the 939 socket, as well as putting out their "4x4" quad core solution so that it could use an older dual or single core such as 4600+ X2 or 3800+. Sure, that doesn't sell more of their processors immediately, but it would reduce the opportunities for people to jump to Intel when new processors and a new motherboard are required. I'm definitely moving to the Intel solution when their QuadCore is available. It's cool that video encoding and processing scales so well with processor count.

Gints, its not the memory, but the bandwidth which makes the difference. 256bit vs 128bit is the difference though, but RAM ON these cards isnt usually utilsed to the full extent.PremPro2, Liquid, AE, Combustion and several others DO use these card realtime features (the newer being HD MPG decoding in nvidia cards), but with the advanced shaders etc ec they dont take advantage of it.. yet.. ive always been hoping for advanced HW colour correction, effects, 3d text/titling etc apps through these cards, but i doubt were gonna see it.. either way, a 6800 is perfectly fine for this kind of thing. its relatively cheap, considerably powerful (does everything these apps claim they do) and to be honest, IMO these newfound GPU integration ssytems have the potential to be pretty much the perfect solution for vdeo editing

That card is definitely overkill for what you want. I'd recommend getting a 7950GTX because it's still a really fast card but the price just dropped a lot from the release of the 8800GTX. Look at XFX and PNY brands.

Oh and make sure you are looking at the core "2" duo and not the older core duo.

Cheers

Not being particularly knowledgeable about video card architecture, I don't know whether or not this will lead to tangible benefit for After Effects and other OpenGL apps, but supposedly the nVidia 8800 has hardware support for DirectX 10. Here is a link to the Adobe OpenHD page:
http://www.adobe.com/adobeopenhd/
where they further link to vendor press releases. The nVidia release does specifically say that both PPro and AE take advantage of the GPU pixel shading, etc AND the card's memory.

Also, my 2 cents on processor is that if you're ready to spring for the 6800 specifically to support video work, by all accounts so far the couple of hundred dollars more a Core 2 Quadro (QX6700) will cost should definitely give you a good bang-for-buck performance boost. I'm chomping at the bit myself to build a quad-core system.

im with u pete,
im just waiting little bit (price wise) till core 2 really kicks in before i jump the boat..

Hey Guys... this is a really good thread for me as I am trying to select the right video card for a new system. I use about the same applications as people are mentioning here.

I have been torn between the 7950GT and the Quadro FX1500.

I have been reading that the Quadro FX cards are far superior for video editting (specifically in Adobe Apps) and 3d modeling... but they are far more expensive with seemingly less RAM and is only 128 bit? What is the deal on these cards? The one cool thing is the breakout box. Does anyone use this and if so.. how does it work exactly?

THanks.

Matrox APVe? It allows you to actually use 3 monitors instead of 2, that any nVidia offers?