garageCube

[VjKg]

I have a lasted generation Mac Pro Dual Quad 2.8Ghz with the stock 256Mb Video card. The best I can tell is there are 3 512Mb cards available. They all spec different for different uses. What is the consensus opinion on the best on for Modul8.

[area71]

Hi,
i think it depends on the output. As far as I know you can only use the ATI Radeon HD2600 with 256MB for multiprojection.
Only this graphcs card can be used multiple times. All the others have too much power consumtion to put more than one in your mac pro. http://support.apple.com/kb/SP11
The good thing is you can use the DVI-to-video adapter. http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2809?viewlocale=en_US

cheers,

area71

[Valparaiiso]

Hi,
with your mac pro, you have one ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT. You can use the two others cards sold in the AppleStore (NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT,
and ATI Radeon X1900 XT). It works, and better than HD 2600.

[VjKg]

Hi,
with your mac pro, you have one ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT. You can use the two others cards sold in the AppleStore (NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT,
and ATI Radeon X1900 XT). It works, and better than HD 2600.

So am I correct in assuming then that if I want single projection at very high quality the 8800GT and the X1900 XT are comparable with no clear winner for Modul8. If I want 2 projections use the HD 2600 XT.

Or should I go for another HD 2600 XT. Does 512Mb give noticeable overall performance improvement?

[area71]

I recently found out that threre is another card:
ATI Radeon HD 3870 mac Edition.
You can put two cards in the early 2008 mac pro (no garanty)
It seems that this card is very good too:
http://www.barefeats.com/harper17.html

As far as I know, the new mac pro has two 16x PCIe Slots for high power cards and two 4x PCIe Slots for cards like the 2600.

It is not easy to find someone who has more than two cards in the mac pro. All the gamers don´t need so many monitors. Just us silly VJs...

I just spoke to the apple store and was told that the mac pro can have up to four graphic cards. Even four NVIDIA FX 5600.
I doubt this is possible...
The limit is the power:
300W combined maximum for all PCI Express slots, the 5600 needs up to 171W

[VjKg]

I was watching my cities World Series (baseball) and slowly checking new posts. I opened a bunch of tabs. I got to the last new one and noticed it was a thread I started. As I scrolled down I slowly remembered the need to have this important question answered. Then I got to the spam babble that was the new post and my heart sank. So I want to resurrect this thread.

If you had to pick something, would you load full PCI slots with Display cards or Video capture cards? Also I don't want any of you practical working Vj's saying why not both. This is a black or white question no choice but Display or Capture.

[deepvisual]

I'd use the multi outs far more than I would use Multi Ins

[VjKg]

This used to be an easy question to answer until the Garagecube team announced support for 4 cameras.

[ilan]

Just as a note we have had and continue to have towers with the max amount of video cards running multiple outputs with Modul8 for over 2 years now.

One setup is using the NVIDIA 7300 GT. With proper optimization the results are very good. I have overseen many projects with this configuration.

There is also an article on this page about an events production company using multiple outputs:
http://www.modul8.us/labels/Brussels.html

My memory is a bit foggy but we also tested running Modul8 with a pair of these Mega ATI cards similar to the HD. You can only put 2 in but the results were very good.

The most stunning results were when using the OpenGL functions. When running video it is still an issue of bandwith. The faster your drives the faster and more fluid the video. This is the reason that video production facilities won't work with anything less then a RAID drive.