Highend3d Artists Discussion Forums

Video Card Optimization

Tags: #<Tag:0x007f19391041a0>

director 2006-07-06 20:59:11 UTC #1

I'm in need of a video card upgrade. I think. lol

The system I'm running is a Dual 2.0 G5 with 4 gigs of Ram. I'm sure its a basic video card that comes with the system so any ideas what to move up to?

user_deleted 2006-07-06 22:14:34 UTC #2

from Apple

"Your AGP card, installed in slot 1, contains the graphics processor unit (GPU) and provides the computer's display ports. Slot 1 is designed specifically to accept AGP cards. This 533-megahertz (MHz) slot accommodates 1.5-volt (V) AGP cards.

You can replace the card that came with the computer with an AGP 8X or AGP 8X Pro card. A replacement AGP card must have driver software compatible with Mac OS X."

I saw a couple of nice cards available for the Mac at ati.com. Be aware though, that most newer graphics cards have a pci express interface. So the AGP cards are becomming scarce.

director 2006-07-06 22:58:23 UTC #3

hmm. So what type of card is everyone else out there using? What do you reccomend.

user_deleted 2006-07-07 02:56:40 UTC #4

We have 4 machines in our office, almost identical to your configuration. The only machine we have upgraded is a 5th machine that we use a 30 Apple monitor on, and it required upgrading our card, however I am not sure of the exact model.

Most of our work is feature film, utilizing 2K film plates. We haven't had any issues with our video card and shake, but occasionally with Maya (as usual, OpenGL, etc.)

director 2006-07-11 19:57:17 UTC #5

Can anyone reccomend a specific card for my machine? Or is what I have able to do the job? I get really long render times, and I saw no speed when I went from 2 - 4 gigs of RAM.

If anyone knows of a topic board on this site that has already covered this question, please send me the link.

Thanks!

deke-kincaid 2006-07-11 20:17:23 UTC #6

QUOTE(director @ 07/11/06, 11:57 AM) [snapback]242147[/snapback]
Can anyone reccomend a specific card for my machine?
I suggest a 6800/7800 nvidia card. Ati cards tend to have opengl issues which can cause problems in apps like maya and sometimes shake

QUOTE(director @ 07/11/06, 11:57 AM) [snapback]242147[/snapback]
Or is what I have able to do the job? I get really long render times, and I saw no speed when I went from 2 - 4 gigs of RAM.
Shake is a software renderer, not a hardware one, so video card makes no difference in rendering. To speed up rendering, learn to commanline render, it renders about 2-3x faster when it doesn't have to write images to the framebuffer on the video card.

Also Shake is a 32 bit application, so it can't use much more then 2.5-3 gig of ram. Shake is a fairly efficient, even on gigantic scripts have rarely used beyond 1 gig of ram. I/O speed is often what slows things down. Make yourself a homemade sata raid with 4-8 drives striped together and put all your media on that.

director 2006-07-12 05:06:11 UTC #7

whoa. Home made sata raid? How do I do that and what is the benifit?

user_deleted 2006-07-12 06:17:14 UTC #8

QUOTE(director @ 07/12/06, 07:06 AM) [snapback]242193[/snapback]
whoa. Home made sata raid? How do I do that and what is the benifit?

you buy a s-ata pci (/x/e) card, a s-ata enclosure, and some s-ata disks, and configure them as raid-0 (make sure you have a backup of your media on another disk!) in disk utility or if you have the money go for a dedicated raid-5 solution.

benefit is faster i/o as mentioned before...
check barefeats.com or google for more info
++ christoph ++

deke-kincaid 2006-07-12 16:19:38 UTC #9

http://www.macgurus.com/productpages/sata/satakits.php

The benefit is your splitting your media over 4-8 drives rather then 1. It make access to the files much faster in applications like shake and fcp. Also personally I use the drives as raid 0 for media access and always have it all backed up somewhere else. Raid 5 only slows things down.

director 2006-07-26 18:00:58 UTC #10

Is this the same thing as a render farm?

user_deleted 2006-07-26 18:24:20 UTC #11

Renderfarm is completely different. Big stack of processors to distribute rendering of 2 and 3d elements, shots, etc.

BTW -- What's everyone's opinion of building a raid for a macbook pro? Is a firewire based raid worth the cost and effort or is there another solution?

director 2006-07-26 18:47:22 UTC #12

What is raid 0 and raid 5?
Do I need to buy any other components to get one of these SATA case kits to work?
Which hard drive type is better (hitachi or wester digital, or other)?
Will this work with my dual 1.8 G5 mac?
Will this work with a new intel Mac in case I upgrade?

deke-kincaid 2006-07-27 00:58:35 UTC #13

http://www.barefeats.com/hard50.html

Thats an internal solution for outfitting many drives inside a g5 rather then bothering with an external kit. As for drives, usually 7200rpm with 8 or even better 16 meg cache. Personally I prefer Seagate because they all come with 3 year warranties by default. SATA doesn't care the machine as long as you have an sata pci card.

as for raid 0 and raid 5 either google it or read this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redundant\_arr...dependent\_disks

director 2006-07-27 04:33:45 UTC #14

You rock Beaker! Thank you for all of your help.

director 2006-07-27 05:37:09 UTC #15

I believe I have another issue now. My G5 computer has a PCI card. the SATA kits are compatable and I'm ready to get one, but if I want to still upgrade my video card I run into the limitation of only staying with a PCI card and none of the newer PCI-e cards.

The SATA kits are not compatable with those cards. (at least not the ones from that mac gurus web page)

Finally, what if I upgrade my entire system? Then I have to have the PCI-e card which is good for the video card upgrade, but bad for the SATA kit.

hmm. I'm learning a lot, but really need a final suggestion on this last phase.

user_deleted 2006-07-27 08:55:03 UTC #16

Hi,
Be careful as the PCI bus has a limited bandwith (max. 33 mb/s on PC if I remember correctly) so you may create a bottleneck as the internal bus won't be able to handle the output of a striped disk array ...
You better check the specs for your machine (as PCI comes in several form 33 mhZ/66 mhZ ...) and if you see that the speed will be slower, or only few percent better than having a single disk, you may have to reconsider your choices.
One possible solution, check for hybride RAID array enclosure with Sata drives and eSata output AND firewire 800 output. You may be able to use the Firewire800 for now, but still you'll be able to use the array later on with a PCI-e/SATA card if you change your machine.

Guy.

deke-kincaid 2006-07-27 20:18:10 UTC #17

It depends which box you have. Some of the 1.8 have a Pci slot, others have a pci-x slot. So you have to make sure your buying the correct sata card for the slot on your machine. To confuse things more, the newer G5's have PCI-Express(not the same as pci-x). None of these 3 are compatible with each other. So make sure your buying the right card for your machine.

As for upgrading the machine. You will have to buy a new sata raid card, but the drives and cables will all work with any machine. Just check out Highpoint and Sonnet's website and find the proper card that fits in the slot on your box(they all make pci, pci-x and pci-express cards for doing sata raid).

http://www.highpoint-tech.com/
http://www.sonnettech.com/

deke-kincaid 2006-07-27 20:30:46 UTC #18

QUOTE(guy_iti @ 07/27/06, 12:55 AM) [snapback]243524[/snapback]
Hi,
Be careful as the PCI bus has a limited bandwith (max. 33 mb/s on PC if I remember correctly) so you may create a bottleneck as the internal bus won't be able to handle the output of a striped disk array ...
You better check the specs for your machine (as PCI comes in several form 33 mhZ/66 mhZ ...) and if you see that the speed will be slower, or only few percent better than having a single disk, you may have to reconsider your choices.
A plain old Pci slot (thats 32 bit/33mhz pci slot not 33 mb/s), can still sustain around 120-133 mb/s which is about the speed you will get out of a raid 0 of 4 sata drives.

I believe the lowest powermac g5 came with 2-64 bit 100 mhz pci slot and 1-64 bit 133 mhz pci-x slot. Both do 150mb/s which is more then plenty for a 4x drive raid.

user_deleted 2006-07-27 20:56:02 UTC #19

Hi,
I'm leaving for holidays in 12 hours after 1 full year of hard work so please excuse my confusion between Mb, Mhz ...
One comment though, at least on PC, the bandwith given for PCI is a shared one (meaning shared between all PCI devices), and the 120 Mb/s are very difficult to reach. I have the problem right now with a 4 drives RAID array on a promise PCI controller, and the output is lower than with a single SATA drive.
Cheers,
Guy.

user_deleted 2006-07-27 22:43:35 UTC #20

How about laptops -- is firewire the only solution? How about using ethernet somehow?

Marketplace

Resources

Highend 3D