Actually there was a recent thread that went over which nvidia card = is better, just search for "Benchmarking AE CUDA". Turns = out the 5xx series is probably the better cards, or at least, no worse = than the 6xx series. Thanks to Teddy Gage for doing that initial = testing.

On the PC, our two top cards that we test are the 7950 and the 570. = It's for testing Beauty Box which is all OpenCL, so the CUDA stuff = doesn't matter for us. The 7950 edges out the 570 in AE, but not by much = (and again, we're just testing a 2D plugin, not using ray tracing). I = assume if you had a 580 or 590 they'd be comparable or faster. In = Premiere the 570 smokes the 7950. We may be using OpenCL but of course = Premiere really uses CUDA and it makes a big difference having the = nvidia card.

Cheers,

Jim

----------------------

Jim Tierney

President

Digital Anarchy

http://www.digitalanarchy.com

From:= = After Effects Mail List [mailto:AE-List@media-motion.tv] On Behalf Of = scott.aelist
Sent: Friday, June 22, 2012 11:51 = PM
To: After Effects Mail List
Subject: [AE] [OT]: = Please tell me why not to get a AMD Radeon = 7970

I'm about to purchase a custom-build PC = and am trying to decide on a graphics card. I want something that works = well for AE and Cinema 4D. It seems that both these apps rely primarily = on the CPU, and very little on the GPU. All things being equal, I = thought I would go with the Nvidia card because it supports the CS6 = raytracing. But a guy on a forum is -quite- emphatic that I should get = this Radeon card. Can explain to me why he's wrong?

our = conversation went as = follows:
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RALPH: = Buddy. The 670 is not a good card for workstations. NVidia basically = crippled the cuda performance on the 6xx line to make it better for = gaming. Get a 7970 instead, it has way more compute = power.

ME: I want to go with the Nvidia because Radeon isn't = fully supported by this program I use (After Effects.) Also, someone = pointed out to me that most of my concern should be the wait time on = software rendering, so in my case it's more about the CPU. = Anyhow it was helpful to know about the difference between the GTX 6xx = so I'll probably get a 5xx model.

RALPH: That's only mostly = untrue. From Adobe= 's system requirements page, it says only that AMD cards don't = support GPU acceleration, an unnecessary function. Past that, you will = get more power out of the 7970 as the CUDA cores are nearly non-existant = on the 6xx line, and the compute power on the 5xx line isn't close to = the = 7970's.
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