New Video Card?

[TobyTucker]

I was just curious what everyone's thoughts were on video cards. I have a Mac Pro 8 core 3.2 computer running Vista 64. The video card is a ATI Radeon X19'' with 512 MB of memory. I was looking at possibly the new NVidia Quadro FX 48'' for mac card. This has 1.5 GB memory and way better specs. But before I drop $15''-$18'' I want to make sure I will see an increase in performace running lightroom and photoshop. If the only real world increase would be if I was doing 3D, then I will save my money. Just trying to get whatever performance increase or lag removal I can get.

Any thoughts?

Thanks,
Toby

 

[Brad Snyder]

Not likely to help with Lr. Lr puts very little load on video at present.

PSCS4 can integrate to some extent with recent GPUs, but I have no personal experience with that.

 

[breyman]

Agreed on LR - you won't notice huge increases there.

It does help w/PS, especially if you are working on VERY large files or doing other similar tasks. If you're simply doing basic edits to files opened from LR --> PS, you probably wouldn't get a comparable bang for your buck, IMO.

Those cards tend to make the difference in video. For example, with Premiere Pro when editing H.264 footage (like AVCHD files that come out of some of today's consumer HD camcorders). If you do anything in that area, it's definately worth it as you'd see some serious improvements in editing smoothness and export times.