Tayedrummer wrote:
I'm in the process of building this new system but I'd like to get it into a Radius EX chasis from Next Computing (http://www.nextcomputing.com/products/portable-workstations/radius-ex) so it is easy to bring on set. That chasis can only accept an ATX sized motherboard so I'm likely going with a single 8-core E5 Xeon, GPU and Red Rocket.
The CPU choice seems pretty straight forward since the comon render codec's seem to lean heavily on the CPU.
The GPU choice is up in the air though. The 6000 card is prohibitively priced. 5000 is within reach but it is still over twice the price of the 580 that many people seem to recommend as the strength of the Quadro's is supposedly in 3D and CAD applications. I'm running a GTX 480 and a Red Rocket on a 3 year old i7 960 machine and I get realtime performance of Red and C300 media in Premiere and ScratchLAB. Between that and threads like (http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?77102-Quadro-or-GTX-for-ne w-system) it seems like a GTX might do the trick. Of course, I haven't heard from anyone at Adobe or with Speedgrade experience so I'm checking here to make sure I'm not crippling Speedgrade.
SpeedGrade is designed for single CPU + single GPU workstations. You'll be totally ok using the single 8-core ES Xeon.
The best choice of GPU is definitely a Quadro 4000 / 5000 / 6000, but the Geforce should do the trick if you don't need to work with SDI gear at all. SDI output would require a Quadro SDI setup and is not available for the GeForce series.
As for differences in performance: if your main format is RED, and if you're already committed to using a rocket, the Quadro 5000 has been the most typical choice in the past. It leaves you with enough wiggle room for intense grading on high resolution material.
