Chipset vs Memory

[Sturge33]

Would it be better to get a video card with a higher speed chipset such as a ATI 9600 or 9800 with 128mb or would it be better to go with an ATI 9200 with 256mb memory?

I don't play games on my pc, but I will be using for capturing and also 3D animation with Ulead 3D Studio.

[Febre]

Go with the faster GPU (Graphic Processing Unit), in this case the 9600 or 9800.

The situation would be similar to choosing a 3GHZ CPU system with 128mb of memory verses a 2GHz CPU system with 1GB of memory- naturally you would choose the 3GHz system cause it can do things faster then the 2GHz system even with less memory.

[thecoalman]

I use that app and you could never throw enough at it, Get the 9800 with 256 megs, you won't regret it. It has no affect on capturing.

[overloaded_ide]

It's really a toss up!!
The only thing the high dollar mega power cards are generally good for is games that do on the fly rendering!!

Many people get REALLY confused about that do to all those "RENDERING ANIMATION" claims the card makers claim.

The fact is your PC, the CPU/system board, and Ram and hardrive speed is what makes or breaks the speed of rendering animation like creating your own cartoons! What you see on the monitor is nothing more than a video!!
The video card has nothing to do with that type of RENDERING at all! It is only a playback device the same as watching a DVD or Mpeg from your hard drive. Actually your finished product I would think will be an AVI, Mpeg, or DVD anyway, so any card that handles that ok is fine for making your animated videos, cartoons, movies ect.. just fine. I know this because I used to do some myself. I used a ATI All IN WONDER, gee maybe it was even the pro model, I think it has 4 megs ram and not even DDR either

Now as for the confusion with games. Those high end games require alot of power from the video card because they render as you play the game.
Turn left, the card gets the raw data (basically) and then renders the view to the left, shoot a gun again raw data to the card and the card renders the shooting flames explosion and the dead guy if you hit your target and that is all on the fly, not saved as frames like animated cartoon video would be.

So any card that shows the details you have in your cartoon as I call them, and will run the resolution you want should be fine. As for capturing, well not that much power is needed for that either, at least not compared to games. So I would say concentrate on that for how much power you need from the card and the other stuff falls in line ok.
My 7500 Radeon is doing me fine for everything (and I capture alot), though I am not a big gamer.

Some of the newer cards may be a bit better for capturing than mine, newer chips, Video Soap, ect.. But mine does everything it needs to do really well and I even capture directly to mpg with it also. I do alot of formats and settings and it handles them all fine.

[thecoalman]

Ummm I hate to do it to you again Overload but Ulead 3-D studio is dependant on a good graphics card for animation. It renders objects like a video game but at a much higher quality since time is not factor. A faster card can make a world of difference.

For example my sig image was made using Cool 3-D. So was this,



Here's a link for a quick animated sample I made up a few weeks ago. www.nepadigital.com/temp/test20.mpg

[overloaded_ide]

The situation would be similar to choosing a 3GHZ CPU system with 128mb of memory verses a 2GHz CPU system with 1GB of memory- naturally you would choose the 3GHz system cause it can do things faster then the 2GHz system even with less memory

In theory only, not true in actual use!
128mgs ram
You are creating a bottlekneck the data will have to fight it's way through and that will slow the over all preformance of the system right there!
Sorta like sticking a 5200rpm drive in the same system, if it can't keep up with the processer then the faster CPU does no good to have anyway.

The less ram you have the more often it is written to and erased, that takes time, the more often you do it the slower the CPU runs! Simply because it is waiting for the ram to send the CPU something to process or waiting for the ram to clear so the CPU can send out the data it has already processed. That wait and the fact it is less data at a time really drags down the CPU. It may be lighting fast at processing the data, but it has to wait all the time for those little chunks to get through that bottlekneck.

Kinda like putting a 20gpm water pump on a 1/2 pipe. You got lots of pressure, water, and the pump can send it at 20gpm but you ain't gonna fill a 20gal bucket in no minute with that 1/2 pipe!!

[thecoalman]

You hate me and my picture don't you..... :P

[overloaded_ide]

Well I'm not familar with Ulead, I used poser and other stuff for more cartoon and movie style animation and for that the video card does not matter.

So how does that get proccessed then through a video card?? How would the program send data to the card, process it, and save it to the file on the hard drive or back to the program? Or is this like a preview only proccessed for display as your working and the data has not actually been rendered for a final product yet and would be the next step?

I am reffering to rendering as creation and the saving of the final product to a file, something you could send to a person and they could watch.
Actually it wouldn't have to be to a file I geuss, just so that it is ready to save to that file.

I haven't done much of that 3d stuff since AutoCAD. And not that much then.

[overloaded_ide]

You hate me and my picture don't you.....

You> <me

Not really

[thecoalman]

Check out the sample clip at the bottom of my above post, you can make it do anything. It's a 3-d object just as you see for example on a video game, such as a 55 gallon drum. You can set the quality, cuvature etc. When previewing you turn everthing down, it requires a touch too because you sometimes have to guess unless you want to wait to see a preview before final output. You just turn everthing up for final output. That is one of the reasons that image is so smooth because it's set on high quality. It takes much longer than real time to render that, maybe 5 or 6 seconds per frame. That's a simple object too, I rendered a 4 second clip with many objects explosions etc that took 4 hours on best quality. It goes up one more notch but the return is not worth the time. If your familiar with cad here's the wireframe for the above image on best setting.



Unfotunatley a lot of that is interanl and uneccesary but it produced the affect I was looking for.

[thecoalman]

You hate me and my picture don't you.....

You> <me

Not really

Glad you have a sense of humor

[overloaded_ide]

Hmm,,, I may want to play with that later too. Is there a trial version of the program that works?

I did try your link but Win Media player opened and all I could get here was about 3/4 turn in about the first 3-4 seconds then it stops. Probably a fault of the slow connection here, I should be at the office later tonight finishing some work, I'll try from there. I have a lan connection to the ISP servers and 2 other good system and a 133 too.

I haven't messed with Cad for years, I had an older version available back then (maybe 6) and I think the newest one was about 9 or 10. Have no idea how high they are by now, maybe Ver. 30 if even still the same program. I geuss that was around 92-94?

Well I hate to run, but I have alot to get done today, my water well still is not working right, though it is working some now. May have to pull the pump. Oh boy, only 300' of steel pipe! I think the well is ok, just no pressure, could be bad wire or pump??

[thecoalman]

Hmm,,, I may want to play with that later too. Is there a trial version of the program that works?

Yep unrestricted 30 days, I think there's a few affects missing. No logo on the output. It's fairly cheap too. About $100-$125.

Right click and save as, it's probably the server.

[Alan69]

The video card has nothing to do with that type of RENDERING at all! It is only a playback device the same as watching a DVD or Mpeg from your hard drive. Actually your finished product I would think will be an AVI, Mpeg, or DVD anyway, so any card that handles that ok is fine for making your animated videos, cartoons, movies ect.. just fine. I know this because I used to do some myself. I used a ATI All IN WONDER, gee maybe it was even the pro model, I think it has 4 megs ram and not even DDR either

Of course that's how you'd see it, you have a 5 year old video card and that's pretty much all it can do. Your analogies are fine, your info would be great if you actually had a modern card and had the right answer. Any modern card and good application does most of the rendering in the card.

The situation would be similar to choosing a 3GHZ CPU system with 128mb of memory verses a 2GHz CPU system with 1GB of memory- naturally you would choose the 3GHz system cause it can do things faster then the 2GHz system even with less memory

In theory only, not true in actual use!
128mgs ram
You are creating a bottlekneck the data will have to fight it's way through and that will slow the over all preformance of the system right there!
Sorta like sticking a 5200rpm drive in the same system, if it can't keep up with the processer then the faster CPU does no good to have anyway.

Kinda like putting a 20gpm water pump on a 1/2 pipe. You got lots of pressure, water, and the pump can send it at 20gpm but you ain't gonna fill a 20gal bucket in no minute with that 1/2 pipe!!

Uh, hate to spoil your analogy but the ram would be the BUCKET, not the pipe. More ram only increases the size of the bucket to hold info, not how fast it gets there. For playback, it's done as a movie file anyway and about anything can do it. For rendering, the GPU or card to system bandwidth will be the bottleneck, not the ram. Unlikely you'd normally render something with enough elements to fill 256 MB with current apps.. Even then a good app would render further back elements first, store as an image, then render foreground elements and put them on top. You'd rarely notice if you had a 128 or 256 MB card.

Ram is for multiple frame buffering and holding more objects in card memory. Game stuff mostly since it has to happen in real time, slight delays will hardly affect making a movie. WIthout caring about double and triple buffering it's unlikely you'll have ram bottlenecks.

The less ram you have the more often it is written to and erased, that takes time, the more often you do it the slower the CPU runs! Simply because it is waiting for the ram to send the CPU something to process or waiting for the ram to clear so the CPU can send out the data it has already processed. That wait and the fact it is less data at a time really drags down the CPU. It may be lighting fast at processing the data, but it has to wait all the time for those little chunks to get through that bottlekneck.

More storage only helps if you can REUSE the storage to refer to, to save time pulling in new info. Using it once saves nothing. For a movie where things happen linearly, it hardly matters. So what you fill 256 MB instead of 128 MB. Soon as you fill up either one, you're pulling stuff in from elsewhere at the same rate. It is like an anti-skip buffer. When things don't happen fast enough to make it skip anyway, it doesn't matter whether you have a 5 second buffer or a 10 second one. More memory is crucial to games, where you constantly reuse the same elements and more in memory saves time getting them back in. It's much less crucial for any linear task.

So how does that get proccessed then through a video card?? How would the program send data to the card, process it, and save it to the file on the hard drive or back to the program? Or is this like a preview only proccessed for display as your working and the data has not actually been rendered for a final product yet and would be the next step?

I haven't done much of that 3d stuff since AutoCAD. And not that much then.

Uh, you shove in your objects, let it render, and read back the frame data, it's pretty trivial. The dedicated GPU is many times more effective at it than the main CPU, and the memory transfer is minimal for a movie.

Ok, you haven't touched 3D in 5 years, have a 5 year old card, and barely have the basics of what to do in your head. Why were you explaining it like you were even remotely up to date before? I don't do much with it myself, but heck I keep up at least just out of sheer curiosity. There's a reason people will pay $400 for a 9800, when a fine for capping 7500 is only $60 or so. Only takes 10 minutes of reading to get most of the reasons, and they apply to rendering for movies just as much as rendering for games.


As with all things, the real answer is it's a trade off depending on exactly what you're doing. It helps to have faster GPU's to use more memory, and it helps to have more memory to use faster GPU's. For movie making, I'd take the faster GPU as long as it's noticably faster, like 30 or 50 percent more, unlikely many current apps even use 256 MB effectively, and you won't see it much for movie making anyway. If the speed differece is marginal though (say under 25%) I'd take the more memory. You won't see the speed difference much then and the 256 may keep the card more useful a while longer. And of course all of this thinking is shifted by the actual difference in price.

Alan

Alan

[Alan69]

You just turn everthing up for final output. That is one of the reasons that image is so smooth because it's set on high quality. It takes much longer than real time to render that, maybe 5 or 6 seconds per frame. That's a simple object too, I rendered a 4 second clip with many objects explosions etc that took 4 hours on best quality. It goes up one more notch but the return is not worth the time. If your familiar with cad here's the wireframe for the above image on best setting.

Sounds like they are doing a lot of extra processing. Something tells me you could use mainly effects that the card does natively, plus a few of the better bang-for-time extra effects, and render output that would be very close to the same with much less time. For sure some of those effects are using a lot of time and contributing almost nothing, probably not worth figuring it out for a one time thing though. Might be worth finding the few worst offenders for time/vs output enhancement and not using them unless needed though.. Heck might get me back into 3D, there are a few specific things I've been wanting to do for a while but have put off getting back up to speed, maybe the tools are a bit better now too. For sure it's faster, my 9600 is far better at 3D than anything I've had before, Armada 2 looks great on it.

Alan

[thecoalman]

There's a reason people will pay $400 for a 9800, when a fine for capping 7500 is only $60 or so. Only takes 10 minutes of reading to get most of the reasons, and they apply to rendering for movies just as much as rendering for games.

First the 9800 pro is only $200. Recently saw the 9800 128 AIW at best buy for $159 after rebate. Second a video card's abilities to render video is negligible. I was able to watch smaller mpg's on on my P233 with a display adapter that used only system resources (all 40mb of ram). Third it has nothing do with capturing to the best of my knowledge except with the ATI AIW which offloads some of the MPEG encoding work to the GPU. So as far as video goes nearly any display card would be adequate which is what overload _ide was stating, he wasn't aware that the app that the poster was reffering too required 3-d rendering.

Sounds like they are doing a lot of extra processing. Something tells me you could use mainly effects that the card does natively, plus a few of the better bang-for-time extra effects, and render output that would be very close to the same with much less time. For sure some of those effects are using a lot of time and contributing almost nothing

Yes it is, requires quite a bit of horsepower to render a couple thousand perfectly round balls plus particle affects. which by the way contributed quite a bit to what I was trying to achieve. But thanks for the advice anyway but I prefer quality over quanity.

[BJ_M]

nvidia is offering now a rendering engine like renderman which uses the graphics card to do a large amount of the rendering in programs like maya and Softimage ...

so - it WAS true that for 3d apps - it was only important to have really good openGL support and lots of texture memory in some cases -- but this isn't always true now -- at least for the rendering cpu's (which might be different than your workstation)

[glockjs]

its all a balance. 9800 is deffinately going to be better though. not just faster but newer technology and features that lack in the 9200.

i just picked up my AIW 9800pro from newegg for 277. i checked today it was back up to 318. still worth it though.

[BJ_M]

where can i get a 9800 pro for only 200$ ?

havent seem them that low -- i want one


edit: thats US$ , bahh -- time it gets to canada it is back to 300$ , what you can buy them for here (350$) almost

[thecoalman]

edit: thats US$ , bahh -- time it gets to canada it is back to 300$ , what you can buy them for here (350$) almost

I was doing the same thing when I was in Canada, evertime I'd look at the price on something I'd think Damn that's expensive then

[Alan69]

[quote="thecoalman"]

First the 9800 pro is only $200. Recently saw the 9800 128 AIW at best buy for $159 after rebate. Second a video card's abilities to render video is negligible. I was able to watch smaller mpg's on on my P233 with a display adapter that used only system resources (all 40mb of ram). Third it has nothing do with capturing to the best of my knowledge except with the ATI AIW which offloads some of the MPEG encoding work to the GPU. So as far as video goes nearly any display card would be adequate which is what overload _ide was stating, he wasn't aware that the app that the poster was reffering too required 3-d rendering.

Yes it is, requires quite a bit of horsepower to render a couple thousand perfectly round balls plus particle affects. which by the way contributed quite a bit to what I was trying to achieve. But thanks for the advice anyway but I prefer quality over quanity.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?id=1069301331350&skuId=6241532&type=product

Didn't think they dropped that far. Probably either the 9600 AIW or 9800 non-AIW you saw, $50+ in rebates, I'd be surprised if it was really the 9800 AIW and $250 in rebates. But yes the 9800 non-AIW would be equal for just rendering unless some program can use the inbuilt partial MPEG encoder in the AIW to do some work, likely not or not much anyway. But the OP did say capturing, so that is what I used. Upgraded to the 9600 AIW myself several months back when they dropped to $150, so I tend to notice the ads.

" Second a video card's abilities to render video is negligible. I was able to watch smaller mpg's on on my P233 with a display adapter that used only system resources (all 40mb of ram)."

THAT was my point. It takes nothing to display it, that is not relevant. That you could watch it on your old P233 has noting to do with whether your new card can do initial rendering or not. My 9600 does quite a bit more than "negligible" rendering on the fly, and a 9800 has several advancements over it. With proper programming the engine could even be used to do part or all of many effects not native to the card, in addition to it's native effects. If you turn on every effect all the time and overrender everything, then you may not see too much difference. But anything the card can do helps, and it can greatly speed blocking and test runs where you don't have to have every extra effect turned on.

Actually, O_I was saying this "The video card has nothing to do with that type of RENDERING at all!", when it's actually trivial to have the card do it's rendering and read the output from the memory. It isn't just on the fly, you can easily render back to memory, and it has nothing to do with just what it takes to display a movie, any card can do that. Modern cards can do a hefty amount of rendering on their own, Doom 3 screens etc don't just happen in real time on their own. Slower to read it out of card memory and write it to a file than just display, but much slower still to do that same level of rendering with the CPU. A fast CPU simply can't play a 3D game by itself, a good card can do a hell of a lot of rendering on it's own not just movie playing, and there is nothing to limit it to only on the fly rendering. There's a reason the newer apps are starting to require the cards, and it's not because the card does nothing but display a regular movie.

Yes, quality is great. But if you have 3 or 4 effects turned way up that use 50% to your time but aren't actually doing anything discernable to your video output, you aren't getting 'more quality'. You're only doubling your time for nothing. And in most of these programs, a few of the effects are far more time intensive than others, good to find them and only use the minimal amount needed of those. Still doesn't matter much if you don't care about times for only your final render and it's a one time hit, but it's definitely wasted time not more quality if it's not doing anything extra.

[glockjs]

edit: thats US$ , bahh -- time it gets to canada it is back to 300$ , what you can buy them for here (350$) almost

[studtrooper]

Heh heh. Funny thing is, there is like, what, one or two PC games that can actually utilize more than 128mb of video ram (Doom III and FarCry). And to play those games the right way, you need something pretty damn powerful. I love seeing people buy cards based on the amount of ram it has and not studing on how powerful the entire card is. OMG d00d, my Geforce 5200FX 256mb can TOTALLY handle Doom III!

[overloaded_ide]

Of course that's how you'd see it, you have a 5 year old video card and that's pretty much all it can do. Your analogies are fine, your info would be great if you actually had a modern card and had the right answer. Any modern card and good application does most of the rendering in the card.

First I have alot of equipment, not just 5 year old stuff. When I was rendering animation I had a 4mb AIW I bought cheap from a friend, WHY, because he went with one of the great all powerfull "RENDERING GOD" cards for tons of money and did not need the little AIW he sold me. He even got some kind of video glasses with his card. Plug em in like you would head phones, but little 3D monitors instead of speakers. I think they were 3D.
My first ATI AIW. 4mb I think, but NOT my first capture card! And yes I am still using it in a system as a video card, though I have not captured with it for years now.

Anyway we would go head to head and in real life time my system with a little more ram and a little faster CPU beat the heck out of his with the very expensive video card with all the great rendering claims. Not just sometimes, but everytime! The video card had nothing to do with that type of rendering, as I stated.

Also not long ago, about 1 yr I was talking to both a MAJOR video card rep and a MAJOR CPU rep, both told me at seperate times in seperate conversions the same thing I stated about Video cards render games on the fly but had nothing to do with rendering animation and saving the results. The video card rep even lost a sale in so stating that fact as I was gonna buy a new card from him. Now I would say off hand the guy turned down a $300-$400 sale telling me the card would not do WORk any better than what I had already, I should beleave him..

As for the part about RAM vers CPU, I have 5 pretty new systems each configured differently in some way. I go from 1700 and 1gig 266fsb to 2500 barton with 333fsb and 512mb. I have a few things to compare here.
Thinking of building a 64bit just for fun soon also.
Anyway, unless making a radical jump in CPU speed, normally more ram would be better unless you already have the max you can actually use. Not just my opion, has been agreed with by CPU reps also in personal conversations.
Also when a friend was complaining how slow his PC Creeped along with a 2500 Barton 333FSB I went over to check it out. (I repair and service alot of systems) . He had 128mb PC2100 DDR in his system and it was turtle slow compared to my 1700 with 1gig DDR. I installed a 512 stick of PC2700 (or faster) and his system is now about the speed of mine. So yes ram does make a difference, although that's the PC itself and not a video card I am reffering to.

I meet alot of reps at times in various places, but it has been awhile.

As for the 3D program, nope I'm not familair with that as Coalman said, so perhaps I was wrong there. I was thinking of more standard animation rendering like for cartoon type movies/shows.
Also maybe some things have changed recently with some of the newer stuff.
Next time I see the Reps I'll have to ask them what's new I geuss

[thecoalman]

Yes, quality is great. But if you have 3 or 4 effects turned way up that use 50% to your time but aren't actually doing anything discernable to your video output, you aren't getting 'more quality'. You're only doubling your time for nothing. And in most of these programs, a few of the effects are far more time intensive than others, good to find them and only use the minimal amount needed of those. Still doesn't matter much if you don't care about times for only your final render and it's a one time hit, but it's definitely wasted time not more quality if it's not doing anything extra.

I don't waste my time......

When you take object 1:


And blow it up into objects 500-700 maybe even more if you look at example 3:


And objects are round:


Throw in some particle affects such as fire and smoke, render a full 720x480 frame and it's going to take some time.

[racerxnet]

I add transitions and 3D effects to my customers movies with the Rex Pro and feel its a combination of all things working together. The best bang for the buck was adding the full amount of RAM to the system for processing the effects. I'm using a Matrox G550 card for dual display, certainly nothing fancy about this card.

What help in my situation is that the system is hardware based regarding the effects and I do not have to rely on the software for the rendering in 3D. As the system gets more powerful , ie; CPU, motherboard, RAM, one can rely on the software itself.

I run the quality settings at 100% for both viewing and rendering with no slowdown in rendering speed. I output to the Sony TV in realtime to see how the effects look and also for viewing the final product for the customer. For transition effects such as flames, smoke, fractals, PIPs, which total in the thousands you can use Adorage ProDAD. http://www.adorage.de/gb/index.html

Most important is to laern and have fun.

MAK