Rendering SLI 2X260gtx or gtx275

[Blumhaefer]

Will rendering movies using SLI gtx260s be better than one gtx275.
2 X gtx260 896Mb cards are the same price as a gtx 275 1Gb.

[Aaron_8015]

Hi and welcome.

Im not in the know to video rendering, but 2x 260's are faster than a 275. You would have to make sure the software will support and use multi-gpu setups.

[Blumhaefer]

I am using Windows Movie maker and Pinnacle and I will have to check if they will support multiple gpu setups.
Is the multi- gpu set up you are referring to SLI by another description or name?

[Aaron_8015]

Oh. Okay then, I would say that those don't really use GPU power, but having a fast quadcore and fast hard drives (SSD or Raid0 setup) will speed that up. If you don't play games or do 3d rendering then picking up a slower gpu will leave you more for cpu, hdd and RAM.

[pullmyfoot]

actually the fast HD is secondary to rendering speeds.. they are more than enough. its only if you deal with many large files then it might come in useful. but again nothing to do with rendering speeds. you might be able to access them a little faster and the editing will be smoother though. I suggest you upgrade your CPU first. if you already have one of those GPUs stick with it. Its really more than enough. I doubt multi-GPU setups will scale very well anyways. If you are really into this, go spend the money on a workstation graphics card instead. Since you seem to have quite a big budget.

[KarmaKiller]

If you use Badaboom, it uses CUDA to render. And it is dramatically faster then CPU rendering, no matter what CPU your going up against.
And I'm pretty sure it doesn't support SLI, only 1 GPU.

[ShyguyXPC]

hmmm, going to check that out, have some recent FRAPS videos I need to convert and don't feel like loading and installing Adobe Premiere or messing with Windows Movie Maker (prone to crashing).

figure the GTX 285 should render the videos blazing fast.

[Blumhaefer]

I am thinking of going middle of the road with a single GTX275 in my system with an i7 920, 12GB Ram and P6T DeluxeV2 Mobo.

My AMD 64X2 5000, 2Gb RAM with on board video was just not powerfull enough for creating and rendering around 1 hour videos. Lock up 98% of the time.

A workstation card is too expensive for my amatuer video work.

[ShyguyXPC]

Middle of the road? dang, what's the upper end?

i7 920 is pretty powerful as it is, unless you move up to a higher clocked i7 or Xeon, or multiple CPU's, not much better than that.

GTX275 is only a step down from the 285, and the 285 is the most powerful single GPU card out right now. only option better, until ATI's 5xxx series comes out this month, is to step up to a GTX 295 really but thats dual GPU's.

12GB's should be more than enough too.

only running 3GB atm with my 920.

but you should notice a fairly big increase over the X2 5000 easily.

[Blumhaefer]

I was at a Lions meeting last night and ran into a friend that builds systems and has gotten into video work.
He says he uses one system for editing and another separate system for rendering.
He believes that other software causes conflict with the video editing software. No two video software installs allowed on the rendering machine. Not even Windows Media Player.
He fresh installs after each project. Seems to be overboard but if it works, what the heck!!!
So he keeps his separate rendering machine with fresh installs of the OS and rendering software.
I will try the same approach, one machine for editing the video and a separate machine for rendering.