ATI Radeon 4870 vs NVIDIA GT 120 - which best for video editing?

One of my main purposes in using the new Mac Pro would be fast video editing/conversion. As the only benchmark available for ATI/NVIDIA cards published by Apple refers to a high level graphic game (thus referring to number of frames, refresh time and so on), I wonder if the same BIG difference (2.9x to 6.6x from the older Mac Pro) would be noticeable in video editing and conversion (say iMovie/Final Cut for the first, VisulHub/Handbrake for the second purpose). Any hint? Obviously I know I'd wait more for an ATI card and the 10.5.7 release.

Thanks

Mac Pro 2.66GHz 8 core, Mac OS X (10.5.6), intent to buy as BTO

Posted on Mar 5, 2009 1:35 AM

16 replies

The hatter

Level 9

61,031 points

Mar 12, 2009 11:32 AM in response to Tony Giordano

There is no reason under the sun why you can't have each and not exceed the 300W. I doubt the Nvidia 120 needs its own aux connector. You can check places like Tom's Hardware for idle and heavy max load to see what each card draws.

Of course 300 could still cramp your style if you want to have some other high powered cards like SAS/SATA and others - Apple FC or Pro RAID cards.

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ATI Radeon 4870 vs NVIDIA GT 120 - which best for video editing?

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