Quadro / Tesla / Cubix

Hi

I am building a home color correction suite with a Mac Pro and Cubix chassis.

Do Resolve / Cubix work with the nVidia Tesla cards?

If not what is the fastest GPU possible - Quadro 6000?

Is it a waste of power to use one for the GUI card?

Also what is the best nVidia card to use to connect monitoring - the nVidia 4K capture card?

Any help greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

Shane
shanedaly.info

[Peter Chamberlain]

Hi Shane, most of your answers can be found in the config guides of which links are provides at the top of this section.
Peter

Thanks Peter. I did study the config specs but wasn't sure if there are definitive i.e if other setups would also work? It's also a little confusing in that dual slot cards are supported but the document also states that only one GTX 690 can be used in a Cubix?

Basically I'm trying to determine the absolute fastest possible setup with current standards and technology.

My logic is that 3 x GTX 680 = 4608 CUDA cores VS 1 x 690 = 3072 CUDA cores hence the 680 route is faster?

The Cubix Rackmount Elite can hold more cards but I am unsure whether Resolve will use them?

Also how is the Red workload divided between Rocket cards for debayering and CUDA cards for image processing after the debayer?

Thanks again, any advice appreciated!

[Peter Chamberlain]

The Mac OS X supports four GPUs. One for UI and three for processing. In your expander you can put two 690 but you wont get the full benefit if you have the UI GPU, like a Q4000 in the MacPro.

A rocket will decompress and debayer the r3d files and then all these images, rgb pixel data, are sent to the GPUs for image processing, then to the UI GPU for viewer display, cursors etc, and then to the DeckLink for the HD-SDI output to your grading monitor.

The CUDA core math is not a simple as 1+1+1 = 3.... each GPU card has different VRAM (you will want 3 or 4GB) and different internal memory types, shared and global, and memory bus speed.. etc, etc etc.

Three 680's is a nice combo if you get then at the right price. The obsolete 580 was the best price performance but is not hard to get. If you mix and match image processing GPUs the slowest GPU will be the speed bump for all of them.

Use the DeckLink for the HD-SDI I/O... the Q4000 for the UI monitor.
Peter

Thanks Peter, that all makes sense.

I'm really looking to build to fastest home PC setup possible without actually spending on a full licensed Linux resolve.

I researched all last week on the best home Resolve setup and went from OSX Hackintosh to Linux to PC and eventually back to OSX as I learned more. I need ProRes support which pushed it to OSX.

So far I have settled on these components;
- Resolve for Mac OSX license on Mountain Lion
- Corsair Obsidian 900D case
- ASUS LGA2011 Intel C602 DDR3 1600 SATA III Motherboard Z9PE-D8 WSIntel Xeon Eight-Core E5-2687W 3.1GHz 8.0GT/s 20MB LGA2011Corsair Hydro Series
- 2 x Intel Xeon Eight-Core E5-2687W 3.1GHz 8.0GT/s 20MB LGA2011
- 64Gb Corsair Dominator 2100Mhz
- 2 x Extreme Performance Liquid CPU Cooler H100i
Cubix Expander for;
3 x EVGA GeForce GTX 680 FTW 4096MB GDDR5, DVI, DVI-D, HDMI, DisplayPort
1 x Red Rocket Card
- GUI = 1 x Quadro 4000 for Mac
- Decklink 4k card
- Apple Display as GUI monitor (via Displayport?)
- 4 Monitoring undecided as yet
- RAID storage currently undecided

I wanted to build a Thunderbolt setup but have preferred the twin Xeon motherboard to a single i7 core - I need a super stable environment so am not over-clocking.

So my questions are;
Are these the top of the line components??
Is there a better setup?
I read conflicting info about the advantages of 2/3Gb 580 PCIe2 cards vs 4Gb 680 PCIe3 cards? Which is the definitive best for OSX Resolve work?
Why not use 4 x 680 (1 x 680 as the GUI)?
Why are Quadro seen to better with so many less CUDA cores? Is the larger memory bus the deal breaker?
Is an all Quadro / Tesla system better for Resolve (and worth the larger expense)?? They aren't approved by DaVinci.. Would 4 x Quadro 6000 work??
Is the Windows advantage of another GPU and more RAM worth the pain of dealing with the OS? (I hate Windows!)
What are the advantages of DVI over HDMI?

I am trying to build a system which will be relatively future proof moving into a 6k / 4k world.

Thanks again for any advice.

Shane
shanedaly.info

3 x Classified GTX580's will probably get you the best possible performance (even over the 680s) as of TODAY - but they're slightly hard to come by now. They also each require three power feeds, so you need to keep that in mind when building the system. Assuming you can power them - they'll be the fast option.

On a Mac OS system, if you had 3 x Classified GTX580's for CUDA, and a Quadro 4000 for GUI - then that would be a dream system.

The Quadro 4000 is pretty rubbish compared to the GTX5xx and GTX6xx in terms of CUDA performance. It's a great choice for GUI - but not so good for CUDA processing, despite the price tag. We have a Quadro 4000 in one of our MacPro Resolve suites at the moment - and it does the job, but as soon as we upgrade from Resolve 8 to 9, and move from Snow Leopard to Lion, we're putting in a GTX690.

I've seen others here using 4 x Quadro 6000's - and they get fantastic results - but the Classified GTX580's are substantially cheaper and give you much better performance.

Personally - I would probably go with a Apple MacPro over a Hackintosh for reliability and stability reasons. Although you can definitely build a more powerful Hackintosh, with newer processors, really the performance boast you'll get compared to a fully spec'ed out MacPro is pretty minimal. Having top-of-the-line GPUs and fast storage is probably more important than straight CPU speed. Also, the MacPro has a lot of enterprise-level architecture, that gives it a boast compared to "consumer" hardware. Again, you can definitely built a Hackintosh that can smash a MacPro on specs - but for standalone Resolve work, a fully spec-ed out MacPro will do the job.

In terms of Windows vs Mac vs Linux - you can have up to three CUDA GPUs on Mac OS, four on Windows and eight on Linux. So in theory, you can get more processing power out of Windows than MacOS - although Linux kills them both.

In terms of storage - check the Config Guide for some recommendations.

Hope this helps!

Best Regards, Chris!