Choosing The Right GPU To Take Adobe Workflows To The Max

Nvidia by Dave Helmly

As the Adobe Pro Video & Audio Field Team manager for the Americas, I lead a team responsible for working with customers and vendors on the newest technologies that benefit our Pro Video and Audio applications.

We share our findings with the senior engineering teams and product managers, giving them insight into the real workflow benefits of these new technologies. The result: fine-tuned versions of each application, ready to leverage the GPU and tackle the next workflow challenge.

One example of our close collaboration with NVIDIA is our new Mercury Transmit feature, which gives partners a simple programming interface through which they can hook up hardware to Adobe Premiere Pro, Prelude and Encore. NVIDIA and Adobe engineers created the Transmit plug-in to allow Quadro SDI boards to take advantage of Mercury Transmit throughout the entire CS6 Production Premium suite, including our new Color Grading application, Speed Grade.

There are five CS6 workflows that I see most users falling into. Here are my recommendations of NVIDIA GPU setups best-suited for each.

Full CS6 Production Premium Suite workflow

For heavy users of After Effects, Premiere Pro, SpeedGrade and Photoshop, you’ll want to select either the Quadro 5000 or 6000, depending on your After Effects needs. The more memory you have on the card (6000 has the most @ 6GB), the longer the After Effects RAM previews.

For more GPU power, you can add an NVIDIA Tesla C2075 board. This is essentially an NVIDIA Maximus setup and is insanely fast. This provides a dual GPU config for After Effects users. NVIDIA Quadro SDI boards are also supported in CS6 Premiere Pro using NVIDIA’s new Mercury Transmit driver. **Note** check your power supply requirements when using two or more boards in your system. read more...