Need help choosing between AJA Kona LHe v. BM Multibridge Pro

Hi gang,
I'm purchasing a MacPro 3GHz and need to put in one of these cards to bring in component and SDI signals. Big differences seem to be:
* Multibridge has HDMI output for monitoring, AJA does not although AJA has two SDI outs (which requires SDI->HDMI converter for monitoring at extra $$).
* AJA has DVCProHD and Dynamic RT effects hardware acceleration but the Multibridge does not.
Question: is the hardware acceleration on the AJA worth the price difference? Or is this a bunch of hogwash and the Multibridge performs just fine with FCP Studio with DVCProHD and RT effect?
Any other comparison experiences between these two cards will be most helpful!
Thanks.
MacPro 3GHz Mac OS X (10.4.8)

i bought a multibridge extreme a couple months ago, and returned it for a few reasons:
1)- cheap, unbalanced fan made a **** of a racket...
2)- the box kept interfering with my monitors (they would start cycling on and off when the box was hooked to the computer.
I was super disappointed in the service i received from BM (after Kaspar Ko told me to contact him, he never answered any of my emails). I have heard BM support pales in comparison to Aja, but Aja is more expensive.
the multibridge needs some help, and i am sure will eventually be an awesome tool (right now i am hounding the boys who make scopebox to upgrade to multi input capture to work with the multibridge's 2 sdi inputs for mutlicam capture on a single macpro), but for now they have to spend a little more time on R&D.
Used the Kona2 at a studio last summer that i was working for and found it pretty flawless...

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The video signal seems to drop out during playback and audio drops out as well.
I have the newest drivers for Kona 9.0.3 and using the 8,5 aja adobe plugin for CS5. I didn't want to install the the AJA Adobe CS5.5 plugins in fear of messing things up.
I have uninstalled and reinstalled both the control panel and the plugins with no luck, The editor seems to be fine its mainly the playback in the monitor that's not working right.
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Kind of similar. The audio issue is like that. Drops out until I stop playback then restart playback. AJA said to not use kona card but uot put setting instead. That helps but didn't fix it 100% Video playback drops out completely for me with the HDMI out of the LHi. The component out from the LHe works better.
My playback in the program looks good my issue is with external the external monitor playback.
I'm editing with ProRes 422 LT and ProRes 422
Nice video sample. Thats a good way to show your issue. I should do the same thing.

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we did install the new drivers (v4) and it still didn't work. Apparently, the IT guy here is going to call AJA later today. It's good to hear they have great tech support. I feel like noone does anymore.
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Loading the 7.0 drivers causes the display to
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Configuration:
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* Kona LHe board
* 7.0 driver
* Mac Pro
* Intel 2 X 2.66 dual-core xeon processors
Tested by installing a "virgin" 10.6, rebooted,
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wakes back up multiple times.
Installed the 7.0 drivers:
http://www.aja.com/ajashare/AJAKonaLHe7.0.zip
Rebooted. Put the system to sleep.
Wake it back up (key stroke or mouse)
The display is frozen completely, and displays
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went to sleep (the seconds on the time/date
are frozen as of the time the system went
to sleep.)
Rebooted in 64-bit mode. The display is still
frozen after waking up from sleep.
The only thing that changed on this virgin 10.6
install was adding the AJA Kona LHe drivers. There
are no other boards in the computer.
Also tried upgrading to 10.6.1. Same results.
So, do you guys have any tips or ideas
I could try to fix this problem and keep
the system from seizing-up when it goes
to sleep?
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Thanks in advance for any feedback
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BACKGROUND INFO (Questions listed below)
I need some help figuring out the best hardware configuration for a new laptop. I’m a student at a design school and I will be using the laptop to mainly run After Effects and to a lesser extent Photoshop and Illustrator. I don’t need to worry about 3D rendering software or Premier Pro. I am primarily interested in getting the best performance during editing. I am not looking for the best performance for final output. I would prefer to sacrifice final output times for better editing/interface performance.
I will be working with standard definition content and perhaps HD up to 720p on occasion. I do not need to operate in resolutions higher than 720p. My projects are generally animation and use many sources and many layers.
I’ve been reading up on optimal hardware configurations for CS5 but my understanding is still a little foggy and I would like to use this thread to figure out how to build the best machine for my budget. The budget is about $1400 to $1600 CANADIAN after tax.
I DON’T need help finding the laptop. I will search for it on my own. I just need to understand the best hardware to purchase within my budget.
I realize that it is probably impossible to buy the laptop I want with the hardware configuration I need “off the shelf”. Instead I will be looking for a good base model (~$900-$1100) and I will purchase the necessary hardware upgrades separately. I will not be purchasing a Mac.
Right now I’m thinking of a machine built something like this:
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- SSD to replace HDD (However, if possible, I would like a laptop with dual HDD support or swap the optical drive for another HDD. If I had access to 2 drives, I would have and HDD/SSD combo).
- Medium/high end NVIDIA GPU to take advantage of OpenGL while editing.
QUESTIONS
1) Does the “Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously” option enhance general editing performance (applying filters, scrubbing through the timeline, reverting history states)? Or does it ONLY help speed up RAM previews and final output? Does it reduce the length of RAM previews?
1b) Is this option even necessary to enable on 64bit systems? (As far as I understand it was used to solve a problem where 32bit systems/software would only recognize 4GB of RAM per instance of AE).
1c) If I turn this option on to help with RAM previews, would I be hindering general editing performance in any way? Or does this option have basically zero drawbacks?
2) How come “Actual CPUs that will be used” will read 0 even if the sum total of RAM assigned to the CPUs plus the RAM reserved for other applications is less than the total available system RAM (on a 64bit system)? For example, I currently have 4GB RAM and 2 installed CPUs. I have 1.5GB reserved for other programs and when I set 0.75GB per CPU both CPUs are used. However when I set 1GB per CPU then 0 CPUs are used, even though the total RAM adds up to only 3.5GB.
CPU
3.) Considering the fact that I am more concerned with smooth performance while editing rather than final output speeds, would it be better to get a dual core i5 clocked around 2.5 or a quad core i7 clocked around 1.8?
4.) What is the difference between an i3 and an i5 processor even if they are clocked at the same speed? How does an i5 460M compare on the grand scheme of things?
RAM
6.) Should the quantity of RAM that I get (8GB vs 12GB) be based on the number of cores in my CPU? If so, how should I be calculating optimal RAM based on # of cores. Should I also be counting threads, or just actual physical cores?
STORAGE/SWAP
7.) Should I replace the HDD with an SSD? I'm looking for snappy interface performance while editing. I would think that if the RAM fills up it would be best to have the SSD for scratch/cache.
8.) What performance benchmarks are most important when considering an SSD for After Effects? (4k writes? IOs per second? Max read/write?)
9.) I can afford the OCZ Vertex2 120GB SSD. Would this be a good choice if an SSD is recommended?
10.) Would it be better to have 8GB of RAM and an SSD, or 12GB of RAM and an HDD? Explain why.
GPU
10.) After Effects utilizes OpenGL to enhance editing performance. I will not really be using Premier Pro, so catering to the CUDA Mercury Engine is not a concern. Do high end gaming cards provide significant gains in OpenGL performance? Or do OpenGL performance gains taper off around the mid-range GPUs? (i.e. can you justify buying a high end GTX 260M graphics card for enhanced editing performance versus an "entry level" dedicated card like the 310M?)
11.) What hardware specs are most important when considering a GPU for editing performance in AE? (Memory size? # of Pixel shaders? Core speed? Shader speed?)
Thanks so much for any answers you can offer to these questions.

Please make sure that you've read through this page and what it points to.
> 1) Does the “Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously” option
enhance general editing performance (applying filters, scrubbing through
the timeline, reverting history states)? Or does it ONLY help speed up
RAM previews and final output? Does it reduce the length of RAM
previews?
It only increases rendering speed for RAM previews and rendering for final output. In After Effects CS5, it doesn't decrease the length of RAM previews. (In CS4, it does.)
1b) Is this option even necessary to enable on 64bit
systems? (As far as I understand it was used to solve a problem where
32bit systems/software would only recognize 4GB of RAM per instance of
AE).
You misunderstood. Yes, it's still relevant on 64-bit computers. Moreso, in a way. (I'd rather not spend my entire Sunday writing out detailed answers to satisfy idle curiosity, so I'm not going to give all the technical detail to that answer.)
> 1c) If I turn this option on to help with RAM previews,
would I be hindering general editing performance in any way? Or does
this option have basically zero drawbacks?
It takes a small but nonzero time for the background processes to start up when they need to be used and shut down when they're done. And as they sit waiting, they take up a little bit of memory. So, it's not exactly correct to say that there are no downsides to leaving it on. But it's close. I leave it on.
> 2) How come “Actual CPUs that will be used” will read 0 even
if the sum total of RAM assigned to the CPUs plus the RAM reserved for
other applications is less than the total available system RAM (on a
64bit system)? For example, I currently have 4GB RAM and 2 installed
CPUs. I have 1.5GB reserved for other programs and when I set 0.75GB per
CPU both CPUs are used. However when I set 1GB per CPU then 0 CPUs are
used, even though the total RAM adds up to only 3.5GB.
4GB - 1.5GB for other software leaves 2.5 GB for After Effects.
If you have 1GB assigned per background CPU, then the foreground takes 1.2x that = 1.2GB. That leaves 1.3GB for background processes, which is enough for one background process. There's no point in starting only one background process to do rendering, so it doesn't bother. (Note: When background processes are rendering, the foreground process isn't rendering.)
> 3.) Considering the fact that I am more concerned with
smooth performance while editing rather than final output speeds, would
it be better to get a dual core i5 clocked around 2.5 or a quad core i7
clocked around 1.8?
Get the quad-core. That gives you a greater total number of cycles. And After Effects works very well with mutliple processors, even beyond Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously multiprocessing. An entirely unrelated sort of multiprocessing (multithreading) spreads work out to multiple processors.
> 6.) Should the quantity of RAM that I get (8GB vs 12GB) be based on the number of cores in my CPU? If
so, how should I be calculating optimal RAM based on # of cores. Should
I also be counting threads, or just actual physical cores?
The optimum amount is the amount that you can cram into the computer. I'm not kidding. Spend your budget on RAM until you have 4GB installed per processor (and I'm counting the virtual processors due to hyperthreading). If you have a quad-core, that's 8 CPUs with hyperthreading, so the optimum amount of RAM installed is 32GB. You can work with less, but you did ask about optimum. For HD work (i.e., 1920 pixels across), you're OK with more like 3GB installed per CPU. That's what I have at home: 24GB in a quad-core. You're going to assign 2/3 or so of the RAM to After Effects, so 3GB installed per CPU is 2GB per core for HD work in After Effects.
> 10.) Would it be better to have 8GB of RAM and an SSD, or 12GB of RAM and an HDD? Explain why.
12GB of RAM. Because After Effects likes RAM. (If you're thinking of deliberatly using virtual memory to swap memory to the hard disk, don't. That's a performance killer.)
> 10.) After Effects utilizes OpenGL to enhance editing performance.
Not really. If you're on a limited budget, don't even think about the GPU until you've already got the most RAM, the fastest CPUs, the largest number of CPUs, two fast hard disks, and a couple of good monitors. Then, and only then, should you even consider getting soemthing beyond a non-stock graphics card. Yes, OpenGL can be used to accelerate some things, but that's only for the low-fidelity preview renderer. (Pardon the bluntness, but I want to make sure that you heed this.)

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Quote
also what DDR and MHZ clock, DRAM fequency etc does the ram have to be
http://global.msi.eu/index.php?func=proddesc&maincat_no=1&prod_no=1039
Quote
• Supports DDR2 533/400 memory interface.
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http://global.msi.eu/uploads/test_report/TR10_1039.pdf

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Hi,
We have a G5 that has a new AJA Kona 3, Final Cut Pro 5.1.4, and OS 10.4.9. The problem is that when you try and do anything in Final Cut Pro it runs amazingly slow.
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Cheers,
Dave

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Need help choosing between AJA Kona LHe v. BM Multibridge Pro

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