What are the differences between a process card and an accel card?

[mboxpro]

Hi I want to know what are the differences between both cards and why the process card is out of business today.

[crizdee]

Originally Posted by mboxpro

Hi I want to know what are the differences between both cards and why the process card is out of business today.

The quick answer...

Accel has some more powerful chips and enables more plugins! almost 2x as many plugs as the process card. depends somewhat on which plugs, most have been maxxed for accel. also some plugins will only run on accel cards.

[Bobby Peru]

I heard swapping an Accel card for a regular Process card in an HD3 system gives only about a 15% increase in total system processing power. I have a Core, 1 Accel and 1 Process card. I thought about swapping out my 2nd process card but never had, because the benefit to the system doesn't seem worth it.

Bobby Peru
Milwaukee, WI

[mboxpro]

So why digidesign manufactured the process card instead of the accel card since the begining of the hd, the protools 6.1 runs with process cards and the 6.4 with accels cards, there is not so much time from 6.1 to 6.4 so why not manufactured the accel cards at the begining????

[derF]

Availability of the more powerful chip (and the cheaper cost). That and the fact that HD has been around since OS9 and PT5.3.1.

As to the original question, I don't think it's worth the money. I did the same upgrade for a client to 2xAccel cards and he couldn't tell the difference. Unless you have money to burn stick with 1 of each. I have a non-Accel HD3 system and am very happy with it.

[Andre Knecht]

Originally Posted by derF

[…] I don't think it's worth the money. I did the same upgrade for a client to 2xAccel cards and he couldn't tell the difference.

It depends on the nature of your work. If you track large sessions at high sampling rates, or if mixing is your bread and butter, then Accel cards are a must — and more than just a pair, I might add. I constantly ran out of DSP with an HD4 system (3+1). Adding a fourth Accel card made a big difference. And no, I don’t have money to burn — I leave that to investment bankers.

IHTH.

[BaileyBass]

Originally Posted by Andre Knecht

And no, I don’t have money to burn — I leave that to investment bankers.

IHTH.

But... the investment bankers will soon be burning our (tax) money too

Adding an Accel card to my HD2 made a world of difference. SB

[Delta Music Belgium]

I have an HD 7 Accel PCI (1 HD Core + 6 HD Accel) in a 64 bit 7 slot PCI expansion chassis, from time to time it gets maxed out (96 audio tracks, 44,1 kHz, 3 to 4 TDM plug-in's on each track)