Anyone have any benchmarks on the performance difference between these?  If so, when and where would you see it?  If any Avid engineers would like to chime in, that would be most helpful.

Bump.

Rob G?   Brian W?

I have recently compared FX1500 and FX3700 which are two different generations but the results are probably of a same importance. With the MC3's ability to use GPU for rendering the performance of the GPU gets finally its meaning. While with 2.7/2.8 there was absolutelly no point in getting FX3500 (unless you wanted to have Stereo-out), now with the 3.0 the difference is huge. Most importantly it seems like MC3 is unable to use the GPU rendering with the old FX1500/FX3500 range, while it does miracles with FX3700. My test 45s sequence took 50 minutes to render on MC2.8 and none of the effects were real-time. With MC3 all the effects are real-time and rendering takes 2 minutes. Of course the multiple cores support help as well, but in the end it comes to the fact that it makes no sense to go for FX1500/FX3500 these days. FX3700 works just fine with 2.8 as well as 3.0, including full-screen playback.

Thanks for the detailed response.  I'm looking at some refurbished xw8400's.  They are offered with 1500's and 3500's but no 3700's .... I guess I'll keep looking.  Regarding the procs, I'll start a new thread to keep things organized.

well since the prices went dramatically down on the new Quadro FX series i suggest getting the cheaper 1500 with your refurbished system and get the 1700/3700 separatelly from your local distributor. I would suggest getting the 3700. if you look at the QualifiedGpuBoards.txt file that comes with MC3 you'll find our that only 3700,4600 and 5600 are in the list for PC and GeForce 8800 GT for MAC. 3700 is definitelly the safest bet.

The best price I found was at Provantage ... $799.91

http://www.provantage.com/pny-vcqfx3700-pcie-pb~7PNYV05X.htm

Everywhere else was over $1,000 ....

yep... that's pretty much the price i got it for... get the original HP (prod no. KD506AA), that was the cheapest i could get.

For quadros the 'bay is your friend

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/nVIDIA-Quadro-FX3700-512MB-FX-3700-VIDEO-CARD-PCI-E-DVI_W0QQitemZ140244499416QQcmdZViewItem?hash=item140244499416&&_trksid=p3286.m63.l1177

for some reason they've never held their value that well, though admittedly the 3700 is still pricey