Originally Posted by
Leif
I built two identical machines from scratch--all parts brand new--in April. Each machine is equipped with two Phoenix cards (4 inputs each box), SSD for content, and Radeon 4870 output card.
The macs as a whole have had zero problems. Playback has been stable, despite operating in very hot and humid conditions.
The Phoenix cards, on the other hand, have been a letdown. Capture has seized/frozen on numerous occasions, often requiring a reboot to reacquire a signal; at one recent show we shut a machine down for an hour before the our set to give it time to cool down but one of the cards never came back, and I had to set Catalyst to copy one of the other inputs.
At first we thought this was a heat issue across the entire system but one card in particular seems to seize a lot more than the others. This is troubling to me because the two servers on this show are built identically. It seems to me that if it was a heat issue, I would be having similar failures on both machines. As it is, I suspect a defective card.
Considering the price of the cards, and being only 3-4 months old, this is a disappointment. To their credit, AS seem keen to help and are sending a new card out this week. But I remain nervous, especially after reading Oli's posts...
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