Looking for a Graphics card

Ash_

Hey, my current system is HP Pavilion Elite m9070.uk. It was bought like 5 years ago, and the graphics card died on me. So I'm after after a new card now. I don't really play games on my PC, mainly watch HD videos and do a bit of video editing. So I'm after a graphics card that helps in video rendering. Also a HDMI display out would be helpful so I can connect to my HD TV. Don't really have too much cash to splash my budget is around 100 -120 Euros.

Also, I think my PSU has only 300W power. Will I have to upgrade it to support the card ?

And

I have 3GB of RAM, probably should be upgrading it as well ? (i have a 64bit processor)

Any advice with a link or guide is appreciated.

Thanks

areyawell

What processor you have out of curiosity?

Id go for this graphics card- 24 pounds

http://www.amazon.co.uk/VTX3D-Radeon-Graphics-Profile-Bracket/dp/B0042UK9Q4/ref=pd_sim_computers_1

And this 4GB of Ram for 14 pounds. Is your operating system 64 bit? If not no point updating the ram.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Kingston-1333MHz-DDR3-Non-ECC-Memory/dp/B002K23V1Q/ref=sr_1_2?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1352242378&sr=1-2

It says you need 350 watt supply for graphics card but you should be fine with your 300 watt PSU

Ash_

areyawell wrote: »

What processor you have out of curiosity?

areyawell wrote: »

And this 4GB of Ram for 14 pounds. Is your operating system 64 bit? If not no point updating the ram.

I have a 64bit processor.
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q6600 @ 2.40GHz, 2400 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 4 Logical Processor(s)

areyawell wrote: »

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Kingston-1333MHz-DDR3-Non-ECC-Memory/dp/B002K23V1Q/ref=sr_1_2?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1352242378&sr=1-2

Is this RAM DDR3 ? Don't think i can use it, my motherboard specs says for Memory sockets 4xDDR2. This is the motherboard ASUS IPIBL-LA

And thanks for the reply

ED E

The 5450 listed above is a decent option. If you're on a small budget you wont be using something that supports CUDA so any modern-ish card will do fine.

Do you have 3GB or 3.4GB? If the latter, you actually have 4GB but 32Bit Windows. In any case, you could buy more ram, but DDR2 is more expensive than DDR3 at this point.

Supported DIMM types:
DDR2-800
DDR2-667
Non-ECC memory only, unbuffered
Supports 2 GB DDR2 DIMMs
Supports 8 GB on 64 bit PCs
Supports 4 GB* on 32 bit PCs

So yeah, if you have/move to 64bit and grab 8GB ram plus a new graphics card you'll have an acceptable box for editing.

Ash_

Cheers for the reply.

ED E wrote: »

Do you have 3GB or 3.4GB?

I've a sytem with 3GB RAM (2x1GB, 2x512MB). I'll get 2GB RAM for now (remove one of 512MB) and make it to 4GB (minimum required by the software). Prices for the DDR2 RAM is so high
This Kingston RAM should be fine for me, isn't ?


And for the graphics card, what are my options above Radeon 5450 ?
How are these GeForce GT 600 Series ?

ED E

Yep, that ram will do fine. I think the best config will be to fit them as:

[SIZE="2"]1GB
2GB
1GB
Empty [/SIZE]

So at least channel 1 will be matched.

What are you using to edit, and what monitors have you got? If its just 1x1080p monitor and no CUDA then a 640 would be overkill most likely. Its a more modern card, but still lower power so not a huge advantage but a significant diff in price.

Ash_

ED E wrote: »

What are you using to edit, and what monitors have you got? If its just 1x1080p monitor and no CUDA then a 640 would be overkill most likely. Its a more modern card, but still lower power so not a huge advantage but a significant diff in price.

I'm using Sony Vegas Pro 12, they suggest a GeForce GT 2xx Series or higher to get GPU acceleration feature. Don't want to buy a card that is/would get outdated soon. And I might upgrade my current PC in 1-2 years as well. So what card would be suitable in GeForce GT series ?

Oh and I have only 1 monitor, 22' with optimal resolution of 1680x1050.

marco_polo

Ash_ wrote: »

I'm using Sony Vegas Pro 12, they suggest a GeForce GT 2xx Series or higher to get GPU acceleration feature. Don't want to buy a card that is/would get outdated soon. And I might upgrade my current PC in 1-2 years as well. So what card would be suitable in GeForce GT series ?

Oh and I have only 1 monitor, 22' with optimal resolution of 1680x1050.

Vegas appears to support a fairly wide range of NVidia and AMD cards?

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/vegaspro/gpuacceleration

Ash_

marco_polo wrote: »

Vegas appears to support a fairly wide range of NVidia and AMD cards?

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/vegaspro/gpuacceleration

ye, I was asking for suggestions from models under that criteria.

ED E

Supported cards for GPU-acceleration
To take full advantage of the GPU-acceleration in Vegas Pro 12, you will need a supported card with at least 512 MB of GPU memory.

NVIDIA
Requires a CUDA-enabled GPU and driver 270.xx or later. GeForce GPUs:
GeForce GTX 4xx Series or higher (or GeForce GT 2xx Series or higher with driver 285.62 or later).
Quadro GPUs: Quadro 600 or higher (or Quadro FX 1700 or higher with driver 285.62 or later).
NVIDIA recommends NVIDIA Quadro for professional applications and recommends use of the latest boards based on the Fermi architecture.

AMD/ATI
Requires an OpenCL-enabled GPU and Catalyst driver 11.7 or later with a Radeon HD 57xx or higher GPU. If using a FirePro GPU, FirePro unified driver 8.85 or later is required.

You'd have to do more reading into how much a GPU does/can help. If its only assisting the CPU and you have an older core with DDR2 then beyond a certain point may be a waste. If you're doing small stuff then having to wait an extra ten minutes before you upload to youtube may be worth the saving of a really powerful GPU.