Video Card suggestions

[Steak]

So, were a fairly small shop that just invested in an HP 9000s printer. Most of our computers are pretty old and were looking to get a workhorse for doing jobs we would print. I've spec'd out most of the computer already and just need suggestions on video cards (advice on the rest is welcome also).

CPU
Mobo
Memory
PSU
HDD

I know which are better gaming cards but im not too sure what to look for in a video card for design work.

 

[Aaron SDF]

Same thing. Unless you are building a serious CAD machine, or are creating virtual worlds, a gaming card will be all you need.
Most enterprise cards are slightly beefed up and way overpriced desktop gaming cards, unless you go very high end. If you went with a 'professional' model you would spend more on the GFX card that than your whole computer, maybe even your printer.

 

[petesign]

Are you using Photoshop CS4 or higher? It supports Open GL. Quoted from Adobe's site...
"Photoshop CS5 and CS4 leverage the the video card's chip (the graphics processing unit, or GPU) instead of the computer's main chip (the central processing unit, or CPU) to speed some functions. Photoshop accesses and uses the GPU when the GPU:

* supports OpenGL, a software and hardware standard that accelerates video processing when working with large or complex images, including 3D.
* has at least 256 MB of RAM.
* has a display driver that supports OpenGL 2.0 and Shader Model 3.0, which is used by the GPU to perform rendering effects."

http://www.adobe.com/go/kb405711
There's a link to adobe's site that has a list of tested and supported video cards for CS4 photoshop.

Good luck!
-Pete

 

[petesign]

One other thing, looking at your build there. Double the RAM, get windows 7 64bit professional, and get 12 or 16 gigs of ram. I have 8 gigs, and wish I had doubled it.

 

[choucove]

You have a pretty solid system configuration listed there. The memory is very good name brand stuff, I've used Corsair in a number of builds, but they have become very expensive for what you get. For the same price you can find other triple-channel kits with lower latency or higher frequency. Something like these Crucial Ballistix are a great value with lower timings at the same cost as the Corsair memory.

As for the video cards, again most of the work in a 2D design environment is going to be done by the processor. A more powerful graphics card is meant to give you a little better working environment at higher resolution is all. That, and as mentioned above, if your software supports GPU acceleration like Adobe CS4 then can help quite a bit with rendering.

The test system that we set up uses a PNY GeForce GT250 graphics card. It's more than enough for anything they will do, and is new enough to support Adobe's CUDA GPU acceleration features. You could actually get by with even less, such as a GeForce 240 or even an older series such as a GT 9800 or 9600 would be enough for what you need.

 

[tanneji]

I have a gtx 260 and love it. It is finally getting down to a reasonable price as well. If I were going to get a card today, it would be the GTX 460. You can get one for around $200 and has all of the new Direct X 11 instructions etc that my current card lacks. I have an 8400 GS in my other workstation and though it helps it is still nowhere near the aid that the GTX is. Massive difference in Creative Suite and way more beneficial than I imagined it would be.

 

[Steak]

Are you using Photoshop CS4 or higher? Double the RAM, get windows 7 64bit professional, and get 12 or 16 gigs of ram. I have 8 gigs, and wish I had doubled it.

Thats a decision were trying to make right now. We have cs3 now and are weighing upgrading. I've been pretty satisfied with cs3 and hear good things about cs5. I do want to double the ram but were trying to stay at a budget around $1500, we just bought the printer and a lot of other media from another shop for about $13,500 so we'll be on a budget for a little bit. xD That is always an option for the future.

they have become very expensive for what you get.

I agree Corsair is more pricey but we want this system to hold up over time, I have also used corsair in other rigs before and know they are quality. I guess the deciding factor on the video card is what software we'll be using. We're not buying it right away so I might see if I can hold out for a "deal".

Thank you very much for the advice its been very helpful!

 

[choucove]

If you are looking to keep within the budget for about $1500, you could probably get more performance by going with a P55 Socket 1156 platform instead of the X58 platform. The only real benefit that the X58 has over the P55 is if you are running multiple video cards, which is far more than you will ever need for your design system.

Our test system was a Core i5-760 processor on an ASUS P7P55D-Evo motherboard with PNY GeForce GT250 video card, WD 500GB SATA hard drive with 32 MB of cache (though your VelociRaptor is also a good choice), a Corsair 750 Watt PSU just like you have listed above, and 12 GB of DDR3 1333 GSkills memory. All that for $1,200 including Windows 7 Professional. We set up each computer with 4 GB of RAMDisk out of their 12 GB of RAM and dedicate that towards temp files from Flexi, Adobe, and Windows. If that ever ends up being too little space it can use disk space on the primary hard drive, or we can throw in up to another 4 GB and dedicate it towards RAMDisk.

 

[petesign]

^^^^^
Nice. Wish I had splurged for the ram, and done the ramdisk - great idea.

I went with a SLI P55 mobo - and went cheap on the video cards, two 9500GT cards. Wish I had just bought one GT250 - as the old 9500's don't have all the bells and whistles.

 

[choucove]

There really is so much power in today's newest generation of video cards that is is more than overkill for anything that you could possibly use in this kind of design environment. The GTX 460 is more powerful than the GTX 280 that is currently in my main desktop system that I built just over a year ago. This system can crunch through pretty much any game today at max resolution and max to near-max settings. That's far more than you ever need for doing 2D design work, and in the end just requires more power to run and you aren't even hardly taxing it. The simple truth is with the power of even regular integrated graphics today you would be fine. The Intel HD integrated graphics can run smoothly at full 1080p resolutions and the same with the Radeon HD 4200-4300 integrated graphics on AMD systems.

 

[Steak]

If you are looking to keep within the budget for about $1500, you could probably get more performance by going with a P55 Socket 1156 platform instead of the X58 platform.

Wow, yeah i shaved off quite a bit by going with that thank you! This is what im thinking about going with now:

mobo
CPU
Ram
Video Card

We set up each computer with 4 GB of RAMDisk out of their 12 GB of RAM and dedicate that towards temp files from Flexi, Adobe, and Windows. If that ever ends up being too little space it can use disk space on the primary hard drive, or we can throw in up to another 4 GB and dedicate it towards RAMDisk.

That sounds pretty efficient. How did you go about doing that? Is that done in the bios or in windows?


Again, thank you for the help.

 

[choucove]

That is quite similar to the system that we configured. The only other thing that I might suggest if you are going to upgrade to a newer version of Adobe is to use an nVidia graphics card. From my understanding, the GPU acceleration in Adobe is only supported on CUDA which is only on nVidia graphics cards. Future versions of Adobe may support GPU acceleration on the newer ATI graphics cards, but right now I don't believe they are.

RAMDisk is software run on your operating system. There are several good versions out there, we went with the free version of DATARAM RAMDisk that you can allot up to 4 GB of your physical RAM to become a virtual hard drive. You can then point your Windows TEMP files, as well as your Adobe scratch disk locations, to the drive letter of this new virtual hard drive.

 

[signswi]

GPU acceleration in PS works fine on ATI cards, at least it does on the 5850 in my home rig.

 

[choucove]

GPU acceleration in PS works fine on ATI cards, at least it does on the 5850 in my home rig.

Jesse, thank you for that update, that is great to hear. That was one thing that I was not very sure about when we started researching our system configuration so we just decided to stick with the nVidia graphics card.