Video Card Question (1 Viewer)

Just curious; I'm about to upgrade my puter and have been tossing around the idea of on-board video vs a PCIe card...
I'm not into gaming any more (brain can't keep up). But what I do utilize is a lot of picture/graphic programming. I.E. Photoshop and Premiere.

What I'd like to find out is ... what is slowing my system down when running these programs. Is it my older processer (P4 2Gig) or is it my video card? If I am doing a lot of work w/photos or rendering video; is a better graphics card going to help me or is that all part of the system/processor?

Thx!

Generally speaking I would always advise getting a separate card rather than using an on-board video as it has it's own memory so doesn't take any system memory freeing that up for other tasks.

Now for 2D applications you don't need to go overboard because you're only displaying the data not processing it, that's what the RAM and processor are for.

You mention Premier Pro and rendering are you capturing the video from a camera ? if so the very best thing you can invest in is a hardware capture card as this will render the video in real time - it won't render imported objects that again is done with the RAM and processor so it depends on how you wil use your system.

A good example is the video edit PC I spec'd for work - it's an absolute beast (2 quad core CPU's, 8Gig of fully buffered RAM etc.) but only has a GeForce 8800GT but crucially it has a £1000 capture card that can render 6 steams of HD video in real time.

So what's your budget ? Do you have any systems in mind already or are you going to build one yourself ? I'd be happy to help you spec one.

I may have mis-spoke. When I spoke of 'rendering' I didn't mean 'capturing' but should have said 'converting' instead. My camera takes video in MOV format. I can convert a 10-15 min video in no time (I.E. going from MOV to AVI or MPEG).

For an example of what I'm hoping to 'speed up'... I put together a video of photos and mov files for my nephew. Turned out great IMHO. I basically took a few maps, overlayed with a moving line and video (a'la Indiana Jones). (Here's a link to it). Putting the maps/lines/video together was actually easier than I thought, but when I went to make that whole project an AVI (was around 10min) took my computer nearly 4hrs to complete!! This is the type of process that I want to 'speed up'. After finalizing the movie I burned it as a DVD. I didn't think it would ever finish!!! That took the system over 14hrs!!!!! I would do a lot more of this type of editing if it didn't take so darn long to get the results! BTW: If you watch the vid I put together it isn't the 'final' version.. Had to change a few things

I've been shopping for a while now. I won't buy a 'system' but instead put together my own. I have only bought ONE computer 'system' as a whole before; I can't see myself ever doing that agian. Too much fun to assemble and set up on your own! LoL... Right now, I'm pretty much set on an AMD 940 Denab(?) quad core 3.0GHz, Gigabyte MoBo, 4gig RAM. Heck of a step up from a P4 2GHz and 1Gig ram!

AC5FF said:

I may have mis-spoke. When I spoke of 'rendering' I didn't mean 'capturing' but should have said 'converting' instead. My camera takes video in MOV format. I can convert a 10-15 min video in no time (I.E. going from MOV to AVI or MPEG).

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OK so you moving the file from the camera to the PC first then converting it to a format Premier recognises but you'll still have to render it but if your camera has a firewire output and you get a capture card you'll not have to render this content which will reduce the majority of rendering and of course the transcoding to AVI. You will though have to capture the video in real time but, particularly if your doing a lot of editing it, doing it this way will save time.

Remember any content unless captured will need to be rendered first even before you edit the footage.

TIP: render on the fly after you import something render it straight away and after you have applied any effects.

AC5FF said:

Right now, I'm pretty much set on an AMD 940 Denab(?) quad core 3.0GHz, Gigabyte MoBo, 4gig RAM. Heck of a step up from a P4 2GHz and 1Gig ram!

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mmm not to sure about the CPU, Intel have the march on AMD atm IMO and I found this

"Now we come to the category where the Phenom II X4 940 is not the best choice: video transcoding and graphics rendering."

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Personally I'd look at either an Intel Core 2 Quad Q9xxx CPU or if your budget can stretch an Intel i7.

You might also want to consider a SATA hard disk as well

My newish machine is designed for high end performance for video editing and gaming - here the spec if you want to use it for some more info gathering:

Intel Core 2 Quad Q9450 Processor overclocked to 3.2GHz
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro CPU Cooler
Asus Rampage Formula Motherboard with Intel X48 chipset - Gaming motherboard maybe overkill for you.
nVIDIA GeForce GTX 260 896MB Graphics Card - You won't need one of these of course
Thermaltake Toughpower 750W Power Supply
4GB PC2-6400 DDR2 Memory
20x DVD-RW/CD-RW Optical Drive (Black)
750GB SATA 7200rpm Hard Disk

With case and high end audio card it was just over £1000 - but that will have come down a bit now.