So many graphics cards.....

[BarryG]

Hi guys, I'm new to PC Specialist, I have put together a nice looking spec, but I am perplexed by the number of different graphics cards that are available. I'm not really a gamer (I use my PS3 for that) but I do a fair amount of image and video editing.

I've specc'd 16Gb RAM for the machine so it should be able to cope with the ever increasing sizes of image files, but I don't really know how much of an impact the spec of the graphics card has on the speed of manipulating image files and rendering video - so any advice would be welcome.

I guess that one of the biggest questions to start with is: Nvdia Geforce or AMD Radeon? I assume that everyone will have their favourite. It does seem that the AMD cards give slightly better value for money.

Having said that, I have initially chosen the Nvidia GTX560 which is effectively £141. I wouldn't want to go too much higher than that, so please don't recommend anything over £200.

Many thanks in advance for your input.

 

[ghphoto]

Hi there.
I've just specced up with 16gb too, I tend to stick to intel cpu's for processing power.

I have read that some programs can access the cuda cores of nvidia graphics cards to speed things up, cuda is slower than CPU cores but there are more of them. For rendering video this may be helpful, but not to a greater degree for still images. Photoshop eats CPU, then memory then anything else it can get it's teeth into, for example a 12 megapixel image by the time it loads will show as 32 mb, before you even start to process it. My old system with 2gb ram was struggling towards the end so I bit the bullet, ordered a new system and am now waiting.

Good luck m8

 

[Frenchy]

Im not sure about video editing, but if your looking at lets say rendering a 3d model into a 2d image then a workstation card like the Nvidia Quadro series is the way to go. I would assume since video and image editing are 2D that the Quadro would also be thge best way to go, rather than a gaming card. It will be uterlly useless for gaming though, so if you planned on playing games at all, there are some benchmarks that show quadros struggling to produce more then 15 fps (you need around 25 fps for smooth gameplay).