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Morning guys,
I've been looking into the possibility of upgrading the graphics card in my PC. My motherboard is an aging Gigabyte 945gcm-s2l and I am currently running an NVDIA GeFORCE 6600 256MB DDR2 graphics card. My board can take a maximum of 4GB DDR2 RAM (already installed and it's OCZ gaming RAM which I believe is as good as my board will take) but only 3GB of it is useable as apparently the 'missing' GB is being used by my current graphics card. It's not a OS issue it's not showing in the BIOS and I use a 64bit OS which can handle this anyway. Would a more powerful graphics card improve my systems performance or would it be a waste of money? I don't play games on my PC but I do use it for HD video editing. My processor is actually not all that bad it's an Intel Core 2 Extreme x6800 (overclocked to 3.5Ghz with cooling modified) and my system is generally pretty fast and stable. It's just with video editing every bit of power counts. I know that I should really build/buy a new PC but apart from the money, I have that much stuff on this one that it would it take me forever to sort it all out again and I really don't have the time at the moment.
I am using a Cooler Master Elite gaming tower which is powered by a 350W PSU BTW.
Be grateful for any suggestions.
I've been looking into the possibility of upgrading the graphics card in my PC. My motherboard is an aging Gigabyte 945gcm-s2l and I am currently running an NVDIA GeFORCE 6600 256MB DDR2 graphics card. My board can take a maximum of 4GB DDR2 RAM (already installed and it's OCZ gaming RAM which I believe is as good as my board will take) but only 3GB of it is useable as apparently the 'missing' GB is being used by my current graphics card. It's not a OS issue it's not showing in the BIOS and I use a 64bit OS which can handle this anyway. Would a more powerful graphics card improve my systems performance or would it be a waste of money? I don't play games on my PC but I do use it for HD video editing. My processor is actually not all that bad it's an Intel Core 2 Extreme x6800 (overclocked to 3.5Ghz with cooling modified) and my system is generally pretty fast and stable. It's just with video editing every bit of power counts. I know that I should really build/buy a new PC but apart from the money, I have that much stuff on this one that it would it take me forever to sort it all out again and I really don't have the time at the moment.
I am using a Cooler Master Elite gaming tower which is powered by a 350W PSU BTW.
Be grateful for any suggestions.
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On reflection, a new GFX card looks like a poor use of your money in this situation. Even if you only spend 60 pound, thats still one quarter of the way to a motherboard/cpu/ram upgrade that'll give a guaranteed performance increase. You've no other reason to buy the card so it just seems a bit silly to spend money on something that might help. And if it does, it wont be that great because you're buying a low end card anyway.
Also, I'd be wary about thinking you dont need to upgrade your PSU as you've got an overclocked power hungry CPU. I doubt you've got much extra power left to play with.
Also, I'd be wary about thinking you dont need to upgrade your PSU as you've got an overclocked power hungry CPU. I doubt you've got much extra power left to play with.
There pete, the dilemma rests with you :¬)
But a 440 is a 'low-end' card and will do your job adequately, but not 'gaming-wise'. A 460 is a mid-range and the 470 and 480 are high-end ... look at the specs of the cards within the 400 range:
GeForce400
But a 440 is a 'low-end' card and will do your job adequately, but not 'gaming-wise'. A 460 is a mid-range and the 470 and 480 are high-end ... look at the specs of the cards within the 400 range:
GeForce400
Thanks again for the comments guys, I'm really very grateful for your help.
I can't see any mention of CUDA/OpenCL encoding support for my version of Magix Movie Edit Pro HD (it's the previous version to MX) but as a registered user I quite often get upgrade to the latest version for £25 offers, if it worked that would obviously be a no brainer. However a quick look into CUDA/OpenCL encoding discussions on the net seems to suggest some people are experiencing a noticeable drop in quality when encoding this way (may well be system/program specific?). Would be interested to give it a try, could always download the trial version of Magix MX and give it a whirl?
Regarding a budget I'm a little bit stuck TBH, most features of higher end graphic cards seem to me to be aimed at gaming (which I don't use a PC for). On the other hand don't want to buy a £60 card and find it's sod all different to the one I've got. The other Gigabyte card which looks as though it will run off my current PSU (just checked it's 360W not 350W as previously stated is this one and it does also incorporate NVDIA CUDA technology. Not sure if it'll do the job though or if I would be better off biting the bullet and upgrading my PSU so I could go for a more powerful card?
I can't see any mention of CUDA/OpenCL encoding support for my version of Magix Movie Edit Pro HD (it's the previous version to MX) but as a registered user I quite often get upgrade to the latest version for £25 offers, if it worked that would obviously be a no brainer. However a quick look into CUDA/OpenCL encoding discussions on the net seems to suggest some people are experiencing a noticeable drop in quality when encoding this way (may well be system/program specific?). Would be interested to give it a try, could always download the trial version of Magix MX and give it a whirl?
Regarding a budget I'm a little bit stuck TBH, most features of higher end graphic cards seem to me to be aimed at gaming (which I don't use a PC for). On the other hand don't want to buy a £60 card and find it's sod all different to the one I've got. The other Gigabyte card which looks as though it will run off my current PSU (just checked it's 360W not 350W as previously stated is this one and it does also incorporate NVDIA CUDA technology. Not sure if it'll do the job though or if I would be better off biting the bullet and upgrading my PSU so I could go for a more powerful card?
I suppose the real question is, how much do you want to spend?
pete_21 wrote:
@Garin I'm using Magix Movie Edit Pro HD, it's a really good program BTW, fairly easy to use and the end results look really good. It wasn't very expensive either.
Well before you go buying anything you should probably double check as the latest vesion if called Magix Movie Edit Pro MX. So your version might not have CUDA/OpenCL support for encoding.
pete_21 wrote:
@Garin I'm using Magix Movie Edit Pro HD, it's a really good program BTW, fairly easy to use and the end results look really good. It wasn't very expensive either.
Well before you go buying anything you should probably double check as the latest vesion if called Magix Movie Edit Pro MX. So your version might not have CUDA/OpenCL support for encoding.
I was surprised recently with a client GFX upgrade, to an ATI/AMD/Radeon card (quite a high-spec card aswell) that powered direct and was as small as the old Voodoo3 card! If you've no idea then you know where to come ... here in the Forums ... or I'll come and 'fiddle' for you :¬)
@Garin I'm using Magix Movie Edit Pro HD, it's a really good program BTW, fairly easy to use and the end results look really good. It wasn't very expensive either.
@DL Cheers, will check those cards out. According to customer reviews on Amazon the Gigabyte cards (there are 2 different models) take their power direct from the PCI Express slot (no additional power required) and apparently work fine on PSU's of 300W+ (although 400W is the manufacturers recommended minimum). That was the reason I initially looked at them but please bear in mind that I generally have no idea what the hell I'm doing! :)
@DL Cheers, will check those cards out. According to customer reviews on Amazon the Gigabyte cards (there are 2 different models) take their power direct from the PCI Express slot (no additional power required) and apparently work fine on PSU's of 300W+ (although 400W is the manufacturers recommended minimum). That was the reason I initially looked at them but please bear in mind that I generally have no idea what the hell I'm doing! :)
If you are considering a GFX upgrade to this Gigabyte GT 430 OC 1GB DDR3, then a GTX 460 or infact a GTX 560 Ti would make more sense and may be cheaper :¬)
I've just had a look at the magix website, what product are you using? It seems their current product Movie Edit Pro supports CUDA/OpenCL. If its that then upgrading your GFX card could be worthwhile.
Dr. Garin wrote:
Ah, just had a look at your motherboard...it looks like a chipset issue. You're going to have that issue no matter the GFX card installed.
Also keep in mind that you'll only really benefit from upgrading your gfx card if your video editing software supports it. Otherwise the general benefit probably isnt worth the money spent especially as a modern gfx card is going to be bottlenecked by the rest of the system now.
Did think that might be the case, thanks for looking though. Magix site states dedicated graphics card with 512MB VRAM for HD video editing. I have been using the program in SD mode (view in reduced quality while working on projects) and it seems to work OK. Rendering is pretty time consuming but the end result is fine. Obviously my RAM and processor are not really ideal either but I can't replace those at the moment. Thanks again for your help mate, it is appreciated.
Ah, just had a look at your motherboard...it looks like a chipset issue. You're going to have that issue no matter the GFX card installed.
Also keep in mind that you'll only really benefit from upgrading your gfx card if your video editing software supports it. Otherwise the general benefit probably isnt worth the money spent especially as a modern gfx card is going to be bottlenecked by the rest of the system now.
Did think that might be the case, thanks for looking though. Magix site states dedicated graphics card with 512MB VRAM for HD video editing. I have been using the program in SD mode (view in reduced quality while working on projects) and it seems to work OK. Rendering is pretty time consuming but the end result is fine. Obviously my RAM and processor are not really ideal either but I can't replace those at the moment. Thanks again for your help mate, it is appreciated.
Ah, just had a look at your motherboard...it looks like a chipset issue. You're going to have that issue no matter the GFX card installed.
Also keep in mind that you'll only really benefit from upgrading your gfx card if your video editing software supports it. Otherwise the general benefit probably isnt worth the money spent especially as a modern gfx card is going to be bottlenecked by the rest of the system now.
Also keep in mind that you'll only really benefit from upgrading your gfx card if your video editing software supports it. Otherwise the general benefit probably isnt worth the money spent especially as a modern gfx card is going to be bottlenecked by the rest of the system now.
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