Need Video Card for Rendering, Streaming, Photoshop

Since Adobe is now more dependent on OpenGL and moving that direction, your best bet is going to be an AMD card, what kind of budget are you looking at for said card?

 

Well his entire budget is $1600 so he has a lot of leeway as to how much he wants to spend. I was looking at the latest AMD releases and they are recommending a whopping 750 watt power supply. I don't think he needs the latest and greatest so we are open to any suggestions we can get.

Thanks for the reply.

 

To be honest, at $1600 I'd probably recommend replacing his CPU,MOBO, and GPU. The FX-8350 is a great chip but, he can really get some performance gains if he switches to intel.

 

Well the question is which Intel chip and especially for rendering?

 

Something like the 4770k & Z87 Mobo or 4930k & X79 Mobo. As for GPU. I'd probably recommend a third party 290x when they come out.

 

I disagree with you on the 4770k because in terms of rendering, video editing, and such the 8350 8 core is actually just fine and in some cases better. Rendering in Adobe for instance is faster on my old 8350 than my friends 3770k stock to stock.

If I was to make a recomendation here, I would say just stick with the system and dont scrap it yet, for a GPU, blkfx1 is right, a R9 290X will be the best for your budget to get you the most graphical power without going into the other server side GPUs.

If you know what your doing, you can get an R9 290X now and put on the accelero 3 fan cooler to make it silent and resolve any noise concerns immediatly or wait for solutions from the manufacturers themselves.

Like these two
R9 290X
Arctic Accelero HD 7970 (They fit the new cards, the PCB is the same enough that they work great)

 

While, the 8350 may be suitable, In almost all cases I've found the 4770k is faster than the 8350.
https://www.techspot.com/review/679-intel-haswell-core-i7-4770k/
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/core-i7-4770k-haswell-review,3521.html

Additionally, I wasn't' thinking in terms of just Adobe. When you look at the tasks that OP wants to perform, the intel platform will be deliver more efficiency and performance. Now, if he doesn't want to leave the AMD platform. Sure, it will still serve him well. But, if he is wanting more performance than he currently has, the switch would do him some good. Plus, he'll get the benefits of a newer gen board and chip. He has a budget of $1600. He if was to invest that into say his CPU,MOBO and GPU instead of just his GPU. He'll come out with a better build.

 

While this is correct, rendering videos in AfterEffects makes use of CUDA cores and therefore, nVidia would be a better choice here.

Well, yeah. After Effects doesnt use the CPU as much as it used to, so any modern CPU will be fine. You just need a lot of cores .

 

But also in Recent times, Adobe even said they are endorsing OpenGL and moving over to that more than Cuda (Dont know if they are dropping it) so for furure sake, I think a AMD card would be a significantly better option since NVidia does very poorly with OpenGL.

Even so, unless he is going with an X79 and 6 core i7, an upgrade of that magnitude would feel unecessary even for his needs. A good PSU and AMD GPU will solve all his needs for what hes doing.

 

I suggested the 4930K. As they're both upgrades. My suggestions was for more performance as I noticed the budget. I've already mentioned that the AMD build would be suitable as well.

 

There is no need in bickering over which is best, especially when it is likely personal preference getting in the way and both are closely comparable.

 

Definitely AMD for futureproofing this video editing rig due to changes in rendering tech, but nVidia is great also, so dont completely leave it out.

The Extreme line isnt really a great option in this situation since the 4770K is much more efficient and basically the same in terms of rendering performance, while costing less. Also, the Z87 line is much more cost effective than X79. Both could work though .

 

Again, lol. I suggested both. JC713 My suggestions were merely that of performance, not value. The guy gave him a budget of $1,600 for a new video card. I'm pretty sure the guy is after more performance rather than value.

 

Oh I dont, leave them out, its just for value to performance mixed with the fact that more things are supporting OpenGL more and more, its leaving NVidia behind in that area.

But also, the big question of all this is the question of whether he wants to rebuild the machine, overclock at all, etc. Because if he just wants a new GPU, then we have hit the nail on the head as the 290X will probably be the best future proofing option for his needs. As for the CPU and if he does want to rebuild, then we will have to see if he wants to try or can overclock on his own. Because even in that respect, if hes just going off of stock performance, the best thing would be to actually grab a FX 9590 for out of the box stock performance in all these functions plus unless hes got a low end board, he can then just put the chip into it.

 

Well guys this has been really informative because to be honest ever since I built my i5 Ivy system, Radeon 6950, 8 gigs blah, blah, blah in May of 2012 I have not really kept up with the latest and greatest for some time ( I have built systems using both AMD and Intel; both AMD and Nvidia. All worked great). Thus, my coming to my favorite Tech Forums on the net.

So here is my next question (and it shows how much I have been out of the loop). I know the FX-8350 is older tech but it does have 8 cores and from which all that I have researched cores are essential for rendering (as well as a lot of RAM), etc. So, how does the Quad i7 Haswell provide greater efficiency and more performance than the 8 Core FX?

He is NOT overclocking.

 

Its the core to core performance that's important, the i7 has significantly better core to core performance than an FX chip. However because the FX chip is an actual 8 core processor vs having 4 regular cores with 2 threads each means that in heavily multi-threaded tasks that the FX chip will win, but in things only utilizing up to 4 cores the i7 is a better option.

 

I have had a lot of workstation experience over the years and AMD is the king of BUDGET workstations. If you want a powerful workstation at a budget, then go AMD. If you want the latest and greatest for a workstation, go for an Intel i7 4770K.

It all comes down to what software he is using. Do you think you can get the details on what exactly is being used and what version?

 

I'll ask and get back to you guys.

 

Okay this is what he told me: Sony Vegas, Fraps, Adobe After Affects, Cinema 4d, Steam games, League, Skype, Photoshop, Teamspeak, VLC media player, Origin games, Osu, Minecraft, Team viewer
And many more

* All in the latest versions and using Windows 7 64. I don't know if I mentioned this but he does plan on using 16 Gigs of RAM.

 

Not GPU, but required: gonna need dedicated SSD for fraps, beneficial to use another for scratch disk while editing too.

To play games at 1920*1080 and record at same time, going to need high-end GPU.

Purchase: GPU, 1-2x SSDs.

 

He plans on getting an SSD. But we never considered a second one. What size SSD for the FRAPS?

 

120GB for fraps. 60GB could be enough for the optional scratch disk

Alternatively, you could: record to SSD via fraps, move file to platter (WD Black), use SSD as scratch disk.

 

If you have this budget heres my advice:

Keep what you have already, no need to upgrade right now, would not be beneficial enough in my opinion to warrant spending the cash since he does not plan to overclock. If you want more CPU power without planning to overclock, what exact motherboard does he have because if it supports the heavy clocked FX 9 series chips, that might offer the best deal for him.

Grab a couple of Samsung SSD, you have enough of a budget, grab one of the 500gb Samsung drives for a boot and have plenty of write room for anything you could need.

Get an R9 290X with an aftermarket cooler or wait till some are released.

That will be more than a beast of a gaming setup and handle anything you could throw at it with ease.

 

Ok so since he is using the latest suites, either AMD and nVidia will be fine. nVidia is probably better since you want reliability when it comes to Workstations and nVidia drivers are generally more stable.