Workstation vs Gaming Graphics Card for Heavy Graphic Design

Karbonkreationz · Sep 20, 2014

Hello everyone,

I've been spending the last few nights racking my brain trying to determine whether to go with a workstation or gaming style graphics card. I built my PC about 2 years ago and its time to upgrade as we head into the craze of 4K and Quad HD monitors, etc etc.

I work full time as a graphic designer and spend about 18 hours a day doing anything from vector illustration work to full on vehicle renderings in Photoshop CC. I would like to upgrade some of the guts of my current tower to make things a bit faster and also allow for upgrades to a nice set of monitors in the near future. The main components I am looking to upgrade are the graphics card, memory and the monitors. Currently I am running:

EVGA GeForce GTX 550Ti

AMD FX-4100 Zambezi Quad Core 3.6Ghz

ASUS M5A97 AM3+ AMD Board

G.Skill Ripjaws Series 12GB DDR3 1333

What I am looking to add/upgrade to:

Crossover, Monoprice Zero-G, or similar Korean based 1440p 27" monitor (possibly 2 in the future with the Cintiq as a 3rd screen)

Performance Graphics Card - Looking to spend $600 or less unless its worth the extra money

Wacom 22HD Cintiq Drawing Tablet 1080p

Additional Memory if you guys think its necessary

Happy to upgrade the Power Supply if need be

Any help would be greatly greatly appreciated! Please let me know if you have any additional questions

Thanks!

bluejayek · Sep 20, 2014

What power supply do you have now?

The GTX980 which was just released is the best performing single GPU card and is under your budget. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125683&cm_re=GTX_980-_-14-125-683-_-Product

It is supposed to be able to run on a 500W power supply, but I would go for a quality 750W power supply. The recommendations for power use are based on gaming loads which the card is optimized to use lower power on. Running full out on rendering it can peak at 300W power use on the card itself.

This would work. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817207015&cm_re=XFX_750W-_-17-207-015-_-Product

The Original Agrajag · Sep 20, 2014

Luckily the new 900 series from Nvidia are pegged to run more efficiently, both using less power and producing better performance overall. If I were you I would go for some high performance ram from kingston for example. Ideally a 32gb quad channel kit or, failing that, 16gb running in duel channel with the appropriate ram that the upgrade to 32gb in the future will be just slotted in and good to go.

The only other thing I might recommend you look into is relating to the current enhancements to be had from newer multithreaded/hyperthreading CPU's. Not only will your graphic design programs thank you but your also eliminating the possibility of all the power of your new rig being bottlenecked by your CPU/MOBO.

Good luck with your upgrade.

bluejayek · Sep 20, 2014

Original, its important to read through the full reviews of these new cards. If you take a look at toms hardware section on the power consumption, most of the gains in gaming loads are from fancy methods of reducing performance when it isn' really needed. If the card is actually having to be 100% utilized like in a rendering workload, the card is not really more efficient then the 700 series.

The Original Agrajag · Sep 20, 2014

You got me...

I tend to smash out a few helpful replies every day or so and I usually mention Nvidia's catering to certain consumers only, but alas today I have failed you! I will commit ritualistic suicide as soon as I have finished my cereal.

Sorry Karbonkreationz, I was not meaning to recommend the 900 series, I only thought to mention the new kid on the block. Only a fanboy/fangirl would buy into the hype and recommend a product on the first week of its release.

Sadly all my other recommendations, perfectly valid for your proposed upgrade, have been overshadowed by my hastily mentioning the new Nvidia card.

If only I had more time... sniff. I would have liked to build my own cottage in outback. If only this bowl of cereal would be more full I could have had a few more minutes to enjoy this. Why, OH Why did I not use a bigger bowl!!!!!!!!!

Karbonkreationz · Sep 21, 2014

Thank you all for the very quick and also amusing responses. I appreciate the quick feedback and will check out all of the above mentioned information.

Based on what you guys have suggested so far, it seems as though I am better off heading down the gaming card path instead of a workstation? I am very limited in knowledge when it comes to the latest and greatest in terms of graphics cards. A majority of my knowledge extends rather into the software I use daily. I am not looking for blazing fast performance but I, like many others, would just like something that can keep up.

In terms of upgrading the CPU....can you guys recommend anything in particular? I wasn't planning on rebuilding the whole system but I may entertain the thought in a few months if there are some good hardware deals in the holiday months ahead.

Thank you all again for the quick responses and helpful input. I greatly appreciate it!

The Original Agrajag · Sep 21, 2014

I'm still here... I just refilled my cereal bowl. lol

Due to the economy of popular demand you may indeed be better of with a performance "gaming" GPU due to the gaming sector being of a much higher profit margin/turnover rate for the manufacturers, thus resulting in a likely better price to performance ratio than a more narrow niche like professional media editing.
As for the CPU the i7's from Intel offer improved multi-threaded performance for your needs at a mid to high price point where AMD has some Multi-threaded options in their FX series like the 8320 or 8350. I'll steer clear of the Intel vs AMD debate while saying that the AMD requires more watts from your system than Intel while subsequently producing more heat (in relative terms) but at a much more competitive price.

AMD is perhaps analogous with the Pagani automobile company. Their premium CPU 9*** range come with their own liquid cooling setup as standard... lol.

Good idea to wait for the holiday deals if that is a possibility for you. The new releases will cause price fluctuations which I hope to take advantage of as well.

Good luck with your build.

oxiide · Sep 21, 2014

Karbonkreationz :

I personally think you'd be better off focusing on upgrading that CPU, motherboard, and storage. Vector illustration in Adobe products isn't terribly performance-sensitive, but I think its going to benefit more from a fast CPU, fast RAM, and in the case of Photoshop, a fast scratch disk. A few very specific tasks in Photoshop can leverage CUDA acceleration, but that FX-4100 is probably hurting you much more.

Photoshop can use the extra logical cores you'd get from a Core i7, but I think you'd be pretty happy with a Core i5-4690K as well. In either case, the jump from an FX-4100 would be pretty massive.

If you do go for a new video card, I agree with the above: the GTX 970 and 980 look pretty attractive right now. Quadro cards are based on the same cores as their gaming counterparts, they cost so much more for their specialized drivers and validation. Graphic design/illustration isn't a field where such cards are typically necessary.

Karbonkreationz · Sep 21, 2014

Thanks again everyone for the quick and informative responses. The information I have gathered so far is exactly what I was hoping to achieve.

What started out as a simple idea to upgrade the GPU has increased to a few more parts haha.....but isn't that how it always goes??

I would still like to stay somewhat on a budget and keep as many existing parts as possible. Some other questions I still have (and a few that have developed since) are:

If I decide to upgrade the CPU, am I better off upgrading the windows version as well at the same time and just doing a clean install? Or can I say everything I currently have and just swap them out?

Also, if I lean more towards the GTX 970 range, is this card capable of running two 1440P monitors along with an additional 1080P Wacom Tablet? I plan to run 1 monitor for the time being but would like to have the option to run two in the future without having to again change the graphics card.

Originally when I built the system I had ordered 16gb of ram but had trouble getting the system to recognize more than 12...which is what I have been running since.......what would you guys recommend in terms of memory upgrades? Skip the wimpy stuff and go straight for a 24-32gb setup?

Thank you again for any input!

MJDS · Apr 10, 2015

For Photoshop CC 32gb of ram should be your minimum. With the work I do, in creating logos, Photoshop generally will use between 21-24gbs on average. Figure in the rest of your system needs and you'll see you can run out at 32gbs very easily. The fastest ram your cpu/mobo can handle without over clocking is the speed to go with. If you have the proper amount of ram DO NOT use a scratch disk. Photoshop CC works in your ram for the fastest possible performance. When it runs out of ram it will then begin working off the scratch. The downside to working off a scratch is that no ssd out there comes close to the performance of ram, therefore giving your rendering speeds a massive hit. You can go under Edit/Preferences to change how often Photoshop saves your work off ram incase power outage or whatever.
I'm sure I am far to late to help you but perhaps the next person searching may be helped. One other note, if you have the wiggle room in your budget go with 2011-v3 with the ddr4. The ram will only cost an extra $50-75 for 32gbs and has a massive performance increase for Photoshop. Going this route will maximize performance now and should continue to do so as Adobe evolves their CC products and continue to utilize the ram as the primary work drive. Still a little expensive but has dropped, it's actually the mobos that are the slowest to be dropping.

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