Desktop PC for Movie Editing

Forum Systems : Prebuilt Desktop PC for Movie Editing

Hey All- I'm looking to buy a new PC in the next week or so to start getting into video editing... given the specs below, would it be worth upgrading the video card? I'm still a newbie so I don't need anything special at the moment but was wondering if you guys thought it would be worth the extra money for a better video card? Any other suggestions?

Thanks so much!

Dell XPS 8300

Processor Intel® Core™ i7-2600 processor(8MB Cache, 3.4GHz)
Operating System Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium, 64Bit, English
Memory3 8GB4 DDR3 SDRAM at 1333MHz
Hard Drive 1000GB3 SATA hard drive (7200RPM)
Video Card AMD Radeon™ HD 6450 1GB DDR3

-OR-

AMD Radeon HD 6670 1 GB DDR5 (add $80)
1GB GDDR5 NVIDIA GeForce GT545 (add $110)
AMD Radeon HD 6770 (add $140)

Reply to jdawg5600

Do you plan on gaming on the machine any? If not, then there is no need to upgrade the video card. If you are, then upgrade it to the 6770.

Reply to phyco126

I don't plan on gaming much so what I've kinda been gathering is that the video card won't be a huge factor then?

What would you say the most important factors are in a machine for video editing as a hobby? Hard drive size and memory?

Reply to jdawg5600

Not unless you get a high end nVidia card with software that supports utilizing CUDA cores for rendering and such.

Processor, RAM, and then HDD. Personally I use a separate small HDD as the scratch disk, then my main 2 TB HDD for the rest.

Reply to phyco126

Thanks for the feedback, I don't think for my purposes a high-end video card is going to be necessary at the moment.

Basically I just want to be able to take home movies I record and edit them, this is't going to be a professional gig... at least for now.

It seems as though for my purposes an Intel i-7 with 8 Gig of RAM and a 1 TB HDD would be suitable for now, I could always upgrade in the future correct? That's why a desktop PC seems much more appealing to me than a Laptop!

Reply to jdawg5600

You can upgrade, possibly, the RAM. Always can the HDD. A video card upgrade will require a new PSU, most likely. But for you basic tasks, you'll be fine with your choice.

Reply to phyco126