Dell 690 Upgrade

[flippin]

Hello,

Many thanks in advance for all of the effort in answering all of our questions. Though I have never posed a question here before, rest assured that out of courtesy, I have researched my questions to the best of my abilities both here and on the web. Unfortunately I still am concerned about the specifics of each system and hence my questions.

All of that said, the following is the Dell beast which I would like to upgrade. It is essentially new and was purchased for a song through a bankruptcy.

Dell Precision 690 - Current Config.

- 750 watt chasis
- MY171 A01 Board
- Xeon 5355 2.66ghz Quad Core (x1)
- 4gb memory (4x 1gb)
- Nvidia Quadro NVS 285 gpu
-Win XP 32bit

Proposed changes:

- 2nd Cloverton Xeon 5355 2.66ghz
- 16gb additional memory for a total of 20gb (4x 4gb) (will mixing 4x 1gb and 4x 4gb cause issues?)
- new video card to facilitate 3-4 monitors. No gaming but Autocad, CS5 and video editing.
- will upgrade all of the drives 2x ssd (1 for OS) and (1 for programs and scratch disk) and 2x sata drives for storage.
- Win 7 64bit

Thank you for your time thus far, my two questions are;

(1) Will the proposed system satisfy my requirements for Autocad, CS5 and video editing (no gaming)

(2) What is the best gpu which will meet my needs and be compatible with this "older system" I would rather spend a bit more to ensure that I will always have ample video processing power but not sure if I need to purchase a true "workstation card" for $2k!!

Thank you so much again.

 

[flippin]

TTT

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Principal concern is compatibility of the current gpu's with this older unit. What would be the best modern card with 3-4 monitor capability and good video processing abilities.

Cheers

 

[donramon]

Hey, i have same system, also upgraded to 2x quad 5355 cpu's, 16gb ram, 1x ssd and geforce 285gtx and it came with 1kw psu.

1. Dont mix ram, its picky.
2. What board model do u have? because mine is DT029 with A08 bios, and with the quad cpu's if i lose power i have to reset bios each time.
3. As far as video card goes, i dont do auto cad, but mine came with quatro 4500 512mb and i can sell u it if u need it. I duno how good it is, but i looked it up and back in the day it was $2k card, so i guess it cant be too bad.


Hope it helps, if u have any questiosn feel free to PM me.