GPU upgrade for older system

[whoshorton]

Hello, I usually spend all my time searching for answers instead of first asking the question. So here goes trying something new. I have an HPa6200n set up for music production. Runs perfect for my music needs untill my recent need became editing videos. Now I have to find a solution as cheaply as possible. The specs are

AMD Athlon 64 x2 5000+ 2.61ghz
Phoenix AwardBios v6.00
upgraded to 4gb of Ram
and I have upgraded the PSU to 500w
Dual Boot WinXp and Win7 32bit
and the weak link is my Geforce9500GtT video card


I need to do basic video editing in Sony Vegas Pro (that's what I have already) I am looking at a GTX550ti card. Cause it seems like a good deal here and anything is better than what I have. And that's where my knowledge stops. Where can I go with MINIMAL cost? Will just the card switch help me with MAJOR lag in editing only 1-2 channels of video? What are my options? I know very little in these areas. Thank you for anyone who can help.

 

[DarkSable]

God, you only really need like a 9800gt to rock video editing - any bigger than that and you'll start bottlenecking. I have an old one I could sell, and you can probably find them on ebay, but they, as well as their 200 series counterparts, won't be real easy to find new anymore.

 

[whoshorton]

WOW. really? So the bottom of the line card I could find on the shelves at this point would solve my problem?

 

[Deemo13]

Eh not exactly. But I'm guessing your budget is not that high, so anything should do really at your price point. I prefer the 7770 over the 550Ti, as it uses less power, performs faster, and is about the same price.

You can get a used 9800GT or so, but I wouldn't recommend buying a used card, because they don't always go over well.

 

[DarkSable]

Well... No.

A bottom of the line card would be equally as powerful as a top of the line card in your rig. That's the problem. [Ignoring the fact you couldn't even power a high end card.]

If you want to do production of videos, especially HD videos, you're going to need to upgrade your entire computer... your ram is likely DDR2, with that old of a rig, 32 bit OS hurts compiling and editing, and your processor could be a lot snappier.

That being said, if you're going to JUST upgrade GPU, go with a Radeon HD 7750.
It's the fastest card you can get that doesn't require a PCIe power connection - which I'm going to guess your power unit doesn't have. The other nice thing is that if you do want to upgrade down the road, this card will likely still serve you nicely.

Now. If you do want to do an upgrade, you have a couple options. [These are all presuming you're comfortable building a computer yourself; it's easy.] You could go with the card I mentioned and find a budget rig on these forums - probably about $500, and it will blow your computer away.

For about $400, you can build a computer using the next generation AMD APUs, when they come out. They integrate graphics and processor, and for video editing, are just about perfect. If you throw another hundred bucks on there, you can get a decent SSD, which would be the biggest improvement you could get.

 

[whoshorton]

Ahhh. Okay I did also price the Sapphire Hd7770 and 7750 at the same store. That's what you speak of? I've always had Nvidia cards in my systems for some reason I didn't know if i could "rock the boat" and change up brands. Now that I've though about it. seems silly to worry about that. But if that's the solution for the moment. I may just go with that tommorow.

Yes, I want to keep THIS upgrade as simple and cheap as possible. I plan to create a whole new system in the next 6 months or so (come on royalties!) , and leave this one for basic music production and video editing for my partners and leave the screaming new rig for me. ;-)

 

[DarkSable]

Yep, this is by far the best option, then - especially if you ever want to hook the rig up to two monitors for productivity.

Good luck with the royalties!

 

[whoshorton]

Yep, this is by far the best option, then - especially if you ever want to hook the rig up to two monitors for productivity.

Good luck with the royalties!

Yes yes. Thank you for the help. I'm gonna get the card tomorrow. I know guys say this time and again on this page. But it really does help if you "stop and ask for directions" LOL

And I already rock the 2 monitors. I have a 32" lcd for my DAW programs and a 22" on top for my mixer channels and any other drum/synth program. Then I use the 22 as the monitor when doing video.

hmm. just thought about that. Can running two monitors slow things up as well while video editing? I (maybe wrongly) assumed that monitors were like speakers. You can hook up as many as you want, it may divide your end result, but the music is being made "in the box". The bottleneck will always be with whats "in the box", not what its being played through.

 

[DarkSable]

Just thought about that. Can running two monitors slow things up as well while video editing? I (maybe wrongly) assumed that monitors were like speakers. You can hook up as many as you want, it may divide your end result, but the music is being made "in the box". The bottleneck will always be with whats "in the box", not what its being played through.

Oh heck yeah. It's most noticeable while playing games, but here's the thing... if you have an application open in one HD monitor, your graphics card is calculating 1920 by 1080 pixels. If you have the application open in two monitors, it's calculating twice that.

Video editing is less dependent on the graphics card than gaming is, but an upgrade should still help you a lot. [Still not as much as faster RAM and more cores would, though. :/]

 

[whoshorton]

Well, took a few days but got the 7750. Installed and now......things are much worse. Crazy flutters in the preview window. Frames skipping backwards and forwards. Even disabled my second monitor in my Win7 boot, only program installed is Sony Vegas and instead of skipping frames, it skips blocks of frames. hmmmmm... Not sure where to go from here.

 

[DarkSable]

You updated your video drivers, right? And double checked that the card is installed all the way?

 

[whoshorton]

You updated your video drivers, right? And double checked that the card is installed all the way?

Yup yup.

 

[DarkSable]

Hmm...
You don't happen to have a second rig to test the card in, by any chance?

 

[whoshorton]

No, sorry...... not one any better than my already "weak" system. I have come to the conclusion the card is working, just bottlenecked by my old system. I'm pricing a "built" system just for video editing. But will be a while till I have the $$$. At this point. I can do in Vegas what is called a "dynamic RAM preview" where it loads the video being worked on directly onto the RAM, which enables me to work on "sections" of videos without skipping too many frames. But its a LONG process. Its the best that I can do at this point, I think.

Sorry for the late reply, I have been working to finish a video for the last week. Again, the way I have to "work around" the weak system probably takes days to do what should only take hours. But oh well.

 

[DarkSable]

Ahh. If you don't need much storage, $350 will get you a rig with an APU and an SSD.

Sorry to hear that things aren't going well.

Just had a thought, though. I recently had a similar problem upgrading a prebuilt computer with a graphics card...

Did the card mount easily, or did you have any issues with getting it to sit properly?

The prebuilt I was working on looked like the card was seated correctly, but it ended up registering as 0MHz on both the core and memory clocks.

Download GPU-z and see what it tells you.

 

[whoshorton]

I downloaded GPU-Z. nice to see that things are all working as expected. It shows the card running at full capacity and specs. No problem there. Thank you for suggesting that.

 

[whoshorton]

Best answer selected by whoshorton.