Long Overdue GPU Upgrade

[seedubb]

My long-suffering NVidia GT 240 is now ready to be replaced.

The amount of C4D, After Effects & Premiere work I am undertaking has all increased in the past year, but I struggle to find cards that would benefit each program and am still trying to understand the advantages for each one.

APPROXIMATE PURCHASE DATE: Next 3 weeks.

BUDGET RANGE: £200 - £450

USAGE FROM MOST TO LEAST IMPORTANT: After Effects - Premiere - C4D

CURRENT GPU AND POWER SUPPLY: NVidia GT240 - Corsair TX 650W

OTHER RELEVANT SYSTEM SPECS: i7-2600K - 16GB Corsair Vengeance RAM (2X8GB) - MSI MS7673 Mobo

PREFERRED WEBSITE(S) FOR PARTS: No preference, UK based though.

COUNTRY OF ORIGIN:

PARTS PREFERENCES: NVidia card.

OVERCLOCKING: No - I've never overclocked but I would if it's advised.

SLI OR CROSSFIRE: ?

MONITOR RESOLUTION: 1920x1080 - Dual Display

ADDITIONAL COMMENTS: If anyone could briefly explain what each program (AE - PR - C4D) benefits from GPU-wise, it'd help me understand the GPU market and options a little better.

I notice slight lag with video, mostly evident on panning video. And in Premiere it now seems to no longer handle playing video for more than 10 seconds without backing up and choking on the timeline.

Does a dual-display drain GPU resources?

I was considering a GTX 680 / GTX 670 but am totally open to suggestions as I am back at square one every-time I start looking.

Any help appreciated!

 

[ronduth]

i know you want nvidia, and i've always been a Nvidia guy but I went with the new r9 280x amd model and I have to say i really like it. It was about 379.99 USD

 

[huilun02]

Dual display won't drain GPU resources.

You don't need to SLI/Crossfire. Your board won't allow it anyway.

Best card for your budget should be a GTX 780 if you prefer Nvidia.

Here are two good UK sites to buy from. Free delivery in UK.

http://www.scan.co.uk/shop/computer-hardware/all/gpu-nvidia/geforce-gtx-780-pci-e

http://www.ebuyer.com/store/Components/cat/Graphics-Cards-Nvidia/subcat/NVIDIA-GTX-780-Series

Will max everything at 1080p. Enjoy

 

[seedubb]

Thanks for the pointers. I'm considering the 780 instead now.

I have always looked at NVidia cards as a few AE plugins always seemed to prefer them. Just checked and they're open to other cards now, so my options could be opened up. Is there a price/spec jump for other cards that I should look at, are Radeon cards usually cheaper? I've never delved deep into GPUs, so I have no knowledge of the real benefits or comparisons I'm afraid.

Might be a stupid question, but when I look at what processes in Premiere utilise CUDA cores, how do those processes work on Radeon cards? Are the differences big?

 

[huilun02]

You can get the R9 290 or R9 290X from AMD. They perform very well, often better than the GTX 780 (in games)

But their true potential will not be realized because they use the bad stock cooler. And I don't recommend cards with stock coolers.

 

[seedubb]

Ok, I went with the GTX 780 and it arrived today. (MSI Twin Frozr)

Set-up easy enough but Premiere CS6 didn't recognise it as a CUDA enabled card. It may have needed updating but I had limited internet access so just added the card to the accepted cards list for now.

I've not really noticed the increase in timeline performance that I was expecting though. Jumping up from a GT 240, I imagine it should have been quite a drastic leap.

Is there any optimisation or other tweaking I should look into for editing? I've never overclocked a CPU or GPU before - is it worth trying?