Bang for buck upgrade for workstation?

Associate
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10 Jan 2009
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My machine is getting on a bit, but I don't have bundles of cash to chuck around.

I use it for photo and video editing (adobe suite) and I'm getting a bit fed up with its performance, especially when working with video in premiere pro. Even with the preview switched to lowest it stutters playing real time with minimal effects/layers.

My specs are here https://www.dropbox.com/s/cc3oshdjffnuw1k/Screenshot 2019-01-13 21.13.41.png?dl=0

I have 2 spare RAM slots but I'm not sure how much another 16GB or DDR3 would help? What route would you guys take to squeeze some more power out?
 
Soldato
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First you need to find out where your bottlenecks are. Fire up Task Manager on your second monitor and monitor the core usage and the RAM usage. Fire up GPU-Z and monitor the GPU usage.

If you're using more than 16 GB RAM you'll benefit from extra RAM.
If your four CPU cores are maxxed you'll benefit from more cores and faster cores.
If your GPU is maxxed then you'll benefit from a faster GPU.

Note that it's entirely possible that relieving the bottleneck in one area will shift the bottleneck to another!
 
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OP
Joined
10 Jan 2009
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1,753
First you need to find out where your bottlenecks are. Fire up Task Manager on your second monitor and monitor the core usage and the RAM usage. Fire up GPU-Z and monitor the GPU usage.

If you're using more than 16 GB RAM you'll benefit from extra RAM.
If your four CPU cores are maxxed you'll benefit from more cores and faster cores.
If your GPU is maxxed then you'll benefit from a faster GPU.

Note that it's entirely possible that relieving the bottleneck in one area will shift the bottleneck to another!

Sterling advise there my friend, cheers :)

I will take a look. I wasn't sure how to find out if the GPU is even being utilised.
 
Soldato
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Aberdeen
That picture clearly shows that your issue is the CPU: It's bouncing around near 100%. At 3% usage, it looks like you're not using the GPU at all; do you have GPU acceleration turned on?

Unfortunately a CPU upgrade means changing the motherboard and RAM as well. I found this article which may help you decide your replacement. Note the minimum recommended VRAM requirements for GPUs. Your 660 has 2 GB VRAM so Adobe may simple be saying 'No thank you'. Then again, it recommends 32 GB for 1080p video and you're only using 10 GB.

Tell us your budget and we can spec something up for you.
 
Associate
OP
Joined
10 Jan 2009
Posts
1,753
That picture clearly shows that your issue is the CPU: It's bouncing around near 100%. At 3% usage, it looks like you're not using the GPU at all; do you have GPU acceleration turned on?

Unfortunately a CPU upgrade means changing the motherboard and RAM as well. I found this article which may help you decide your replacement. Note the minimum recommended VRAM requirements for GPUs. Your 660 has 2 GB VRAM so Adobe may simple be saying 'No thank you'. Then again, it recommends 32 GB for 1080p video and you're only using 10 GB.

Tell us your budget and we can spec something up for you.

Blonde moment haha. I wasn't even looking at the GPU load I was looking at the core clock at the top!

Well, just checked and GPU acceleration is indeed turned on. Just had a look at a video project file and while its struggling to process the GPU is sat at about 2% load :(

Should it not be helping out a little more? lol
 
Last edited:
Soldato
Joined
14 Aug 2018
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Your 4690K is really quite a weak CPU for video encoding. The best CPU your motherboard can take is the i7 4790 which is an 4 core 8 thread compared to your 4 core 4 thread.

Personally, bang for buck, I'd just sell your parts and get a Ryzen 8 core 16 thread CPU. There you will see some big improvements.for video work.
 
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