Graphics card for new build with CS5

[shades316]

Hi,

Currently have the following spec:

Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail with FREE TrackMania 2 Canyon PC Game £167.99
(£139.99) £167.99
(£139.99)
Asus P8Z68-V LX Intel Z68 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £79.99
(£66.66) £79.99
(£66.66)
Kingston HyperX Blu 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-10666C9 1333MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1333C9D3B1K2/8G) £47.99
(£39.99) £47.99
(£39.99)
Corsair Builder Series CX 430W V2 ATX '80 Plus' Power Supply (CMPSU-430CXUKV2) £35.99
(£29.99) £35.99
(£29.99)
BitFenix Merc Beta Gaming Case - Black £32.99
(£27.49) £32.99
(£27.49)
Samsung SpinPoint F3 500GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (HD502HJ) £30.98
(£25.82) £61.96
(£51.64)
LG GH22NS70 22x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £17.99
(£14.99) £17.99
(£14.99)

However I have to say when it comes to whether I need a dedicated graphics card im confused....!

Some who I have spoke to say I should go for a dedicated graphics card, whereas others suggest that the onboard graphics of this spec are more than enough.

Am i right in thinking that its only certain Adobe plugins that take advantage of CUDA and a dedicated graphics card?

From a Photoshop point of view is it more important to go for more RAM and CPU as opposed to a dedicated card?

Does having a dedicated graphics card mean that rendering and transcoding etc is offloaded to the dedicated graphics card therefore keeping RAM and CPU load down or does it not work that way?

I have read various threads and am still confused - straight talking is what im after!!

Thanks again!

 

[Azarathal]

Does photoshop use hyperthreading? If so the 2600k will be a massive boost.

Unsure on the graphics front im afraid

 

[Biglunn]

Im a regular user of Premiere CS5.5.

Your processor is fine (but an i7 would be even better = overclockyour i5!!), but the biggest boost would be to get over 12gb RAM (especially when working with HD material) and most importantly, GET YOURSELF A MODERN NVIDIA CARD WITH AT LEAST 1gb RAM

I use a GTX 470, which is probaly the cheapest Officially Supported card, and can be found dirt cheap second hand, or get yourself a GTS 450 1gb and hack Premiere - tried both in my system and both give a massive boost. Personally, just get yourself a cheap 470 - hassle free as its officially supported, and no need to get anything more powerful. One other thing with Premiere - get yoursel a really fast RAID hard drive setup to work from, seperate from OS. Hard drives are as cheap as chips these days. I notice your PSU - it may not be adequate with the GTX 470 - replace it or get a 1gb GTS450/GTX460/GTS550/GTX560 which I think are less power hungry, but need Premiere hacked for CUDA.

Your system would be fine for Photoshop even as it is - any cheap modern OpenGL graphics or maybe even onboard will be sufficient

 

[ed79]

I'm not sure about Photoshop CS5 but I have been using Premiere CS5 with my 460 GTX. There are very few nvidia cards supported by the "Mercury Playback Engine" as they seem to want people to pay mega bucks for the quadro cards. Adobes answer is that they only allow you to use cards that they have tested and certified such as these...

http://forums.adobe.com/thread/609054

*However* all you have to do is edit a text file and add your particular nvidia card in (as long as it supports CUDA) - this is how I got mine to work.

I'm temporarily running on a dual core E2180 at 3GHz and it seems this is not enough! I tested last night and encoding a video in Premiere used 100% CPU but did at least use about 20% of the GPU according to MSI Afterburner. I reckon with a faster CPU I'd see much higher GPU activity.

The following pretty much explains it all - including the fact that currently a GTX500 series may not be any faster than an old 280...

http://www.studio1productions.com/Articles/PremiereCS5.htm

 

[ed79]

Just to add that I found on my old i7 920 that using hyperthreading only improved encoding speed by 10-20%.

 

[Azuse05]

You realise CS5 have OpenGL support right? Nvidia just want you to think their proprietary api (cuda) is the only option

 

[ed79]

Do you mean OpenCL? If so, I didn't know that...

 

[Azarathal]

Just to add that I found on my old i7 920 that using hyperthreading only improved encoding speed by 10-20%.

I'd say 10-20% is a fair ammount tbh

 

[ed79]

Just had a look and I don't think Adobe support Open CL (Gfx card processing)...

What about OpenCL?

As we were beginning the work for Premiere Pro CS5, OpenCL wasn’t far enough along for us to use it for the Mercury Playback Engine.

Regarding plans for future versions: Sorry, but we can’t comment on what may or may not be done in future versions. That said, we rely heavily on feature requests to determine how many people want a specific feature. If you’d like to see us use OpenCL for processing, please submit a feature request.

http://blogs.adobe.com/premiereprot...y-playback-engine-and-adobe-premiere-pro.html

 

[Azuse05]

No I mean OpenGL has been used by adobe since CS4, OpenCL wasn't far enough along when they started CS5 according to their blog. I'm simply pointing out that Nvidia isn't the only option, however there are thing's done by OpenGL that Cuda won't do and vis versa, therefore it makes sense to lean towards Nvidia as it will leaver both apis.

Just make sure you pick a gpu on the official support list if possible.

 

[ed79]

I'd say 10-20% is a fair ammount tbh

It's just that seeing 8 CPU graphs in task manager made me think hyperthreading would make more difference - I was expecting 50% faster or something.

For what I do (encoding a 10 minute video maybe once a month) it's not worth me paying 50% more for a Sandybridge i7 than an i5, but in an environment where time is money I can see the advantage.

 

[ed79]

You realise CS5 have OpenGL support right? Nvidia just want you to think their proprietary api (cuda) is the only option

But Open GL and CUDA are completely different.

Back in the day Open GL made 3D models rotate better on SGI workstations and later on made Quake look better and run smoother

It won't however, speed up video encoding by 2 - 10 times like CUDA will, and I assume like Open CL would as well if it were supported.