p.1 #1 · Which video card to choose for Dell 8500 build?
Here are the current video card options for a Dell XPS 8500 build. Which would you recommend for Lightroom 4 and Photoshop CS6? Was going to get the cheapest card, Radeon HD 7570.
AMD Radeon™ HD 7570 1GB GDDR5
NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 640 1GB GDDR5
AMD Radeon™ HD 7770 2GB GDDR5
p.1 #2 · Which video card to choose for Dell 8500 build?
I'm sure any of the cards would work- what kind of processor is the XPS sporting?
What do you want your rig to be to do? I build my own and from use have come to prefer Intel proc's and nVidia cards. HUGE difference for me. So do you want something that will work for as little loot as possible? That doesn't equate to the fastest and best looking images...
p.1 #3 · Which video card to choose for Dell 8500 build?
As RDParker implies, most people say that the video card has little impact for photo editing. That mostly comes into play for moving images (games, video, etc). For photo editing, better to spend the money on processor or RAM.
p.1 #4 · Which video card to choose for Dell 8500 build?
I'm a strong advocate for a dedicated video card to help offload some from the processor. It doesn't need to be a "wicked awesome" video card ... just something that can "lighten the load" / free up the processor to let it do the heavy lifting on the number crunching.
The heavy stuff isn't the presentation of the images, it is the creation / computation or our manipulations and the volume of information being used at a given time. Spend your money on a Quad CPU for the heavy lifting (Dump Truck) and get a moderate video card for the lighter task (Wheelbarrow).
If you aren't into video and gaming, the 7570 you mention should be just fine ... imo.
Oct 01, 2012 at 12:09 PM
mshi Offline • • • • [X]
p.1 #5 · Which video card to choose for Dell 8500 build?
If you're a digital artist who likes to put thousands upon thousands layers in a single Photoshop file with really big file size, go for the GPU that has tons of RAM and super fast clock speed. If it's just for still image retouching without using any 3D stuff, 1GB GPU memory is already overkill. On the other hand, you want to get CUDA-based cards if you will use Premiere Pro for video-editing since Adobe's Mercury playback engine uses CUDA.
Basically the GT 440 has 96 GPU's/CUDA cores, that allow multi-processor rendering for many Adobe functions. Definitely the better card for Adobe.
I had a GT 430 card that I used with Adobe acceleration, it helped quite a bit. I also ran dual monitors for editing off of the card.
I just upgraded that to a GTX 560, which has 4x as many cores. But that also required an upgraded power supply. The GT 440 is pretty safe, as it only requires a 300 watt power supply.
p.1 #7 · Which video card to choose for Dell 8500 build?
mshi wrote:
If you're a digital artist who likes to put thousands upon thousands layers in a single Photoshop file with really big file size, go for the GPU that has tons of RAM and super fast clock speed. If it's just for still image retouching without using any 3D stuff, 1GB GPU memory is already overkill. On the other hand, you want to get CUDA-based cards if you will use Premiere Pro for video-editing since Adobe's Mercury playback engine uses CUDA.
I will repeat this. You don't need a high end GPU unless you:
1. want to game on the machine, and/or
2. run applications that can use the GPU's processing power to speed up some tasks
If your application uses OpenCL programming, you can use both AMD/ATi and Nvidia GPU's to achieve this result. Some applications like Adobe Premiere Pro use CUDA programming, and these applications will ONLY run on Nvidia cards that support CUDA. All else being equal, buy the cheapest card that will support all the monitors you want to drive at their specified resolutions.
If you don't plan to game or use OpenCL or CUDA based apps, use the GPU integrated on the Intel i7 SandyBridge and IvyBridge processors to drive the monitor. This should more than suffice, and it will save you energy and cooling costs which can add up over time.
