Replace pc videocard

My video card has become unstable and I need to replace it but it is a jungle out there. There are so many different cards to choose from so I am hoping to get some suggestions.

My current card is a: Nvidia GF GTX 295 1792 MB PCI-E

My requirements for a new card is of course that it should be PCI-E and have 2 digital outputs and one or more GPUs. Its a plus if it also has HDMI output.


My main use of that pc is Ligthroom, Photoshop and just added Premiere Pro and After Effects ( thanks to creative cloud ).

Most are decent. If you're not running huge multi-screen with a multi-card system, then you don't need to worry too much about your card memory.

Personally I tend to just grab my favourite online hardware retailer, and then Passmark's benchmark charts. Figure out a rough budget, make a list of what is available for sale, and then start ranking them based on their benchmark chart.

nVidia 520 1GB - latest generation, cheapest. Getting a more expensive card would be a waste of money for image processing.

tim wrote in post #14452433
nVidia 520 1GB - latest generation, cheapest. Getting a more expensive card would be a waste of money for image processing.

Its not just for image processing its also for video processing with Adobe Premiere Pro.

Check out the Adobe website to see which cards are supported by the Mercury Playback engine used in Premiere Pro.

http://www.adobe.com …-playback-engine.edu.html

Nightstalker wrote in post #14454120
Check out the Adobe website to see which cards are supported by the Mercury Playback engine used in Premiere Pro.

http://www.adobe.com …-playback-engine.edu.html

Thanks. The link does not work though.

This link works: http://www.adobe.com …cury-playback-engine.html

The real question is how much benefit a fast video card would be. I think you'd need to find a video forum to see what they think. My quick impression is... some benefit, but it's not huge.

Couple of links though, this one and this one, might be helpful.

Thanks Tim. I will check those links.

just a quick question:
what do you mean by 'unstable' ? how old is your card?

its highly probable that its your system(software) that got unstable.

Chrizz wrote in post #14455014
just a quick question:
what do you mean by 'unstable' ? how old is your card?

its highly probable that its your system(software) that got unstable.

No it is the card that is unstable.

There has been a lot of instability problems reported with several GTX--- series models. I went thru a year of (*%#^ with two models of these, including factory returns and replacements -- all to no avail. Both now in junk box, replaced with 2GB ram versions of ATI Radeon 6950. Absolutely the smoothest cards I have had in several years, very fast and STABILE. Are doing great on very large photo files.

GTX 570 HD (Superclock is just $10-20 more) or the GTX 480 which very few remain on the market are currently (due to rebates) the best bang for your buck. The GTX 570 is comparable to the GTX 560 TI 448 core but those as with the GTX 480 don't offer Displayport. If you can get the EVGA Classified or comparable which are becoming scarce you get an actual GTX 580 minus two memory chips For $200 less. For another hundred bucks over the better 500 series the GTX 670 is also worth considering.

I been debating on getting the GTX 670 vs the EVGA 570 Classified (not sure if it's sold in EU) as it would be nice to future proof with PCI-E 3.0 which is fully backwards compatible. Also the higher end cards come with full HDMI ports and the 600 series can push three monitors where the 500 series and below can only push two. Personally i'm only running two screens because that's all my card can handle. I used to run SLI for more power but eventually the heat eventually drove me to pull one of the cards. Where as the newer 600 series cards run much cooler and have enough power to push dual 30 inch screens.

Lots of people say you don't need a monster card and what have you but it really depends on individual needs. Personally i feel that having a good bit more power even if i'm not using it YET is worth it. If you upgrade every two to three years you will pay about the same if not more in the long run. But not only will you pay for more frequent upgrades you also wont have a better overall experience between upgrades. Statistics show the average person upgrades their computer or at least the video card every three years. The average video card will cost between $200 and $250 so that's $400 to $500 every five to six years.

If you pay $400 for a GTX 670 now you probably wont see a need to upgrade it for a long time being that it has near double the power of a GTX 570. I'd say the 600 series will be good for 6 years easy and you will save money on energy costs. Considering a much more powerful card wont work as hard which means better efficiency and less heat overall. Most people also never consider that maxing out a slower video card degrades the system especially mechanical drives unless you have really good cooling which in itself can be very costly.

nVidia 570 cards are around $300. nVidia 520 cards are around $50. Given there's no significant gain in Photoshop that's $250 that could be put toward an SSD that would give you a significant speedup.

Since video cards are so easy to replace it seems sensible to wait until they're actually used before paying for one.

GTX 520 is not going to cut it for someone who works with video and it's hard to believe that a professional would even consider one of the lowest of low end cards. Maybe for editing photos of the grand kids playing with the family dog in the back yard. But we could make the same argument for P&S vs SLR or 10D vs 7D since nobody really needs a camera then costs more then $10 to capture great photos.

As for buying used video cards you take a very big risk of it being on it's last leg (actually had to reflow one of mine) and only the low end cards depreciate all that quickly. In fact some higher cards like the EVGA Classified series can be worth more on the used market due to the gaming market vs what they fetched new. It depends on rebate deals, how many are produced and how well the card might handle overclocking. That and if a particular card is in high demand for SLI like the GTX 570 which is more economical then a GTX 580 for gamers who want surround vision.

http://www.tomshardwar​e.com …-cuda-64-bit,2770-10.html

Ah yeah video does use it a bit more. Photographers don't need any more than a 520 though.