Hello all, so I'm really happy about my build completed almost a year ago, with the awesome help of you folks at bit-tech. Now I'm looking for a fairly substantial uprade. Budget is around $750-$1200, £470-£780 - taking into account money I may make back by swapping/selling current components. Current build: Case: Zalman GS1000 Mobo: ASUS P6T D2 X58 CPU: Intel Core i7 920 D0 GPU: EVGA nVidia GTX 295 1,792 RAM: 12Gb OCZ 1600 DDR3 Triple Channel Storage: 120Gb OCZ Solid State Drive, 1Tb WD Caviar Black HDD, 1Tb Samsung Spinpoint F3 PSU: ENERMAX Revolution 85+ 1050W Optical: LG BluRay/DVD 24x Mouse: Logitech G5 Keyboard: Logitech G19 LCD Monitors: Dual HP LP2475w H-IPS 24" LCD's OS: Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit Murdermod Black Sleeving Priorities: Cooling Performance Aesthetics/Functionality Main Points: Mobo: Debating switching from ASUS P6TDeluxe 2 to EVGA Classified: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813188069"]EVGA Classified Is it worth it for OC'ing? SSD: edited: Buying Crucial 128Gb C300 GPU: edited: Buying GTX 580 CPU: Still have the stock i7 920 D0, no overclocking. Seems the new standard is something like a 930 or 980? Also seems prices have come down, would it be worth upgrading? I do a ton of HD video rendering which completely runs off CPU (SONY Vegas Pro 9.0 64-bit with max CPU affinity enabled), and I could use some more horsepower. Soundcard: edited: Buying XONAR Essence Secondary GPU for third monitor: Since I work with a lot of clients at one time (full-time webdesigner) I'd like to mount a 3rd smaller monitor above my duals, reserved for AIM/MSN/Skype etc. This can be a totally crappy monitor for cheap.. just needs to get the job done. Should I buy something like a GTX250 etc, or something even cheaper? I suppose if I were to SLI new 460's as described above.. this would be solved. Any recommendations on a cheap small monitor, around 1440-1680px? Webcam: Thinking of this one: Logitech QuickCam Pro 9000 Mouse: Thinking of upgrading to either: Logitech G500 - new revision of my current mouse CM Storm Inferno - nice bittech review ;-) Headsets: After reading Bit-tech and Newegg reviews, it's between these: Creative Sound Blaster Arena Surround USB Gaming Headset Cons: Horrible reports of bad construction, breakage, bad RMA process.. excellent sound thou Corsair HS1 Cons: Apparently not comfortable over long duration, bad mic performance/settings Confirmed to puchase: Crucial 128Gb SSD: $280 Xonar Essence : $290 NZXT Phantom: $140 EVGA GTX 580: $560 Total Price: $1270 / £787.97 I value your opinions on any other components/ideas too! Thank you in advance for any help!
1) Overclock and get decent CPU cooling 2) Upgrade SSD to a Crucial 3) Upgrade GPU to the high end nVidia or ATi that's coming out soon.
Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Flash, After Effects, Z-Brush, 3DS & Maya, SONY Vegas Pro 64 for video @Ph4ZeD: Happy to hear someone already suggesting upgrading the SSD, I've been thinkin about that Crucial everyday!
Adobe products, Photoshop and After Effects, specifically, will be able to harness the power of GPUs when rendering, which I'm sure you'll find beneficial. However, only certain GPUs are supported. At present, the following GPUs are supported: - GeForce GTX 285 (Windows and Mac OS) - GeForce GTX 470 (Windows) - Quadro 4000 (Windows) - Quadro 5000 (Windows) - Quadro FX 3800 (Windows) - Quadro FX 4800 (Windows and Mac OS) - Quadro FX 5800 (Windows) - Quadro CX As for processors, often times more is not better when it comes to the programs you mentioned. For example, a single octacore processor is better than two quad-core processors. If you decide to go with an SR-2 setup with a pair of Xeons, do not expect it to blow away an i7 setup. An SSD or a RAID (1)0 mechanical setup will also benefit video editing specifically by providing you with with more bandwidth. I'd highly recommend either of them.
Hey Padre, yea I've heard a lot about the Quadros, but that's surprising only the 285 or 470 is on that list. Not that I doubt you or anything. I haven't checked out much about the 470's yet, seems everyone's getting 460's as best bang for the buck right now. Yea I think some massive upgrade to Xeons is way more than I need. I think a simple upgrade to the latest i7 plus overclocking would suit me well, read a lot of people here that are running 4Ghz stable OC
padrejones where did you get that list? I have an oem GT220 that runs smooth as with gpu acceleration and photoshop cs5. Having said that Whitesky will be wanting a more powerful card.. I'm sure the GTX 460 will work..
I agree, it is silly that the only non-workstation cards are the aging 285 and the 470. And if you do want a workstation option, all you have to pick from are the generations old 3xxx, 4xxx, and 5xxx series Quadros. I, as a lifelong ATI purchaser, am a bit peeved. Adobe's decision to write everything using CUDA technology, instead of something like OpenCL, was, in my opinion, an error. EDIT: The list is available directly from Adobe and nVidia. Other GPUs may work, but they are not offically supported.
For headphones, personally I cannot recommend the Sennheiser PC 350's enough. I got them standalone (there are bundles with soundcards) and they were worth the pricetag. Extremely comfortable for hours on end (even wearing glasses), noise cancelling, crisp well balanced sound, great mic. Perfect in my eyes.
Thanks I'm gonna look into those NaloaC, I was just reading about staying away from gaming headsets period if it's mostly for music/sound effects, so I'll scratch the originals off the list.
Any help? Lookin at getting the Crucial for sure, dk about the GPU situation now with all this talk of GTX580..
that adobe list isn't right.. I run after effects and photoshop.. what hangup on load times are you talking about? the 64 bit photoshop should shoot right up ssd you'd probably want more for games.. the 260 and 460 both use gpu acceleration on cs4.. not sure about cs5 but I expect it's the same (only running the cs5 media encoder right now) if your running that good gear, you might as well get the 580 when it hits.. sli and crossfire is for snuffaluffugus who fall for the slippy
So I'm definitely getting the XONAR DX, Crucial 128Gb Turns out I'm gonna take the plunge and pick up GTX 580, reviews were a sigh of relief after 480 mess. My biggest questions then atm are: Should I pickup the EVGA Classified mobos? I'd like em for overclocking + color: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...&cm_re=evba_classified-_-13-188-048-_-Product Is it worth it upgrading CPU? (Current 920 stock D0) to i7-950? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...5211&cm_re=Core_i7-950-_-19-115-211-_-Product Latest review here was nice! I think this would maybe help with video rendering, SONY Vegas relies on CPU and I'd like to OC to 4.0GHz also, switching from my Zalman to NZXT Phantom.
*deleted* Found the only EVGA Classified with USB3 / Sata6Gbs: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813188069
Hey Why not try to overclock your current processor. There are some good guides out there and its really not difficult. I would also get a decent cooler to help. As you use CPU intensive apps, you should really notice a difference. As for getting a new CPU, well apart from the 6 core ones, they are really much the same thing but with slightly different Multpliers. That could be handy if you want to really push some overclocking but not really worth it IMHO. As for those Adobe apps, if ound these 2 articles quite handy http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-gtx-580-gf110-geforce-gtx-480,2781-13.html http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/adobe-cs5-cuda-64-bit,2770.html in short, the GPU makes a huge difference to rendering times and that you can hack (easily) these applications to use different Nvidia gpus. Your current GPU is fairly powerful. I am sure that a new 580 will make a difference but i am not sure if it will be a massive ammount for the outlay. I think i wouldnt botther unless i was a PC gamer. I would also look at storage. There was an intresting thread on here earlier today about how to set up your disks for Adobe After Effects Finally, you mention aesthetics. I know cases are a personal choice but damn that Zalman is a ugly beast! maybe a new case is in order?
