Dell Dilema

[tallen234]

Ok, because of work issues, I am stuck buying a Dell. I am going to get the XPS 9000 i7-920 with 9gb ram. I am stuck on what video card to get. Here are my options

nVidia® GeForce® 310 512M GDDR3 [Included in Price]
nVidia GeForce GT 220, 1024MB [add $50.00]
ATI Radeon HD 5450 1GB DDR3 [add $50.00]
nVidia GeForce GTS 240 1024MB [add $130.00]
ATI Radeon™ HD 5770 1GB GDDR5 [add $180.00]
ATI Radeon HD 5870 1GB GDDR5 [add $330.00]

I am going to use this computer for amateur video editing (most likely with premier), occasional game playing and general computing stuff.

I was told by someone that getting an nVidia is better for my video editing if Adobe goes to "cuda" support in their regular applications. However, the best nVidia card is the 240 which, it is my understanding, that this is already a bit old.

So, I am leaning toward just biting the bullet and getting the 5870 which should be enough for me over the life of the computer. Also, it appears that the "upgrade" price from Dell is a decent deal considering what they go for retail.

Or, I can get the "standard" nVidia 310, bump up to 12gb in Ram and then upgrade to a video card in a few months. I really don't have much hands on experience with working inside the computer, but I am willing to give it a shot.

Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Userremoved]

Dell=shity

Anyway the 5870 looks good but have you looked at workstation cards? 9gb of RAM is plenty.

 

[tortnotes]

Dell = not necessarily bad.

Workstation cards are very expensive if all you're doing is some amateur editing in Premier. Not worth it.

The 5870 would be best for gaming, but if you don't need super 3D performance then the 5770 is probably the best price/performance option you have. It should still be plenty fast for video editing.
It's true that Adobe might take advantage of CUDA (and you could see some significant performance benefits if they do) but system performance should be fast already.
If you upgrade to CS5 at some point in the future when it comes out (it's supposedly going to support CUDA) then you might want to use an Nvidia card. Then again, the way you're talking about throwing around money, you might be able to afford it.

tl;dr: Get the 5770 or 5870. If Premiere ever supports CUDA, it sounds like you could buy a more powerful Nvidia card at that time.