Graphics card for Adobe Illustrator and Flexisign 10

[Niflis01]

I'm currently in the process of planning to build a new computer for work. I don't know very much past the basics even though I built a gaming computer a few years ago. I want to be able to open massive files on AI and Flexi, be able to have multiple files open at once and save time ripping my files for printing. I have no idea what kind of graphics card that I need or if it even matters for what I'm going to be using it for. I'm going to post my current build in a link below so if anyone has any advice on a graphics card or any other component please help me out. Thanks in advance!

http://pcpartpicker.com/list/xDZbtJ

 

[Darkbreeze]

What is your budget for any potential upgrades? The first thing I'd do is plan to include an SSD. Solid state drive speeds will be immensely helpful in these types of workloads, both for reading from, writing to and caching file data.

GPU card is important, but may not necessarily need to be extremely high end, depending on what level of projects you work on. I run both those, and many other graphics programs on a fairly middle of the pack R9 280 currently, and they seem to do just as well as my R9 290x did to be honest.

I don't do insane numbers of layers or more than ten to fifteen images processing at a time though, so your workloads may differ from mine.

 

[Niflis01]

I would like to keep it around $600 to $700 for the computer alone but I don't want to over do it and waste money on parts that I don't need. 90% of the time I work with vector artwork and every once in a while I will work with a few average size bitmaps but nothing extreme. Do you know if vector programs can utilize 8 cpu cores or if that is a waste? Thanks for your time!

 

[Niflis01]

I will spend the money for an SSD. I'll probably just by a 250gb or 500gb and buy another one later if I run out of memory.

 

[Niflis01]

I think I might take my Gigabyte radeon r9 270x 2gb out of my gaming computer and use it in my work computer and buy a EVGA GeForce GTX 960 4GB SuperSC ACX 2.0+ to put in my gaming computer. Let me know what you think about that please. Here is the link to the graphics card. https://pcpartpicker.com/product/kskwrH/evga-video-card-04gp43967kr

 

[k1114]

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/skylake-intel-core-i7-6700k-core-i5-6600k,4252-5.html

Illustrator is not very cpu intensive and although it can use more cores, most is on just 1. Photoshop is actually similar as well. The higher threaded work is put on the gpu. As you can see, fx performs the worst, even to pentiums. I'm not sure why the apus vary so much since gpu acceleration should be off to test cpus. You'd be better off with an i3. There isn't much of a performance increase over a mid range card and a 270x would do great.

I don't know about flexisign but vector based graphic software is primarily cpu and not particularly highly threaded.

 

[Darkbreeze]

@K1114, I think the build he posted above is what he already has, so I'm not sure that a change of platform altogether is what we're talking about here. I could be wrong though. I think he just wants to improve his performance as much as he can without having to change platforms.

If he already has that 8350 and what is a pretty decent motherboard actually, I'm not sure making a change is really necessary considering I recently swapped from a very similar platform to my Skylake configuration and while it is faster now, it was ok before in most graphics applications. Good enough for all but the highest echelon users looking for professional performance.

Again, maybe I'm reading his needs wrong.

@ Niflis, is that build above one you already have, or is that your intended build?

 

[k1114]

He said he was making a work pc and would change gpu of the gaming pc but that 1 pc could do it all instead of having 2 separate.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Ok, my appologies, I guess I skipped right over that first statement he made. (Sheepishly creeps away)

 

[Niflis01]

Hey guys, thanks for the help. The parts list that I posted was what I had in mind for my new computer. My gaming computer has an AMD fx 6300, Asus M5A97 R2.0 and a Gigabyte radeon r9 270x 2gb. I don't have any preferred brands I just want the best work computer I can get for $500 to $700 tops. I will put a list together with the i3 and see what you guys think. If you have anymore suggestions please send them my way, I need all the help I can get. The reason I want to build a new computer instead of just use my gaming computer for both is because all I play for the most part is IRacing and I have a steering wheel and pedal setup and I don't want to have to move my computer back and forth from my office to my game room to play it. Thanks!

 

[Niflis01]

I wish I would have known that AMD cpus performed that bad compared to intel before I built my last computer. I guess you have to learn somehow.

 

[Niflis01]

I think I'm going to go with the Intel Core i5-6500 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor. If anyone knows of a good mb for this cpu let me know. Also how can you tell if a mb has USB 3.0? I need it to have 3.0 because most external backup HD's need 3.0 now.

 

[k1114]

It'll say in specs. Pcpartpicker has the option to filter for mobos with usb 3.0 headers. You'll need to do the same for cases for front panel usb 3.0.
http://pcpartpicker.com/list/3dtzKZ