Graphics Card Recommendation for PC Build

[jeeplife]

Hi Guys - first off, many thanks for the wealth of knowledge spread on these forums!

I'm putting together a system to replace my 6+ yr PC (Q6600), which, although is still going somewhat strong, has to stretch for some of the day to day work for me these days.

A lot of the work I do involve photo editing (Adobe Lightroom / Photoshop) and video editing (Premiere Pro / AfterEffects). A lot of these programs will be open simultaneously for multitasking.
Pictures are usually raw from a Canon 6D, and video is 1080p from the same DSLR or a GoPro. I would like to in the near future to start playing with 4K as the GoPro is capable of it.

With that in mind, here's what I have decided on so far:
i7-4790K processor (purchased)
Gigabyte Z97X-UD5H mobo
Samsung 840 EVO 250GB SDD
WD 2 TB 7200rpm HDD (purchased)
Corsair 850W power supply (purchased)
16GB 1600 CAS 9 DDR3 RAM (brand/model TBD based on pricing)

Question - I'm assuming a decent graphics card will help me along the way with the heavy lifting of videos rendering & playback. Might also help when I jump to 4K -- whenever I buy that monitor. What sort of video card would you guys recommend for this setup? While I don't want to spend $400 for overkill, I don't want to spend $80 to achieve basically nothing either.

Thanks in advance for your help!

 

[lightcloud]

The best price/performance card for 4K IMO is the GTX 970.

Or check out my Graphics Card Tier List if you are willing to run 4K. Those cards are on Tier 1 or in Tier 2.

 

[ZenShredder]

Here's a question you need to ask yourself first: Are you using this purely as a workstation or as a mix between working and playing games?

If you intend to use it solely as a workstation, you need to be looking at AMD FirePro cards or Nvidia Quadro cards. The down side of this is that they are INCREDIBLY expensive for a decent card, mainly because they're targeted for professionals who have the money to burn or large corporations/studios.

If you intend to do a mix of gaming and workstation tasks, I would suggest picking up a gaming card, specifically the R9 290 or 290X series since AMD just slashed their prices by $100 AND some of the manufacturers like MSI have slashed their prices by $50, meaning you get a $400 card for $250(I jumped on this deal, that's why I recommend it). To give you a little insight, I am a gamer but I also use Photoshop and Illustrator for my work since I'm a digital artist, my girlfriend also runs Maya on my desktop as well. These programs run pretty decently, they won't render a 5000 pixel brush stroke in a millisecond, but coupled with my AMD FX-8350 processor it runs GREAT, and that's with my old card still inside(haven't got the new card yet). My old card is an Asus HD 7770 Ghz edition, so the upgrade to an R9 290 will be enormous so I expect it will hold up very well running Photoshop, Illustator, Maya, Corel Painter, whatever else I have to throw at it.

A key thing to keep in mind is that the reason why workstation cards are so expensive as well is because they excel in something called "Double Floating Point Precision" which is something I have no idea about to be honest, however I know that gaming cards are crippled in this aspect and are better at Single Floating Point Precision calculations. However, based on my experience a good gaming card will still get the job done, the only other difference between these cards is their specialized drivers for applications such as Photoshop and the like. Other than that, it all comes down to their architecture, clock speed, etc. etc.

Good luck with the build, if you're looking to save money and would rather go for a workstation card, I'd recommend dropping the Intel CPU and go with an AMD FX-8350 like I have, it does the same job for cheaper, the only difference is that the i7 is a little faster and runs at a much lower wattage than the AMD CPU, but if saving money on the build is your priority then I'd suggest that. However, what you do is up to you of course.

Hope that helps!

 

[jeeplife]

The PC will pretty much be a workstation... but it is by no means meant to be enterprise or pro-grade. Whatever the work that I do is as a hobbyist. Will take a serious look at the R9 290 and pull the trigger if I find a reasonable deal. thanks guys!