Money for more RAM or a decent video card?

[xhei]

Hi everyone,i wanted to build my own pc. I have put in order all of the pieces so far,but i wanted your advice of what should i get,my configuration is:

intel i7 2600k
mobo asrock z68 pro3
psu xfx core edition 550watt
Case Midl Cooler Master Elite 430 ATX
4fans 120mm
2 led cathodes,wireless mouse and keyboard

first i decided to have 8gigs(2x4) of Ram,and to have a geforce 560 non ti version,this much i could afford for my budget

i wanted to ask if would it be better to get 16gigs of ram (4x4 dual channel) and to buy a cheaper geforce video card or to leave it like that?

main purpose for me would be working on after effects,some blender,cinema 4d,photoshop. I rendered scene i worked on my friend's pc,he had 4gigs of ram,the compilation was a full hd,and it took all 4gigs of usage! i like to work on hd files,even short ones,but i like the resolution of 720p or 1080p.
don't plan at all for gaming,i'm used to play on my ps3 (don't liked at all playing on the keyboard)

 

[blazorthon]

I don't think 16GB of memory is necessary for what you are doing but I'm not an expert in professional software. I also don't know if a better video card would help at all but it should if the software uses GPGPU (especially CUDA) acceleration.

I can say that a better solid state drive would help you but I don't know by how much. Also, rendering likes high performance memory. I would recommend an 8GB 1866MHz kit if you don't want to spend too much or pay a more for a faster kit.

Don't sacrifice latency for bandwidth, both are important.

If 8GB proves to not be enough then 16GB would be the next logical step if you want to keep RAM capacity per module identical, a safer bet for getting the computer to work right than having 12GB (2x2GB + 2x4GB) would offer.

For rendering high bandwidth, low latency RAM makes a significant impact. A good solid state drive helps pretty much everything in some way so I can't not recommend getting one.

Here is a potential memory kit:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231455

1.5v, 1866MHz, 9-10-9-28 timings. Do a little overclocking to get a slightly tighter CAS or maybe a higher frequency and that should be good memory speed.

Because of the work you do sandforce based drives ma have problems... I don't know how much of your data would be compressed and how much more compression it can take. Sandforce SSDs are the most common and generally the best around but incompressible data (or already compressed data) can cause them to choke because the high bandwidth of the Sandforce controller is enabled by it compressing data as it passes through.

The SSDs will still be fast but they might not be close to the reported speeds because of this.


Will you be overclocking your CPU? if not then you should choose the slightly cheaper i7-2600 and a significantly cheaper motherboard than any good Z68/P67 boards.