Question Please recommend a graphics card for newbie video artist - PC specs in question (ty!)

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Dec 29, 2022
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Hi,

I'm a music composer who has started to make some video artworks. These have so far been constructed between Affinity Photo editor, Inkscape and REAPER audio software (which has a basic video editor) - however I'd like to start using Blender software to do a little light processing. Please can you recommend me a graphics card?

Here is a Speccy of my computer:

CPU
Intel Core i7 870 (1st Gen i7)
Lynnfield 45nm Technology

RAM
16.0GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 533MHz (7-7-7-20)

Motherboard
Gigabyte Technology Co. Ltd. H55M-UD2H (Socket 1156)

Graphics
PL1980 (1280x1024@60Hz)
1023MB NVIDIA Quadro K420 (NVIDIA)

PSU
550W Corsair VS550 PSU


Would a second hand RXT 3050 or RTX 3070 be a good choice or would these cards not be compatible or overkill?

Thank you very much for any help -
 
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There is no graphics card I can recommend that would be appropriate for you to use until you get a much better power supply. That Corsair VS is one of the worst possible models from a well known name brand that you could possibly have.

Please read these and then upgrade accordingly. And the bottom line really is that there are very few graphics cards that are going to work well with your system because the hardware is SO old. It's literally 13 year old hardware, but something like the GTX 1050 or GTX 1650 might be ok. Or, if you plan to upgrade the CPU, motherboard and memory (Plus of course the PSU which needs to be upgraded no matter WHAT graphics card you go with, or even if you don't even add one) then something from the RTX 2xxx or 3xxx or any number of AMD cards might be suitable afterwards.

Without a better power supply, adding any graphics card is asking for trouble. And by better I don't just mean "more watts". I mean better quality and performance.




 

Ar558

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Dec 13, 2022
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Hi,

I'm a music composer who has started to make some video artworks. These have so far been constructed between Affinity Photo editor, Inkscape and REAPER audio software (which has a basic video editor) - however I'd like to start using Blender software to do a little light processing. Please can you recommend me a graphics card?

Here is a Speccy of my computer:

CPU
Intel Core i7 870 (1st Gen i7)
Lynnfield 45nm Technology

RAM
16.0GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 533MHz (7-7-7-20)

Motherboard
Gigabyte Technology Co. Ltd. H55M-UD2H (Socket 1156)

Graphics
PL1980 (1280x1024@60Hz)
1023MB NVIDIA Quadro K420 (NVIDIA)

PSU
550W Corsair VS550 PSU


A friend said that a second hand RXT 3050 or RTX 3070 might be a good choice. Is their advice good - or would it not be compatible or overkill?

Thank you very much for any help -

All this kit is so out of date that even a 3050 would be bottlenecked. I doubt it would make sense to put anything more than a 1060 in a setup like this. I dunno if you can get Blender to run only using the GPU but given this is PCI gen x2 I'm pretty sure it would be bottlenecked by that anyway.
I would suggest a new PC for this kind of workload. Even a budget build would massively outperform this machine.
 
All this kit is so out of date that even a 3050 would be bottlenecked. I doubt it would make sense to put anything more than a 1060 in a setup like this. I dunno if you can get Blender to run only using the GPU but given this is PCI gen x2 I'm pretty sure it would be bottlenecked by that anyway.
I would suggest a new PC for this kind of workload. Even a budget build would massively outperform this machine.
It's not for gaming, so "bottlenecked" really doesn't apply here in the traditional sense but even so you are partially correct because practically any modern video production application is going to still require at least a halfway decent CPU and while 16GB of memory is probably technically enough for just about any entry level application usage, if you start getting into even slightly more advanced rendering and editing you will probably be wanting to see more like 32GB or at least 16GB of the much faster DDR4. 16GB of 1066mhz memory is like trying to race a sloth against a cheetah in any modern application that is even moderately memory intensive.
 

Ar558

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Dec 13, 2022
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It's not for gaming, so "bottlenecked" really doesn't apply here in the traditional sense but even so you are partially correct because practically any modern video production application is going to still require at least a halfway decent CPU and while 16GB of memory is probably technically enough for just about any entry level application usage, if you start getting into even slightly more advanced rendering and editing you will probably be wanting to see more like 32GB or at least 16GB of the much faster DDR4. 16GB of 1066mhz memory is like trying to race a sloth against a cheetah in any modern application that is even moderately memory intensive.

Yeh bottlenecked applies to performance being limited in any application not just gaming but the rest I agree with.
 
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Dec 29, 2022
4
1
15

I am planning to buy the PC this week. This is the machine that I am looking at:
https://www.scan.co.uk/3xs/configurator/rx670-4u-tb

The changes that I planning to make to the system are to:
Add - ASUS NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 DUAL 12GB OC V2 Ampere Graphics Card
Add - Storage Drive - M.2 NVMe - 1TB Samsung 980 PRO - 7000MB/s Read, 5000MB/s Write

I was interested to learn from this thread how important PSU are. Do you think the existing 650W Seasonic Focus GX-650 80PLUS Gold will be fine for this system, or should I upgrade it to the 850W Seasonic Focus PX-850 - 80PLUS Platinum ?

Does anything in the base spec of the computer look a bit dodgy or are all of the standard components good quality?

Thank you
 
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