Upgrading workstation to Quadro card

[paulandrewyoung]

Hi Guys,

I recently purchased an older HP workstation as a cheap upgrade so I could do some more video editing and motion graphics at home. I purchased a HP XW8200 workstation with dual Xeon processors at 3.4ghz, 16GB Ram, and a NVida GT520 1GB gfx card.
The GFX card was an upgrade from the previous owner.
Whilst HD editing works fine in AVID, not blistering but ok, my after effects performance is a little stunted and I am considering puchasing a 2nd hand Quadro K2000 2GB card for up to £150 pounds on ebay.

What do you guys think about this upgrade? I've red mixed things about that card. Would a newer more consumer level card do a better job at a similar price? The machine is obviously fairly old and am also concerned about compatibilty, I'm running Windows 7 professional 64bit.

Any help or advice much appreciated!

Thanks,

Paul

 

[kanewolf]

Hi Guys,

I recently purchased an older HP workstation as a cheap upgrade so I could do some more video editing and motion graphics at home. I purchased a HP XW8200 workstation with dual Xeon processors at 3.4ghz, 16GB Ram, and a NVida GT520 1GB gfx card.
The GFX card was an upgrade from the previous owner.
Whilst HD editing works fine in AVID, not blistering but ok, my after effects performance is a little stunted and I am considering puchasing a 2nd hand Quadro K2000 2GB card for up to £150 pounds on ebay.

What do you guys think about this upgrade? I've red mixed things about that card. Would a newer more consumer level card do a better job at a similar price? The machine is obviously fairly old and am also concerned about compatibilty, I'm running Windows 7 professional 64bit.

Any help or advice much appreciated!

Thanks,

Paul

According to HP's product bulletin, the xw8200 was available with up to a a Quadro FX 4500. That card required a single 6 pin supplemental power plug. It has a single PCIe x 16 slot so you are limited to a single graphics card.

"Professional" graphics cards always carry a premium. You can probably get a much more powerful consumer card for your money. You probably need to find some benchmark results that you believe are similar to your workflow.

 

[Mahisse]

You can find a much better card than the Quadro K2000 as a second hand buy for 150$. Though the K2000 is a professional/workstation card and is about 5 times faster than the GT520 there are many other cards, which will be a better choice for you, even though they are not dedicated workstation cards. Take the Nvidia 560 ti for example, which is twice as fast as the K2000.

In the future, if video rendering is something that is important to you remember that more processor cores is often better, since the video rendering software available can utilize many cores and often support hyper threading as well.

Oh.. and don't buy a OEM machine again.. for your own sake. Much easier and cheaper to upgrade when needed.

 

[paulandrewyoung]

You can find a much better card than the Quadro K2000 as a second hand buy for 150$. Though the K2000 is a professional/workstation card and is about 5 times faster than the GT520 there are many other cards, which will be a better choice for you, even though they are not dedicated workstation cards. Take the Nvidia 560 ti for example, which is twice as fast as the K2000.

In the future, if video rendering is something that is important to you remember that more processor cores is often better, since the video rendering software available can utilize many cores and often support hyper threading as well.

Oh.. and don't buy a OEM machine again.. for your own sake. Much easier and cheaper to upgrade when needed.

Thanks for your response. Would the 560 ti be "twice as fast" as the K2000 with After Effects work etc which would take advantage of the CUDA and 2GB of the K2000? The 560 ti isn't supported by After Effects but apparently it's an easy txt file adjustment to make it. I've checked some forums and apparantly it seems to be ok with Avid.

Are there any other cards that you recommend me to look at?

I understand that CPU makes a lot of difference to rendering but that system is still a decent and cheaper (at the time) step up from my older one. Am I able to update the CPUs in that system?

Thanks for your help, out of curiosity, why is a OEM machine harder to upgrade?

I also forgot, one of the other features that I want from the K2000 is the 3 monitor output. I use the system to do theatre projections and having 3 outputs would be a major benefit. Sorry to add in another detail but you're far more knowledgeable than I.

Many thanks