Video Card

[jbgreen31]

I have a i3 3ghz HP, 6gb of ram, but a stock video. Is it worth getting a video card (ie, nvidia)? If so, which would you guys recommend? Looking for most bang for my buck.
Thanks
J

[Accolades]

Hi,

Nvidia GTX 295 is nice, getting a little old now...

[DVDDoug]

When it comes to video editing, the actual editing/processing/rendering are done by the CPU. The video card & monitor are only used for... monitoring! A better video card will not affect the video quality of your DVDs or Bly-Ray discs, etc. (unless it allows you to more-accurately see what your video looks like). In most cases, a bigger or better video monitor is probably a better investment than a video card.

A CUDA enabled NVIDIA card will speed-up some processing/rendering tasks by handing-off these tasks to the video card (GPU) from the CPU. I don't know what operations are sped-up or how much speed increase you can get, but it's a speed advantage and not a quality advantage.

When it comes to gaming, speed and quality are related. With game video, you're not just displaying video, the video has to be rendered (created) in real-time.

[Accolades]

Nvidia GTX 295 has 1GB of GPU available RAM - so programs that are designed to use the GPU will certainly get better processing.

Good for scrubbing the timeline when editing.

Bus Type GDDR3
Bus Width 448-bit
Bandwidth 10.9 GB/s

Field Value
Device Properties
Device Name GeForce GTX 295
Clock Rate 1242 MHz
Multiprocessors / Cores 30 / 240
Max Threads Per Block 512
Max Registers Per Block 16384
Warp Size 32 threads
Max Block Size 512 x 512 x 64
Max Grid Size 65535 x 65535 x 1
Compute Capability 1.3
CUDA DLL nvcuda.dll (8.17.11.9757 - nVIDIA ForceWare 197.57)

Memory Properties
Total Memory 877 MB
Total Constant Memory 64 KB
Max Shared Memory Per Block 16 KB
Max Memory Pitch 2147483647 bytes
Texture Alignment 256 bytes

Device Features
32-bit Atomic Operations Supported
64-bit Atomic Operations Supported
Concurrent Memory Copy & Execute Supported
Double-Precision Floating-Point Supported
Warp Vote Functions Supported

Device Manufacturer
Company Name NVIDIA Corporation
Product Information http://www.nvidia.com/page/products.html
Driver Download http://www.nvidia.com/content/drivers/drivers.asp
Driver Update http://driveragent.com?ref=59

[jbgreen31]

That's very helpful. Thanks Doug!