Adobe CS5 on 2500K - do I even need a GPU?

[radhak]

Need my (proposed) desktop to work nicely with Adobe CS5. No gaming at all.

So, if I get the I5 2500K, do I even need any video card? Wouldn't the integrated HD Graphics 3000 be enough for CS5?

(I may nor may not overclock, but the 2500 gets the HD 2000 while the 2500K has the HD 3000, supposedly much better).

Yes, I might use dual monitors sometime down the line, not right away, so am thinking the Asus P8z68 (with HDMI/Display ports) might be enough to handle that.

Right?

 

[dpk33]

A lot of CS5 apps benefit greatly from Nvidia's CUDA. This isn't supported by any of the Radeon cards or the Intel HD3000. Also, a 2600/2600k is a lot better for CS5 as it has 8 threads vs the 4 threads that the 2500/2500k has. Plus, these things overclock like monsters, even on stock cooling and voltage.

 

[radhak]

Thanks dpk3. I looked that up a bit, and looks like Adobe Photoshop CS5 does not benefit from CUDA, only the Premiere CS5 does. My bad - I did not specify that I was not much interested in video editing.

Not sure how well CS5 uses multi-threading...

 

[dpk33]

If you don't do video editing and don't need the CUDA support, then the intel 3000 graphics are fine. I mainly use CS5 for the video editing, so threads are important to me. But 2500k is very powerful regardless, especially when overclocked.

 

[3DVagabond]

PS can use a lot of VRAM, depending on image size and number of layers, etc...

As far as CUDA and CS5, not only is it limited to Premiere, but it's also limited to which nVidia GPU's are supported (there are hacks to work around it). There are PS plugins that use CUDA, I don't know what compatibility issues they might have from card to card, though.

 

[MustangSVT]

yes 2500k and hd3000 is fine for non professional use in cs5.