Need a video card recommendation.

[mgh-pa]

Alright, I'm looking to get a dedicated video card for my build (onboard isn't cutting my PS and Premier needs). My build is the following:

LIAN LI ARMORSUIT PC-P50
Intel i5 2500k
CORSAIR CWCH50-1 Hydro Cooler
MSI H77-MA G43
2x 128G CRUCIAL CT128 M4 SSD
2 GB WD Caviar Green
16 GB Ram
Windows 7 Professional

I don't game, but I have Adobe CC, and do extensive PS work (batch processing, RAW to DNG conversions/edits, panoramas, etc.,) along with starting to get into Adobe Premiere and After Effects. I don't need a crazy high end card, just the best bang for the buck (also going to run dual monitors but most cards these days are capable I'm assuming).

Budget? I'm not sure. I'm flexible. The cheapest I can spend while still getting a solid card (again, not gaming).

 

[Jaydip]

You still need to give us a budget 🙂 are you a professional by chance?

 

[mgh-pa]

Nope, an educator and hobbyist🙂 I haven't even priced cards, so where to begin. Let's say no higher than $250...doable?

 

[lehtv]

Is this for CS6?

 

[Jaydip]

sure thing 😀

 

[mgh-pa]

Creative Cloud.

 

[Essence_of_War]

What is your PSU situation?

 

[mgh-pa]

What is your PSU situation?

Corsair GS-600.

 

[lehtv]

Creative Cloud.

Woops, my mistake. While an AMD card would work for most features, you'll probably want NVIDIA GPU in order to also support CUDA and for GPU acceleration of the renderer in AE. Lists of officially supported cards:

http://www.adobe.com/products/aftereffects/tech-specs.html
http://www.adobe.com/products/premiere/tech-specs.html

But I don't know if a Quadro would make a significant difference over a GeForce... I don't see why you'd need the extra precision, but I can see why you'd want extra performance for the price so perhaps a GeForce makes more sense. The "lowest end" recent-generation card to support the ray-traced 3d renderer in AE: GTX 670. Maybe an MSI GTX 670 PE $250 AR @newegg?

EDIT: FWIW, something like a GTX 650 could nearly max out graphics acceleration in Photoshop CS6, I believe the same will apply to Photoshop CC. But a better card will benefit the video editing tools more.

 

[mgh-pa]

Woops, my mistake. While an AMD card would work for most features, you'll probably want NVIDIA GPU in order to also support CUDA and for GPU acceleration of the renderer in AE. Lists of officially supported cards:

http://www.adobe.com/products/aftereffects/tech-specs.html
http://www.adobe.com/products/premiere/tech-specs.html

But I don't know if a Quadro would make a significant difference over a GeForce... I don't see why you'd need the extra precision, but I can see why you'd want extra performance for the price so perhaps a GeForce makes more sense. The "lowest end" recent-generation card to support the ray-traced 3d renderer in AE: GTX 670. Maybe an MSI GTX 670 PE $250 AR @newegg?

EDIT: FWIW, something like a GTX 650 could nearly max out graphics acceleration in Photoshop CS6, I believe the same will apply to Photoshop CC. But a better card will benefit the video editing tools more.

Thanks! That's the information I'm looking for.

 

[snouter]

I had trouble with an AMD HD6950 2GB. Card had never given me a lick of trouble before this incident. It's an "approved" card, but crashed like crazy in Premiere Pro CC unless I turned Mercury Playback Hardware Acceleration off which made PP CC run slow and dogged the CPU out.

I switched to an Nvidia GTX760 and have not had a single crash since.

CUDA is sort of on the way out, but, it definitely seemed like the AMD / OpenCL was not ready for prime time in my case.

Anecdotal I guess, but that was my experience.

FWIW, I am very happy with my MSI GTX760. I have since bought another one.