New video card (and OC) - does it help with Vegas?
 

I just purchased a new video card and heard that it probably won't help with rendering speeds, even if I OClock it - is this true?

vegas is mostly dependent on 1)processor speed and 2) RAM. The more the better.

I have never seen any improvement in rendering sppeds due to the vid card

Don

To verify what Don has correctly said, I purchased a workstation with a $2K graphics card, replaced the card with an $150 card and saw absolutely no difference in performance in any way with any application on my PC. I turned around and sold the expensive card on e-bay, of course.

But a quality card is good
 

Agree with the posts above, a $150 card with 256Mb memory is more than adequate, but based on my experience avoid the cheap and nasty ones below $50 - remember you will be using that card's software driver to adjust your monitor.

But a good reason to spend a bit more might be:

- using photoshop with large files
- using Red Giant Magic Bullet Looks which according to some other posts here i think does use the graphics card GPU

- but please check it out for yourself...

David,

The video card makes a big difference if you're rendering Magic Bullet looks (full version) in Vegas. Other than that, no Vegas does not render faster.

I'm currently using a NVidea 8800 which is nice for rendering Magic Bullet but causes me other problems with After Effects (a known bug) which neither NVidea or Adobe seems able or interested in fixing.

Before this card I was using an ATI 1950 Pro which actually gave me a soft (blurry) preview when using the secondary monitor feature in Vegas. That cleared up when I switched to the NVidea card.

Regards, Marc

Thanks for that. I purchased a Nvidia 8600GT video card for around $70.00 so I thought it was a good deal. Now that I know it doesn't help with Vegas, I guess it is a lesson learned.

It never hurts to have a good video card and you should buy the best one you can afford. Even though Vegas doesn't make use of the GPU your system needs it and other applications can make use of it (PI3, BluffTitler, etc).

You shouldn't be bummed about that purchase whatsoever. The 8600GT Video Card is an *excellent* video playback video card. One of the very best on the market frankly... Will it help you in Vegas as far as rendering, etc. Absolutely not..

But what it does do really well is playback quality and acceleration of video for general playback.

Jon