Video Card or Computer Upgrade for Pro 11?
 

I've got Pro 11 being delivered tomorrow. Though i know the answer may be both, I wanted to lay it out to the forum here for advice as I know you all are the best advisors.

My present computer
AMD Athlon Dual Core Processor 4050e 2.10 GHz
3 GB memory
Windows 7

My present video card
ATI Radeon HD 4300/4500
PCI Express 2
512 MB DDR2

I'm looking seriously at the video card
XFX AMD Radeon HD 6870 900M 1 GB DDR5 Dual MINIDP Dual DVI PCI-E Video Card
$206.39

If i only invested in the new video card would that not be the best bang for the buck?

If I can speed up render times and playback smoother in editor that would be great.

Ideas?

TIA
Harry

Re: Video Card or Computer Upgrade for Pro 11?
 

Harry,

I'd strongly recommend a complete new system at this point: Any GPU upgrades will be held back performance-wise by that very old CPU. And given that it performs slower overall than even some of the early Intel Core 2 Duo and Pentium Dual-Core (C2D-based) systems, you'll find that the HD 6870 would be a waste of money on such an old, slow PC.

On the other hand, getting a new CPU, motherboard and RAM without also upgrading the GPU is also pound-foolish: In that case, the CPU will be held back by the older, slow GPU. In addition, with your current low-end HD 4xxx series, Vegas Pro 10 or 11 cannot use GPU acceleration at all because that mode requires an HD 57xx series or newer in order to even enable that mode at all.

In other words, you're stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Re: Video Card or Computer Upgrade for Pro 11?
 

Thanks Randall,

That's why I threw the questions out. That's kinda what I was thinking too. Update both. Thanks for taking the time to comment.

Harry

Re: Video Card or Computer Upgrade for Pro 11?
 

Ordered a
ASUS P8H61-M CORE I7 motherboard
Intel Core i7-2600 3.4GHz 8MB LGA1155 processor
8GB DDR3 1600MHZ PC3-12800 RAM
ATI RADEON HD6750 1GB PCI-e 2.1 DVI HDMI video card
Will run 64bit Windows 7 Home Premium

Now I hope this config wil let Vegas Pro 11 run faster.....;-)

Re: Video Card or Computer Upgrade for Pro 11?
 

I ended up also ordering a new 1TB hard drive and Windows 7 Professional

It hasn't arrived yet but looking forward to loading Vegas Pro 11 on this puppy.

Re: Video Card or Computer Upgrade for Pro 11?
 

Harry,

Before you can enable the OpenCL GPU accelerated mode in Vegas 11, you should update the AMD (ATi) Catalyst video driver to version 11.7 or later. Do not use the driver that is on the CD that comes bundled with the card as that driver may be of an earlier version that's known to be incompatible with the OpenCL GPU accelerated mode in Vegas Pro 10 (in fact, for several months Sony Creative Software recommended the Vegas Pro 10 user to use only the 11.2 driver version until 11.7 came out).

Re: Video Card or Computer Upgrade for Pro 11?
 

Thanks Randall

Sounds like you may have saved me some trouble there - I'll pay special attention to the driver.

System is still not here but hopefully will get here within a couple of weeks and I can see how everything works.