Decent Budget AGP Vid Editing GFX Card

RiW · #1 (**permalink**) 05-23-2007, 05:36 PM

I'm current editing on 1.5 Gigs of Ram, a 2GHz Athlon (not 64) and a GeForce FX 5200 using Sony Vegas. This works but performance can be fairly sluggish at times.

I don't want to buy a new machine and was wondering what the best upgrade would be. I think a new CPU is out of the question as I'd need a new motherboard (current one is Asus A7N8X), and all my RAM slots are full. Therefore, a new Graphics Card (AGP) seems to be the best option and I was wondering which to go for. My budget is around £50 and on another forum someone suggested a GeForce 7.
This looks good:
XFX 7300GT 256MB HDTV D-Sub DVI AGP (XFX 7300GT 256MB HDTV D-Sub DVI AGP)
but I was wondering if anyone had any experience of this card or any other recommendations.

Thanks

Snaak · #2 (**permalink**) 05-23-2007, 07:35 PM

I think that's fine, as far as I know, RAM and CPU are the important factors for video-editing. The 7300GT is not a gaming videocard or anything, but it will certainly at least do the job with video editing.

Mark W · #3 (**permalink**) 05-24-2007, 10:55 AM

Yes, it will work fine but it will not make vegas run faster. Rendering will not be speeded up, vegas doesnt use the gpu when rendering.

However it is possible that the cpu will be hit less when previewing video in the editor. This may have the result of slightly less slow down in hte preview window.

Alan Mills · #4 (**permalink**) 05-25-2007, 11:32 AM

Also, what is your hard drive configuration? It can play a very important role in video editting performance.

RiW · #5 (**permalink**) 05-26-2007, 09:53 AM

Thanks for the advice. I've got two HDDs, one is a 120Gig IDE drive for Windows and Program Installations, the other is a 250Gig SATA (type II but my motherboard only support Type I) for Video files and all my other documents.

Mark, I didn't realise Vegas didn't use the GPU, so do you think it would actually be worth getting a new GFX card, even if it only takes the strain off Windows and other graphical apps and potentially gives Vegas more CPU?

I just got an email from Ebuyer about this which looks good: Point Of View 7600GT 256mb DDR3 DVI HDTV TV Out PCI-E Graphics Card
Any thoughts?

Thanks

Mihai · #6 (**permalink**) 05-27-2007, 05:18 PM

I got a Gigabyte GeForce 7600GS last week, 256 megs, lotsa goodies... good card. Helps games a lot. But it didn't do me any good for video editing except better previews. So I reckon it's gonna be the same for you.
And I'd have another suggestion: you could get 2 identical 2 GB RAM sticks to fill those slots, instead of 1,5... it would be more and faster (dual channel).

Mark W · #7 (**permalink**) 05-27-2007, 08:23 PM

My expirience of vegas is that once the gpu is 'okay' that further gains are tiny. What do i mean by ok, I have a g force 6200le, how slow is that, and it works fine.

I really really noticed an improvemnt to previews and rendering by going dual core, vegas needs cpu cycles, not gpu cycles.

Dual channel ram also gave a noticable speed up, and with 2 gig I find ram preview a useful tool.

RiW · #8 (**permalink**) 06-02-2007, 08:30 AM

Thanks,

I don't think my motherboard (socket A) can take a dual core CPU but more RAM on a dual-channel sounds promising. I read somewhere that the max RAM a 32-bit OS can take is 3Gig and was just wondering whether this is true. If so then 3 x 1gig sticks (2 on a dual-channel) would seem the best bet as 2x2gig + 1 would be greater than the PC could take.

Snaak · #9 (**permalink**) 06-02-2007, 07:22 PM

I don't believe it's possible to have 2 sticks running in dual channel mode and another single stick not running in dual channel mode. If you try that, dual channel won't work. If you want 3GB of RAM to work in dual channel, you've got to get another 2 sticks of 512MB and put them in the other 2 slots.

So it's either everything in dual channel mode or nothing, as far as I know.