Video Card Upgrade

[Eero Makela]

I am looking at a nVidia upgrade to my HP AMD 64x2 4200+ 3GB RAM Vista Home Premium , with a Dell 2408 WFP 1920x1200 Native mode

1. BFG GeForce 8800GT OC nVidia GeForce 8800GT Chipset (625Mhz) 512MB (1800Mhz) GDDR3 Dual Dual-Link DVI PCI-Express 2.0 Graphics Card

2. BFG GeForce 9600GT OC nVidia GeForce 9600GT Chipset (675Mhz) 512MB (1800Mhz) GDDR3 Dual Dual-Link DVI PCI-Express 2.0 Graphics Card

Looks like I also need to upgrade my power supply to a 500 WATT (which I already have) from the original 300w

Is it worth going to either one of these or stay with lower end?

Using LR 2.0 and Adobe CS3 for edits of RAW 12mb images.

[JDArt]

I would not upgrade that machine. The improvements you'd get would be marginal.

If you want to upgrade, upgrade the entire box.

[gumper]

Eero, why are you wanting to upgrade your card? These two cards you mentioned are only for avid Gamers, they're not going to improve Photoshop performance.
Like JD said, not worth upgrading that HP.

If it aint broke, dont fix it.

[Eero Makela]

Thanks, I do use the computer for other things the other main thing is video, like in watching movies and shows. I noticed now with the larger 1920x1200 rez my videos play choppy at least at the start. And I think this is due to the large rez (I moved from 1280x1024 to 1920x1200)

Maybe it is related to bloughtware infecting the computer but will check that out as well. Also I need to switch back to the old LCD 19" to check if videos play normal.

Currently I am spending my $$$ toward photo gear as I have stopped caring about the computer unless it has issues that can be fixed. (I use to upgrade every 18 months, my laptop is over 3 years old, mind you I now also have a newer company laptop so need for personal 1 as much)

Maybe it is the OS finally showing it's true colors (I am stuck with Vista as I have not had any luck tracking down device drivers for this motherboard, but might try again). It has been fine until I added the 24" LCD to help with Photo editing and also wanted to upgrade the computer as well, I have an older similar 24" that I never used for computer as I bought it for Video use only)

[matthewlrigdon]

If you don't upgrade to Photoshop CS4, there's little or no reason to upgrade your video card for editing work. CS3 had very minimal support for GPU acceleration (I think, but can't swear, it was primarily support for 3D rendering with the newly introduced 3D objects).

CS4 uses GPU for a number of things. I've noticed it while using the zoom tool. It's a bit of a "gee-whiz" feature, but having the image literally zoom in and out like a lens is kinda cool and it is fast. I haven't really tested this, but I know previous versions of Photoshop only provided pixel-perfect rendering at certain pre-defined zoom settings (25, 33, 50, 66, 100), rather than all zoom settings and I hope that's something that's been "fixed" with GPU support.