Advice on Graphics card for editing 4k

[icecoldidiot]

I have a budget of about £1000 to upgrade the graphics on on Dell t7600 ( 128gb, dual zenon )

Any suggestions?

Should I buy a couple of mid range cards or one 12gb card?

Thanks for any advice.

best wishes

Fred

[Bill_Gehrke]

Well the card to be suggested depends on how much CPU you have???  Give us the detailed CPU model number.  Xeon's run from pitiful to powerful

[icecoldidiot]

Hi Bill

2 x E3-2687w 0 @ 3.1Ghz

128 GB Ram

Guess I'm at the pitiful end

[Bill_Gehrke]

I am assuming that you really have two E5-2687W and while they are "end-of-life" I have some great results from them.  More later the wife is calling

[icecoldidiot]

Hi Bill, yes definitely have two.

Indeed, marked as end of life, but still useful in the real world of a  freelance self shooting p/D.  

I have the usual mixture of drives, ssd, hybrid, and dog drives that get pulled for project back up.

Shooting with a mixture of gear as required. 4k projects using Blackmagic are becoming the normal so just looking at a way of speeding up the work flow without resorting to proxies.

Definitely not a benchmark geek, so often get lost in tech reviews.

With regards to scratch discs etc, I'm sure I could tweet a bit more efficency out of  the drive setup.

The current card is a single k4000.

Thank's for your response.

All the best

[Bill_Gehrke]

I have my Premiere Pro BenchMark (PPBM) results on the CPU intensive scores on this are summarized and your dual E5-2687W is really a great CPU system.

But your big problem (if my research is correct) is while the motherboard in that computer does have PCIe 3.0 bus for your GPU BUT the Quadro K4000 Graphic card is only PCIe 2.0 and it is a puny card with only 3 GB of VRAM 768 CUDA cores.  My GTX 1060 for $260 has 6 GB of VRAM and 1280 cores and immense more memory bandwidth.

Your GPU is single slot width and most all new cards are dual slot width.  I do not know your computers physical layout but that may restrict you to one card.  Also you will have to check to see if you have the power connectors for one or two cards the newer cards generally require two power connectors .  So I am guessing the one card may be the preferred solution You appear to have at least a 1000 watt power supply so that should not be a problem.  You might want to look at a GTX 1080 Ti with its 11 GB of VRAM and 3584 CUDA cores. 

[icecoldidiot]

Hi Bill,

After looking inside ( a place where I tend to avoid ) it looks like I have a spare power hookup, so two cards would not be an issue.

I only have one blue slot though.

There is definitely space for a double width card.

Looking at the GTX1080, perhaps that is the best value upgrade at the moment.

[Bill_Gehrke]

Be careful and check the specific card you are going to buy because GTX 1080's can have two 8-pin connectors or 8-pin plus 6-pin or a single 8-pin power connector.

I was not sure but I checked and nVidia does have drivers for Windows 7 for the GTX 1080.  Make sure you go to the nVidia site for your drivers, not the Dell site.

[icecoldidiot]

Thanks Bill, checked out and I can get power cable adaptors to meet any requirement.

Good news on the win 7 drivers, would have been a nightmare to change OS as well, one thing at a time..:-)

I'll let you know the improvements when the card is installed.

Thanks for all the time and advice you have given on this subject.

All the best

Fred

[Bill_Gehrke]

Hold on a moment I did not ask important information  What version of Microsoft Windows and what numeric version of Premiere Pro?

Also is this still under Dell maintenance?  There is a nVidia GPU driver situation that may negate my suggestions above. 

[icecoldidiot]

Windows 7, still under mantanance for a couple of months and on latest 2017 version.