Thank you for being a valued part of the CNET community. As of December 1, 2020, the forums are in read-only format. In early 2021, CNET Forums will no longer be available. We are grateful for the participation and advice you have provided to one another over the years.

Thanks,

CNET Support

Question

Please Help: Need Suggestions on Workstation Hardware Upgrad

Dec 3, 2013 12:12PM PST

I am trying to evaluate what piece of hardware I should upgrade on my main workstation. I was thinking about adding a NVIDIA GTX 660 with the GTS 450 I have, however first wanted to see where my current bottlenecks are before adding another video card. I do not play video games, I spend most of my time on the computer programming and for my business I create virtual tours. I have my operating system on a SSD 840 drive and the rest of my work resides on 4 - 7200rpm SATA drives.

Current System Configuration
Mainboard: BIOSTAR T5XE CFX-SLI
Chipset: Intel P55
Processor: Intel Core i7 870 @ 2933 MHz (max: 3861)
Physical Memory: 20480 MB = 20GB
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTS 450
Network Card: Realtek Semiconductor RTL8168/8111 PCIe Gigabit Ethernet Adapter ( I use BitSync and constantly remote access files off of this computer )
Cooling: Water Cooled CPU and more fans then someone could want for the rest of the hardware.


Average Physical Memory Usage while idling: 19%
Average CPU Usage while idling: 5%


I consistently max out memory and keep CPU usage in the upper 90% if I am either rendering panoramas for virtual tours or using Adobe After Effects or encoding a video or just have a lot of stuff going on with word, browsers, and Lightroom 5.

Maximum Budget: $500 prefer to spend under $400
Would I see a significant improvement increase with a newer motherboard and newer CPU?

OR

Would I be better off adding a GTX 660 graphic card and adding another 2 monitors? - I would only do this if $400 wasn't going to get me a significant performance increase.

OR

Would I just be better off saving my money and maybe adding another solid state for key files I am using in relation to panoramic rendering or video encoding?


Any advice would be greatly appreciated! Thank you for reading this!

Discussion is locked

- Collapse -
Answer
Budget
Dec 4, 2013 2:40AM PST

With 400 bucks I doubt your going to be able to update the cpu/mobo/ram.

Some rendering progs will try to shift the work load to the gpu.
For that type prog a better gpu is a plus.
I don't know what your going to spend for the 660 but a look here might get more bang.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-graphics-card-review,3107.html

You can try to run parallel cards if you want.....it can be a pita.
I don't look for trouble so I just stick with a single card.

Some folks when they upgrade ram make a hash.
They mix+match sticks which forces the ram to clock down to the slowest stick or they trash the dual channel feature.

- Collapse -
Thank you for the input!
Dec 11, 2013 3:15PM PST

Thank you! Just exactly what I was thinking, now its just the choice of spend more money or be satisfied with the current performance. Will I really benefit from it.

Thank you for your input !