Looking for advice on GPU upgrade

[Sean Montgomery]

As a new Epic-W owner, I'm now turning my attention to upgrading my system to better handle 8K files. I haven't shot anything with it yet because I'm still waiting on DSMC2 accessories. But I'm expecting a few trade-ups will be necessary.

My current system can handle 4K decently well but struggles a bit with 6K from my DSMC1 Dragon. It's a custom built PC running Windows 10 Pro. 32GB of RAM. Currently has a single NVIDIA GTX 970 card. The motherboard does have 2 GPU slots and could accept a second graphics card. But admittedly, that's where I'm walking into an abyss because I've never worked on a machine with two graphics cards. So my experience in this area is quite limited.

This all leads me to my questions:

1) Is having two cards even something that would benefit me? I'm reading that Premiere is still a single GPU application -- true? Clearly there's room for improvement with a straight-up swap, but just wondering if leaving the 970 in would be of use.

2) I'm also reading that when it comes to Pascal vs Maxwell, the difference in performance does not justify the price differential.

3) Taking cost out of the equation, would you choose a Titan X Maxwell or a RED Rocket X for Helium footage? Or something else?

Appreciate any thoughts! I'm pouring over relevant threads in this forum, but I've yet to reach a consensus.

 

[Sean Montgomery]

The motherboard is an ASUS X99-A/USB 3.1, currently with 4 memory sticks taking up 32GB of RAM. I've verified it can accept up to 64GB.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

I would not recommend dual GPUs here. Premiere does not use more than one and Resolve will, but the 970 is not as powerful as what is out there now. I think I would also recommend a new 1080ti card and possibly the 64GB RAM upgrade. If you're mostly editing in Premiere, the extra RAM isn't going to help. It can be beneficial for Resolve, After Effects, and other apps that can really use it to buffer full resolution frames or sequences. Also depends on your CPU. If you have 6 cores, then the 64GB may not be a bad idea. With 8 cores, I woul say definitely yes to the 64GB.

 

[Sean Montgomery]

Much appreciated on the advice from both of you. My processor is 6-cores, but I do also do a heavy amount of work in After Effects, and sometimes Cinema4D. Plus with RAM just being stupid cheap, it seems like the RAM upgrade would be a no brainer.

If I'm reading correctly, the 1080 Ti card isn't available yet, but should be very soon. Should be good timing because I probably won't be heavy into Helium production until all of my accessories arrive -- likely December.

 

[Daniel Dash]

Sean: Maybe paste your full configuration here. Would be easier to help.

 

[Sean Montgomery]

Full config:

OS: Windows 10 Pro
RAM: G.SKILL Ripjaws 4 Series 32GB (4 x 8GB) 288-Pin DDR4 SDRAM
CPU: Intel Core i7-5820K Haswell-E 6-Core 3.3 GHz
Motherboard: Asus X99-A/USB 3.1 LGA2011
GPU: Asus NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 OC 4GB GDDR5
Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO

 

[Roger Singh]

If you use Cinema4D and have a x99 board already, the cheapest upgrade with the most noticeable difference would be to buy a xeon v4 ES CPU off eBay. You can get an 18 core CPU that will score 2200+ in cinebench for around $600. You just have to make sure your board is compatible. Then you can sell your current cpu for $300+ to off set the cost.

Also you'll notice a big difference with a video card with 8GB compared to 4GB when it comes to grading red projects for 4K finish in Resolve.