os/video card choice

[Jaime Uribelarrea]

Hi,
I decided to post here because I have a similar doubt and I didn’t want to create a whole new post for it.
This guy is building me a PC (Win7, Vegas) from scratch.
The specs that’ll be there for sure are:

Intel Core i7 3770 (3,4GHz – 8Mb)
Motherboard Gigabyte B75-3DH – Sata 3 – USB 3.0 – HDMI
HD 1Tb WD Sata3
8Gb DDR3 1600 Kingston
DVD R/W
Sentey CS1-1410 Plus
Power Source: Shure 600w
SSD 2,5″ 120Gb Kingston SSDNOW V300

Then I have to choose (for $ reasons) between the two following “upgrades.”
Considering that the GPU is more than twice the price of doubling my RAM, what’s better for this configuration and for Sony Vegas (no more than 2D, 2K most likely): more RAM or GPU? (If the prices seem weird it’s because I’m in Argentina and electronics are crazy expensive here).

VGA Asus GT640 1Gb DDR5 u$ 205.-
or
RAM 8Gb DDR3 1600 Kingston u$ 82.-

I’m inclined towards more RAM, but if the improvement will be only marginal, I’d rather spend a few more bucks on the GPU to keep the system fast for as long as possible.

Thanks for your help
Jaime

[John Rofrano]

[Jaime Uribelarrea] “VGA Asus GT640 1Gb DDR5 u$ 205.-
or
RAM 8Gb DDR3 1600 Kingston u$ 82.-“

Considering that your CPU is a 4-core, 8GB or memory should be plenty. I’m not sure 16GB will show any improvement so I’d go with the GPU upgrade. The only problem is that Vegas Pro won’t make good use of the NVIDIA 600 series so it may do nothing as well. You want a GTX500 series card or an ATI Radeon HD 5870/6970 card which are older and should be cheaper.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Jaime Uribelarrea]

Makes sense, I think I’ll follow your advice. In any case, I can buy two 8Gb strips in a year or so and replace the two 4Gb I’m getting now.
Thanks again for your reply.

[John Rofrano]

You’re welcome. Let us know what you picked and if you see any improvement.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Jaime Uribelarrea]

Older video cards are hard to find here, the ones that are compatible with Vegas+CUDA, so I finally decided not to spend that much money on a 1Gb graphics card that Vegas won’t be able to use.
Instead, I’m going for 16 Gb of RAM.
Thanks for your input.

-J.