Video card for Adobe applications?

mr jones

Sup.

My graphic artist just showed me that she needs to upgrade. She is currently using Adobe Creative Suite (primarily Photoshop and InDesign), and I want to get her a videocard that will speed up working with large (30mb to 500mb) projects. I have a Lenovo workstation coming in for her with an integrated video card. What would I look for in a video card that would help her run more smoothly?

The machine that is coming in has:
Intel Dual-Core 2.13ghz cpu
160mb SATA 7200rpm HDD
2gb PC2-4200 RAM

RyakStorm

Forget the video card. This is a serious case of...

Needs more Ram.

Ram.

More.

xta

agreed, i've read on different sources that adobe's apps aren't gpu intensive. personally, i've run versions of photoshop on an integrated laptop and it was fine.

definitely get decent ram and setting up scratch disks well helps a lot

Zimarooski

The video card isn't going to speed up resizing large images, or applying filters, or working with vectors; that's all the CPU's job.

More RAM is what she will always need, and maybe a throw-away hard drive she can use as a scratch disk.

Stormwatcher

What's with the scratch disk thing?

Ruckus

The only workstation videocards I spec up for my techs are the ones rendering AutoCAD in 3d. The guys doing graphics design or editing are running 128MB nVidia stock cards, and those stations have 2GB of RAM.

Try out the Lenovo workstation out first, then decide whether it needs more.

fdiskcdrive

I've noticed with plenty of RAM, Bridge and cameraRAW windows will run like shit if I'm using integrated graphics, especially when scrolling or bridge is generating thumbnails. This is one area I've noticed a general speed increase with a videocard upgrade. So if you use bridge to explore your collection, and lots of cameraRAW, I'm sure any decent videocard ($100-$250) will be worth it.