I am working since 2 years with Intel 3000 HD (build in Chip)Graphic...
Every thing works fine but....
I am starting to love these CDSoundMaster and Acustica Audio vsts !!!
I am asking if someone can recommend a good graphic card(hopefully cheap),because my
System chokes a bit on these lovely vsts ?

Intel Core i5 2500K - 3.3 GHz
Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD3H
Be Quiet! Shadow Rock PRO SR1-CPU Cooler
Kingston HyperX KHX1600C9D3K4/16GX-16 GB
OCZ Octane Series - Solid-State-Disk - 128 GB

Cheers !!!

 

I have a similar setup.Same CPU,stock intel motherboard,Stock cooling,8gb of cheap 1066 DDR3,and a WD Sata HDD.I'm running an XFX HD7770 Ghost Edition and have very little problems.Benchmarking with latest 3dMark is only thing that chokes mine up.I wish I had your Motherboard,Ram,& SSD,I'd have 0 problems.You know that with most MSI & Gigabyte boards that i5 can run at 4.5 ghz without getting too hot? The multiplier is really only thing that needs changed.I'd check google,I've seen guys get as far as 5.0ghz with watercooling or really good fans.As far as graphics cards go I'd recommend something with GDDR5 like 1gb or more.Also I know throttlestop helped me alot,by default the bios was underclocking my CPU to save power.Disabled c states (Or whatever it's called) in bios and run throttlestop.But that's just for this intel board,your Gigabyte prolly doesn't throttle itself down like that.Best of luck

 

I can recommend the MSI GTX750 Ti OC Twin Frozr.
GTX750Ti review
It doesn't need extra power connection, it's only 60W and is powered by the PCI-E slot.
It's about 140€, for me it was a no-brainer.

 

As a regular Nebula user and 'lover', at this moment the only acceleration you can get on Nebula is Cuda, so that means an nvidia card. And they are beta testing new cuda-bridges the last week (it was left outdated for over a year or so) and still the old rules apply: It works only (good) on long-tail programs, like reverbs. All the eq / tape / console stuff won't benefit from Cuda or even make it slower.
They say programs / presets need tails of 150ms or longer and tails need to be of the same size to make Cuda kinda work.

On simple Reverb programs, I see only a slight increase, and I seem to be only use it with on instance. If I have one Cuda-instance on a track, adding another makes it stutter, while adding a normal cpu instance makes it OK.

The 'Aqua' plugins (see it as a Nebula library bundled into a standalone plugin) doesn't even have Cuda support.

So, in short: don't buy a graphics card thinking it will speed up calculations. This is almost never the case in practise, especially not with Nebula.

As a disclaimer: I'm not trying to troll, I love Nebula I'm just saying how it is. I tried it myself less than a week ago with the new Cuda stuff they have in beta. I have a Core i7-860 clocked at 3.3 ghz with a MSI GTX760 TF.

 

Get this card and you're ready to rock. I recommend it due to it's passive cooling, which will keep your computer silent as long as you intend to make music and is more than powerful for a workstation. Keep in mind is also cheap (comparing to the other models which the guys above recommended you).




Zotac Nvidia GT 640 Link.

Check the stores around you and see if it's available in your region. Good luck!

Edit: Even this one, fanless GT630 will be more than good enough:

 

I`ve got the nvidia GT430 in my DAW PC and it makes me smile.

I was mainly only interested in multi outs but the card has proved to be an asset.

Should be mighty cheap now too.

 

The GT630 is a newer version of GT430, right? If he can't find it anymore, GT630 is like the same.

 

Ok.. nobody reading my post accordingly.

He wants a graphics card to speed up Nebula and Aqua plugins.. while they don't have any acceleration from graphics cards.. Stop keep suggesting cards while they won't do any good for the OP.

 

I use Nebula too and i got the ASUS GT630(Nvidia) fanless graphic card and has enough Cuda cores to work with. Anyway, if he wants to go hard, he can get GT 660/670 or above.

 

A gpu wont make any difference - if you don't use graphic intensive programs or intend to game - why bother? or if you must just buy any card from the past 5 years off ebay.

 

He already mentioned 'bout Nebula stuff, which supports Cuda processing.

 

honestly a gpu will not help if you want to use cuda then yes but as stated above cuda is only for reverbs. everything will not work with it. seriously your setup is better than mine, I have the i5 2400 (not k'ed because I wasn't thinking back when I bought it) and I run multiple nebula plugins but I'm at 44.1. which if you run any higher yes your system will choke and your ram is fine if you want to max out it would help more than a gpu (well if you run 64bit which I assume you do) . best bet would be either over clock the cpu and on a standard processor wouldn't go to high but Ive heard people 3.9 or even 4.1 on stock. or buy a new processor which in wouldn't make a huge difference unless you went to 6 or 8 core. other than that its pretty much a standard problem with every Nebula user. just gotta work your mixes and bounce down a lot. but I'm by far no expert.

 

really, you guys don't listen.

Nebula Cuda _does_ _NOT_ work, so _STOP_ suggesting cards, it won't help him at all.

I explained perfectly well what will and will not work with Cuda in Nebula, and it is NONE of what he talks about in his 1st post.

 

I totally agree with dipje, I haven't seen any performance increase with cuda support.
Before the OP is spending money for no need I think we first need proof!

maybe selling your cpu for a i7 is a better idea, arround where I live used i5 are still sold for a decent amount of money

a decent soundcard should help also, check your buffer lenght. nebula is for mixing and mastering stuff so for my opinion it can't be high enough

I am am running on amd a10-5800 multiplier on 44x with my memory clocked at 2133 and I can use serveral intstances of nebula,
with 1 in the higher timed cpu hunger option enabled on the master...

 

But he still needs a graphic card for his system, what do you suggest? To don't buy anything at all? Alot of plugis these days are open-gl (for graphic support, so the GUIs are no longer powered by the CPU if he gets a dedicated graphic card)

 

He says he's using an intel integrated chip on a pretty recent Core i5 and that everything is working fine. Reading is a lost art form these days apparently.

That HD3000 intel chip does all the opengl/ui stuff perfectly, and actually has some decent OpenCL support and power if some plugins start supporting that.

The OP asked to something to use instead of the onboard chip because his system has troubles running Nebula instances... a dedicated card won't fix that.

 

I had integrated chip in the past and it was useless to me, because my CPU was still the one who did the graphical processing.

Intel HD graphics are integrated which means CPU (the brain) does both the work for the code in the video and then it renders the graphics... basically doing double work. A seperate Graphics card has its own processor and memory to handle tasks so it won't use your other system resources.

 

First of all...thanks for your most helpful opinions !!!!!

I come to the conclusion,that buying a G-Card is not
the answer...not yet..maybe in the future...
I can run several instances of the Nebula stuff,it chokes a bit
but it works...(FOCUSRITE SAFFIRE PRO 24 Firewire Audio-Interface)
I bought the 2500K(the moment you buy,its old) for Justin....justin case...so i have potential,
was searching for a elegant way to solve this without Overclocking.
You hear rumors that say a G-Card can speed up your PC,(for Gaming its true)
so I thought i ask the community...

So many thanks again....!!!

 

1-2Gb GPU any type is decent for daw and plugins... no matter.

Recently I changed my card from ATI 500mb + share 500 with ATI pure 2Gb card while I testing Sequoia... Sequoia has a lot of graphics problem... and I realize it's not because card then the worst programming

Same thing is with Digital Performer and VST plugins on Windows, basicaly any of VST plugin don't have good refresh and it's a glichy froozen in DP8.

It's not graphic card, DP has big problems on windows. (per example, waves plugins work correctly as the MASS stock plugins)

 

That's true.. or it was, several years (or even more) ago . These integrated chip also have compute cores, and some even have their own memory pool. It's not much, don't get me wrong. If you would ask me "I need to play some games on monitor blablabla" I would NOT recommend using an integrated chip . But there is a surprising amount of power in the integrated chips these days.

It's _more_ than enough to run all the fancy UI stuff of Windows 7 for instance, and the performance in games actually reaches the point where it's the same speed as the entry level 35,- bucks graphics cards.

You're absolutely right in that UI stuff that looks rather simple can still use the graphics chip these days. Things as rounding of edges, smoothing screen fonts or a simple transparent shadow effect you didn't even notice are all done on the graphics chip. The integrated chips that are integrated on Intel Core-i cpu's are _MORE_ then qualified for that task, I guarantee it. His Core i5 2500K has a pretty decent recent chip. It does full HD video and youtube decoding completely offloading the CPU for instance.

If we were talking about an integrated chip from the Intel Core2Duo / Core2Quad era (what's it, more than 5 years ago now?) you would be right, it's a piece of shit. It displays pixels on a screen, that's it . And you might actually feel your system a bit better and faster responding by just plugging in a 40 dollar Nvidia or AMD card. Those chips where also not integrated on the CPU, they were extra helper chips plugged onto the motherboard by the motherboard-manufacturers. But the recent stuff Intel integrated in the CPU itself, it's actually quite good, and getting better with each generation. The differences between the Core i-2xxx serie and the core i-3xxx serie and the Core i-4xxx serie for example are less and less CPU improvements, and more and more improvements in the integrated gpu chip. The integrated chips from a Core i5-4xxx or Core i7-4xxx can even run Battlefield 3 at 720p with pretty good framerate. For an integrated little thing, impressive performance. And don't forget the graphics chips AMD always integrated in the motherboards were already quite impressive. They had too, their CPU's aren't up to par :P.

To the original poster: Your Core i5-2500K is still a very good performer. Nebula can just eat up whole lots of CPU power. That's what they mean with "Nebula sounds OK, but do you accept the workflow changes" -> it requires more and more bouncing and committing to your mix decisions. It of course depends on what kind of Nebula program you load. A simple console-input preset or a preamp-preset alone doesn't seem that much CPU. A 4 second long reverb can eat it all up in a single instance :P.

Getting a fancy new Intel hexacore Core i7-4930K, but they start at 500 dollars and go up very quickly to 750,- and even more.. for a CPU alone. And in the end, what does it give you? A few more tracks of running real time. In my opinion, so not worth the money :P.