Graphics Cards

[teknatronik]

6450 here and worked from 6 up. Before that I had the 4c Radeon series. It worked too.

[Highly-Controversial]

My computer has not had any updates since the day i built it . 2 years ago . Im running 3 x 22" monitors on a Radion HD7790 and i have no issues . Im an old believer that if your system is running correctly then DO NOT install the windows updates .
And by this method i have not had any issues

[MDPAudio]

I’m using the GTX 750 on my new DAW I built (using Cubase 8 Pro as well).

No problems at all until I had to work with video, which then caused enormous hanging. I eventually got it all ironed out but not without a whole bunch of pain. I guess that’s to be expected when you build your own PC. Is it Win7 64-bit issues? Driver issues? That’s what I focused the first few days of troubleshooting on.

I finally focused on memory, which was the issue. I thought 8 gigs of 1600 would be enough but when you start trying to shuttle through HD video…it just wasn’t. I took my old 1333 sticks and added them to a total 14 gigs and then it started running fine.

So basically your need for GPU bandwidth is miniscule if you’re not working with video. I found the GTX 750 with 14 gigs of RAM to be the minimum spec for working with HD files.

I chose the 750 for bang-for-buck factor. For the money you simply get the best card. At least that was the case 45 days ago. Things change fast though:)

[PeppaPig]

Assuming you’re a Windows user, have you got Aero enabled? If not system resources are used for video buffering, by enabling aero the graphics card will have direct memory access without interrupting windows or the CPU.

[Richard_Herbert]

@PeppaPig

A top-end graphics card is pointless with Cubase - it’s not a graphics intensive application - powerful cards usually require big noisy fans which don’t do DAW users any favours - any DX9 or better graphics card with enough memory to support the number of monitors at the resolution you want to use will do the job.

The only time I’d say a graphics card is a must at all if you’re a 32 bit user that wants to free up the shared memory used by onboard graphics or you require more monitors than the onboard one supports.

While I agree you don’t need a hugely powerful graphics card to run a DAW like Cubase it is not necessarily the best idea to use an underperforming chip.

Certain plugins like Waves use graphical APIs like OpenGL to render their GUIs and have sometimes performed poorly on some graphics chips. I think the main consideration is how compatible the drivers are.

There are some cards that are a nice compromise, have a reasonable amount of rendering power and are still fan less so silent.

[HansHenrikBay]

So dman2014 did you find a good graphic card ? I got NVidia Geforce 210. And the NVidia driver and the directx driver is creating crackles in Cubase 8 so I´m interessted in a silent (no fan) and problem free graphic card.

[mroekalea]

@PeppaPig

@pongthrob

I just recently updated to an Asus GT730 2Gb fanless. Cubase 8 requires Aero to be turned on. If you try to disable it - as I used to - it won’t run. Whereas we used to disable it to improve overall performance, it is now required. A better video card will now take some work away from the CPU.

Any Direct X9 onwards video card will offload the GUI processing from the main CPU - as long as AERO is activated.

I think it is wise to see what directX level needs to be supported by your GPU, from what I know it is at DX level 12 already.

http://www.geforce.com/hardware/technology/dx12/supported-gpus

If I recall it right DX 8 and below are software handeld and from DX11 I know it is supposed to be supported by hardware instead of software, so in these cases there is real offloading to hardware otherwise it’s handled by software which interrupts the system more.

[Tomess]

I’ve the GeForce GTX 750 ti as the passive cooled variante (http://www.mindfactory.de/product_info.php/2048MB-Palit-GeForce-GTX-750-Ti-KalmX-Passiv-PCIe-3-0-x16--Retail-_969692.html) and it works perfect with my two 24" Full HD Monitors, connected via HDMI

[jono_not_bono]

I bought the GTX960 for my Audio PC. It has big fans. The fans only turn on when under stress. Since installing the 960 the fans have NEVER turned on. It’s a silent card when only using it for audio production. A great card. Although perhaps overkill, it allows for 4 x 4k displays so it’s very future proof.

[akshat1984]

I suggest you to go with Geforce GTX 1050 Ti as it is a pretty powerful graphics cards and is quite affordable too. You can check all the best models of GTX 1050 Ti at Best GTX 1050 Ti Graphics Card for 1080p Gaming

[naturecollision]

back in the windows XP days I found that I had much much faster GUI performance when I used a GFX card with a 256bit memory bus instead of a 128bit or a dreadful 64bit, something else that made a big change: automatic down-clocking, I had to disable it for my GPU processor, then it went smooth. basically you still need to do this today with the CPU, not sure about GPU.

I moved to macs since and kind of regret it, I have no chance to tune the system to optimal performance and have sloppy GUI with many apps. but it is more stable overall and less dropouts…

so I think if you get a gamer card and do watercooling, you are on the safe side, also make sure the card does not down-clock (to save power), or you might get hiccups of some sorts. I would go for a card with a 512bit memory interface.

why I know all this? I suffered a lot and hemorrhaged lots money for my tests back then.