Video Card for Adobe CS6 Design Standard

[JLMannin]

I am going to take advantage of the student discount my son can get since he is a Purdue student and get CS6 Design Standard at quite a discount. I know I need to install a dedicated video card and up the memory in my desktop to get a non-frustrating end user experience, but video card selection is daunting for me.

I have located a line of highly customer rated Nvidia GeForce video cards from Galaxy. What I know is that within a series (and for now, I am considering the 600 series), the higher the last two digits, the better the performance. I am looking at 2 GB video cards and am trying to decide between the 610 or the 640. The price difference is about $40 between the cards, but if I went with the 640, it would require a more stout power supply.

Other than the upcoming photoshop use, the computer is mainly used for youtube and netflix streaming and minimal gaming (Minecraft, Civilization IV, and Civilization V)

The PC is about three years old, has a 2.9 GHz i3, and I plan to updrade it to the max RAM of 16 GB.

What video card will best meet my needs?

Thanks in advance.

[cameraman]

Which program are you using?
Premiere has much higher requirements than Photoshop.

[Indy]

.

[JLMannin]

CS6 Design Standard. http://www.adobe.com/products/creativesuite/designstandard/tech-specs.html

[nrc]

Generally the higher end video cards won't make much difference unless you're doing 3D or video work. As long as the 610 can drive your display at the resolution and color depth that your monitor supports then theres no need for a higher end card.

Plenty of RAM is key and you'll also want to make sure that you have plenty of free disk space.

[Pilgrims Drop]

I use Photoshop quite a bit so here's my 2 cents worth...

Photoshop uses OpenGL to enhance zooming/rotating/3D etc... so as long as your card supports OpenGL you're good to go. the 610GT w 2GB should be more than sufficient I think. Only if you plan on doing lots and lots of videoediting you may want to run anything else...

As nrc points out for pure performance internal memory and Harddrive space/speed is even more critical...

16GB should be sufficient for anything less than professional use... and I'd suggest using a separate HD for your scratch disk(disk cache for temporary files). Make sure it's separate HDs and not just a different partitions. I use 2 SSDs for this (1 where I run Windows/Photoshop and 1 where all the programs write their cache stuff)

[Insomniac]

Since you're considering the GeForce 600 series, just a heads up that many of the lower numbered ones are older cards with a new number on them. They don't actually use the next generation chips (code named Kepler). So you could get their equivalent card in the 500 or 400 series for less.