Upgrading my video editing system

[snowtd]

I'd like to upgrade a system I build 6+ year ago (Q6600) as I'm having real trouble editing 1080p 60fps video now.

As I'd love to avoid a fresh reinstall of Win 7 I'm trying to stay in the Asus family of MBs to ease the upgrade as much as possible (does that make sense?)

I'll be reusing my SSD and PS so I'm looking at:

i7-4770k
Zalman CNPS9500 AT cooler
Asus Z87-PRO
16b of Crucial Ballistix Sport - 1600 memory

I'd love to keep this under $800 (could go to $1000) but am unsure about upgrading the vid card. Right now I have an old nvidia 8800 gts.

I use Sony Vegas for most of my editing so there is some potential for GPU accelerated rendering but I'm not sure where the best bang for my buck in vid cards is. I might also start playing BF4 when it come out.

Any advice would be helpful.

Thanks

 

[Essence_of_War]

The Asus Gryphon comes with a free 8gb stick of Crucial and is a very nice motherboard.

Adding a second 8gb stick puts you at 175+67 = $242, which isn't bad for MoBo+RAM.

If you live near a micro center, you can pick up the i7 for $280, but if not, newegg/amazon @ $350 is the best you can do. Your preferred CPU cooler has a $10 rebate going also, so if you add on $30 for that:

= 350 + 32 + 242 = $624, which isn't bad at all.

If you want to use the GPU to play BF4, I would just wait until BF4 comes out so that you can assess the benches and see what will give you good FPS at your resolution. If you can't wait, it would be tough to go wrong with the 770 or the 7970. Although the former might go a hair over your budget.

I don't know that staying with an Asus MoBo will make the upgrade process any easier. But anyone who knows better, please feel free to correct me! If you aren't tied to Asus, you can get a decent MoBo+CPU combo that gets you a workable z87 ATX from MSI. It won't crossfire or SLI, but if that isn't important to you, you could save a couple bucks:
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Core i7-4770K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor ($349.99 @ Newegg)
CPU Cooler: Zalman CNPS9500 AT Ball Bearing CPU Cooler ($31.99 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: MSI Z87-G41 PC Mate ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($117.55 @ Newegg)
Memory: Mushkin Silverline 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($109.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $589.52
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2013-06-13 13:32 EDT-0400)

 

[mfenn]

I don't know that staying with an Asus MoBo will make the upgrade process any easier. But anyone who knows better, please feel free to correct me!

You're right, it won't. It has more to do with the specific controllers on the original board and how the BIOS is set up than the brand.

 

[snowtd]

Thanks for the advice! I'm thinking I'd like to stay with Asus as I've had good results in the past. Not sure about an mATX board. Was just assuming I'd get an ATX board. I want to get as many USB 3 ports for external drives for editing projects.

I do have a microcenter near by (Cambridge) so will definitely pick up a 4770k there next Wednesday when I'm in the city.

Any idea how the integrated graphics would compare to my old 8800GTS?

 

[Sleepingforest]

It should be a bit weaker. The 7750, a $80 dedicated graphics card, is still about 2.8x more powerful than the i7-4770K's graphics; the 7750 is generally just more than twice the power of the 8800GT.

What are you getting a new video card for? Gaming at 1080p? If so, a 2GB 7850 or 660 will serve you well (and costs between $160 and $180).

 

[snowtd]

The new card would be dual purpose. To game at 1080p and also to (hopefully) accelerate my video renders using Sony Vegas.

Right now I don't do much hi res gaming on the system but would like to get BF4 when it comes out.

 

[Sleepingforest]

Since Sony Vegas uses OpenCL for compute, you'll want to go with an AMD GPU (Nvidia's Kelper GK104 GPUs [AKA all of the 6XX and 7XX series but the 780 and the Titan] have very little computer power).

 

[snowtd]

Just a quick follow up

Upgraded the system yesterday with:

Asus Z87-Pro
i7-4770k
16gb Crucial Ballistic Sport 1600

Didn't really prep the system much except for a full backup. Dropped the board in and ran through a bunch of reboots, installed the drivers on the CD that came with the MB then downloaded updated drivers and installed those.

Windows 7 pro 64 bit deactivated with not problems. All in all it was the easiest upgrade I've ever done.

Finally got back to editing some 1080p 60fps projects that have been sitting idle (personal projects) and love the responsiveness of the system now. Will probably max out the memory to 32gb and will get a new video card once BF4 comes out.

Thank you to all who had suggestions on the upgrade.