Now that you’ve got your motherboard and processor (covered in Building an Editing Workstation Part 1), let’s take a look at memory and video cards.
Memory
This is the one area that you can splurge on without spending a whole lot. I’d recommend throwing at least 4GB of memory into your workstation. By today’s standards 4-8GB is a good place to be, especially if you’ve got a quad-core setup.
In video editing, memory is most often used while previewing video. If you use Adobe After Effects, you know what I’m talking about.
One thing to keep in mind is that if you’re using an Intel setup, you may want to shoot for 6GB since many Intel motherboards support triple channel memory. Currently, as I’m writing this, AMD motherboards don’t appear to offer support for triple channel memory, but that’ll probably change soon.
The key here is that you really can’t have too much memory when it comes to video.
Video Card
Ironically, the video card isn’t very crucial here. Well, let me correct myself – it isn’t AS crucial here.
Unless you do a fair amount of 3D modeling and animation, you really don’t need to concern yourself with spending too much on a graphics card. I recommend getting something middle of the road, spending somewhere around $70-$150.
Keep in mind that you’ll want to find something that has at least dual monitor support. The video card I use has two monitor ports as well as an HDMI out. This way I can use both of my monitors, while also outputting the preview to my 32” LCD TV. Features like these can sometimes be more important than the processing power of the card alone.
Now, I should make mention that the new version of Adobe After Effects does take advantage of some OpenGL graphics cards. You can see a list of the supported cards on their website. The list is quite large and many of the cards fall into the midrange I just spoke of. I’m not sure how much of a performance leap you’re really going to see by spending a boatload on one of the more expensive cards supported. Chances are you’d be better off putting that extra cash into more memory and/or a better processor.
And that will do it for Part 2. Stay tuned for the exciting conclusion of Building an Editing Workstation later this week when I cover the hard drive. And hopefully that will leave you a nice guideline when building your next workstation.
