I'm running Premiere Pro CS5 under Windows 7 Professional 64-bit.
HP Z400 workstation. It's about 7 years old. Xeon W3520 @ 2.66 GHz. 12 GB RAM (it's a three-channel architecture and is therefore more optimized with 3 slots filled than all four).
Drives are:
- 512 GB Samsung 840 Pro SSD for OS and apps (properly optimized, I think)
- 1 TB hard drive for Premiere Pro media cache, preview files and media exports
- 3x 1 TB hard drives in RAID5 (2 TB storage) for data
I have a GeForce GTX 470 graphics card in it. (The case for the workstation couldn't take a power supply big enough to run that card, so I have a separate power supply running the card that sits behind the machine.)
I'm aware that it's an old machine and the thing to do is upgrade it soon.
For now, my main question is whether it's worth investing in just a faster graphics card for processing.
If it won't help export times then maybe there's no point. I export to h.264/mp4 for the web and that's when I spend the most time waiting for it.
Okay, so let me also request suggestions for a new workstation for that matter, while we're at it.
Roughly speaking, how much are these improvements likely to buy me in terms of shorter wait times?
Thanks very much.
Jay