Want to recommend a graphics card?

[Hockeynut!]

I'm in the market for a new graphics card for my computer. I do absolutely no gaming, but occasionally watch blu ray movies. I do a ton of photo editing with Lightroom and PS and am looking for a fast card for that purpose. I probably don't want to spend much over $100 as I'm sure I'll be upgrading my entire system within a year to 18 months anyway.

[shmenguin]

In my experience, if you take gaming out of the equation, graphics cards are pretty arbitrary. go with Nvidia over ATI, though.

Id just go on newegg and find the most purchased model in your price range.

[Hockeynut!]

Sounds good - thanks!

[shmenguin]

Sounds good - thanks!

I'm almost positive that it's your CPU that will determine your fate in Lightroom. When you do a big upgrade, be sure to get an i7 processor.

[Hockeynut!]

Yeah, that's what I've been planning on. Just waiting for the price to drop a bit more. My system actually handles LR and PS pretty well, but I'm sure it could be better.

[tifosi77]

Agree withtheforetoing, except I'm an ATI guy.

The processor is far more important to your needs.

[Hockeynut!]

I'm actually not upgrading the card for LR or PS. I bought a new monitor that DVI and my current card only has hdmi and vga.

I've never installed a video card before. From some tutorials online, it looks pretty simple. Am I right in thinking this is something I can handle?

I was also thinking of upgrading to usb 3.0 while I have the case open. Is that a good idea to try myself or am I asking for failure?

Oh, and while I'm asking stupid questions, a lot of the cards I'm looking at talk about the computer's power supply. How can I check to see if what my current system has is adequate?

[mac5155]

It's simple to put it in, just make sure you don't have any static electricity built up inside of ya. Lol

[tifosi77]

Power supply info should be On the unit itself. I forget if there's a Windows utility that displays that information, like in Win Explorer click Help and then About (or something like that).

[shmenguin]

The simpler graphics cards don't draw too much power. You shouldn't have to worry about it. Installing is easy enough. No weird things to watch out for. Ive never fiddled with USB replacement. Those jacks might be tightly integrated with the mother board. They probably weren't designed to be modular like these other components.

Even with an i5, Lightroom handles my 70mb RAW files ok. Loading files and exporting them are the only lags.