Video Card for Multimedia (After Effects)

Hey guys,

I have a XFX 4870 1GB version. I'm doing a lot of After Effects stuff right now, and when I have a lot of particles on screen it takes a while to render. Should I pick up another 4870 and go Crossfire? Or, should I get a different video card? (I do gaming as well)

I should probably pick up a quad core CPU as well eh?

System Specs:

E8400 @ 3.75Ghz
4GB ram
XFX 4870 1GB
500GB Seagate Hard Drive

I know CS4 uses Nvidia cards, so you could try getting a GTX 260 core 216.
Here is Adobe Nvidia Link http://www.nvidia.com/object/adobe.html

dont get a counter part form nvidia that gives of similar performance ?! that would be a waste of $$$

It's a known fact that nVidia dominates the workstation card industry. The patented Nvidia architecture is better suited to workstation rendering, and CUDA makes them more versatile. Don't forget about Tesla either, lol.

Get a quad core.

Get 8GB of 1066 RAM

Render like a motherfucking banshee.

yeah you should get an nvidia card if you want to render and your e8400 should be good the clock its at is faster than the mid range quad cores.. i would recommend 4GB if you have 32bit OS but if you have vista 64-bit i'd get 8gb... but i mean an i7 rig with nvidia and 6gb of ram would be great also and render faster than any banshee i can think of :P

yes your E8400 should be just fine, but for a lot of rendering i would go with 8GB ram at least 1066 or greater (1100), and a nvidia (tesla are good for rendering as certain ones have 2gb of gpu ram, made for rendering and heavy workstation work)so i would say as a final statement is that you should be fine with your CPU unless you have an amd, rendering just LOVES to eat ram; so just go out and get 8gb of 1066 or higher and you should be fine. oh and the gpu. Nvidia support workstation's better coupled with their CUDA and using a tesla your computer will walk by your rendering in stride.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814133253

$3000!! aaarrgh!

you guys need to research the tesla a lot more lol!! the tesla is terrible for media its more of like creating virtualisations and atoms etc nothing like after effects as much as we wish no thats wrong!

I would say get as much ram as possible now.. so get vista ultimate 64-bit like 8+GBs of ram and your e8400 is good and probably like a gtx 260 or more...

 you guys need to really research your stuff more.. thetesla isnt as amazing for the stuff we expected