Art room Graphics Cards - 27.02.12

[bwestlake]

Hi all,

 

This is a carry on from our post - http://www.edugeek.net/forums/hardware/90719-art-room-graphics-cards.html

 

We have came to a conclusion of three machines....

 

Option 1...

 

Intel i5 2400

8gb Ram

1gb Nvidia Graphics card (tbc which model)

 

Option 2...

 

Intel i5 2400

8gb Ram

120gb SSD (tbc which model)

1gb Nvidia Graphics card (tbc which model)

 

Option 3...

 

Intel i5 2500k

8gb Ram

onboard Intel Graphics (Intel 3000)

 

 

I know most people will suggest the SSD but the reason we are quite dubious about it is that we have a cycle of about 6 years per machine, so we are quite unsure as they have been out for only a couple of years, so will the speed still be decent ect... and it may be a little out of our price league.

 

hope you can help

[bwestlake]

the confurmed graphics card will be GeForce GT 520

[3s-gtech]

SSDs have been on the market for several years now, they are pretty mature devices (plenty of 2007 models about). The GT 520 is not going to help nearly as much as the SSD in this instance. Option 3 plus SSD and no GFX makes a lot of sense, otherwise option 2 without GFX, for budget reasons. You can always add them in later on.

[sonofsanta]

TBH... option 2 without the GPU. The chief benefit of the 2500K is the overclocking, which presumably you won't be doing on curriculum machines, so you may as well save the cash and have the 2400. The 2000/3000 difference isn't enormous, graphics wise.

 

The SSDs will still be quick in 6 years if you over-provision them, when you install Windows only partition/format 7/8ths of the drive so that there is some hidden empty space for the SSD firmware to work with, and that will help keep them speedy. SSDs are only getting worse in that regard anyway as they shrink the NAND.

 

8Gb RAM will be plenty fine and the 520 is barely any better than the integrated graphics, if it all. Not worth the £30.