Hi everyone,

just a technical question. I do lots of corporate work, wedding, music video etc...I mostly work with DSLR, XHA1 and EX1. I have a 1 and 1/2 year old computer that it's fast but it could be much better.

Quad 9550 2.83ghz
ASRock 4core1600p35
8gb RAM
ATI Radeon HD 4550

Non of the specs are pro though. I just spent quite a lot of money on a laptop so i can work when I'm away.
I'm not looking to upgrade the entire desktop for another year probably, but i was wondering what could i add to this computer to make it faster? maybe a pro-graphic card? would something like a Quadro FX 580 improve the performance/rendering/editing experience?
I mostly work with the CS4 production premium + magic bullet looks + red giant plugins

thanks in advance!

Guille

The graphics card you use is as fast or even faster than the FX 580. If anything, improve your disk setup,

I second Harm's recommendation. That FX 580, as I have mentioned several times in different threads, is no better than a very ordinary GeForce 9500 GT; in fact, they are both the exact same GPU (only 32 stream processors) and differ only in their driver optimizations. Even a cheap GeForce GT 220 kills the Quadro FX 580 in overall performance. The only Quadros that are at least half-decent cost $500 (for an FX 1800) or more.

By the way, the FX 580 is actually a little bit faster than your current HD 4550, especially in OpenGL. (All 4550s have only a 64-bit memory bus versus the 128-bit memory bus on the G96 GPU that's shared by the Quadro FX 580 and the GeForce 9500 GT.) But it's nowhere near fast enough to justify spending the extra $150 or so that card costs to upgrade from your current HD 4550.