The Right Video Card

[TheGameTSL]

On all the top technology web sites they do extensive reviews on 3D Video Cards. Their reviews are very in depth and cover every detail about 3D cards. But on none of the sites I have seen do they go into the 2D aspects of these cards or which ones are best for 2D.

So my question remains what is the best video card for 2D (Photoshop, Illustrator etc.) out of the following:
- ATI Radeon Pro
- GeForce FX 5800 Ultra
- Nvidia Quadro

You may have noticed my strange omission of the latest Matrox card, the Parahelia huh? If I put it as an option, everyone would have picked it as the clear winner. But out of the big 3 above which will win? Plus are they all "that" far off in quality when compared to the Parahelia?

Please let me know what card you feel is the best out of the 3 above and how it compares against the Matrox card...

[TheGameTSL]

On all the top technology web sites they do extensive reviews on 3D Video Cards. Their reviews are very in depth and cover every detail about 3D cards. But on none of the sites I have seen do they go into the 2D aspects of these cards or which ones are best for 2D.

So my question remains what is the best video card for 2D (Photoshop, Illustrator etc.) out of the following:
- ATI Radeon Pro
- GeForce FX 5800 Ultra
- Nvidia Quadro

You may have noticed my strange omission of the latest Matrox card, the Parahelia huh? If I put it as an option, everyone would have picked it as the clear winner. But out of the big 3 above which will win? Plus are they all "that" far off in quality when compared to the Parahelia?

Please let me know what card you feel is the best out of the 3 above and how it compares against the Matrox card...

[Gaussian]

The speed of 2D is not really an issue anymore in Photoshop and Illustrator, all of the card will do just fine. More important is the quality of your other hardware, like CPU, memory, motherboard etc.

[RAMWolff44]

with 2D compatibility. I have been emailing back and forth with a software author (Cyril Kardassevitch)
that produced a.e.l.i.o.m ( http://www.iluac.com ) and turned me onto the Radeon 8500 ( http://www.ati.com/products/pc/radeon8500/ ) not the newest of the Raion family but he says it is one of the more stable of the Radion family of video cards and supports both 3D and 2D at an affordable cost.

I think I'll be getting one today. I really want to run this guys software and my Matrox G550 does NOT support it. So it's time to move on I guess.

Hope this gives you another idea to work off from.

Richard

---Wolff On The Prowl---

[RAMWolff44]

from NewEgg.com

Here is the page for the models that they carry.

http://www.newegg.com/app/viewproduc...on=RADEON+8500

I ordered the ATI OEM RADEON 8500 LE 128MB DDR DVI/CRT/TV

I know some folks will call me a fool but I have used NVidia and Matrox and both have not fullfilled my needs, so on to the next card and I will see how it adds up on my system. Maybe perfect, maybe OK, maybe ICK!! But only one way to find out and that's to do it!

Good luck!

Richard

---Wolff On The Prowl---

[Ross Macintosh]

Richard - I find it interesting that the developer would recommend a radeon-based graphics card. I say that because his software relies on OpenGL and I have heard repeatedly that nVidia-based cards typically have better OpenGL drivers. The problems relate not to gaming needs, which are well optimized on both radeon & geforce cards, but the OpenGL needs of professional graphics programs that depend on it. Radeon drivers seem to be oriented only to the gamers needs.

So much of card marketing & development is focused on the needs of gamers. There continues to be workstation/cadd-oriented cards but they don't seem to offer good value and it is very difficult to assess how good their performance would be in the real world. (Who wants to pay $1000 to $2500 just to find out?) These days there focus seems to be on 3d performance just like the consumer-oriented cards.

The quality of drivers is an important consideration - the Parahelia is a good example. It does relatively poorly on many benchmarks even though its specs are very good. Maybe it just needs more time for its drivers to mature.

If I could afford any card right now I think I'd go for a GeForce FX-based one. I would have no concerns about its 2d or 3d performance. That said, I imagine Gausian is correct that any higher-end card will likely provide ample 2d performance. The 2d performance differences between them might not be perceptable in the real world.

Regards, Ross

<a href=http://www.designstop.com/>DesignStop.Com</a>

[Ross Macintosh]

Richard - your link is to a card that uses a 4x AGP slot. If your new motherboard has a 8x AGP slot you'd be far better off with a card that could utilize it. I'm sure there are Radeon 8500 cards that feature the 8x AGP.

Regards, Ross

<a href=http://www.designstop.com/>DesignStop.Com</a>

[gidgit]

Great info here folks...

Funny thing is that currently the newest and latest cards are so fast and hold so much potential that in all reality there are no apps or games written yet that will fully realize this said potential... go figure eh... ah the quirks of competitiveness...

This syndrom was also experienced with the advent of SSE quite a few years ago in that other than PhotoShop and very few other apps that could take advantage of such, most everything else was still written for MMX and is to this day continued to be propped up by DirectX...

However, as several have indicated here, if one is seriously looking to creating in 3D and the like, then OpenGL is a very big issue and I would tend to agree that ATI is somewhat behind in this area, though more so as rRoss has indicated here, because of driver issues continually cropping up...

As for 2D, Gauss is bang on in that it is rather the processor, ram, and harddrive which present the goods... it should be suggested that having any ok card with say 32 megs of ram is more than enough for those 2D concerns

For running todays somewhat bloated 2D apps I would recommend no smaller a unit than say a 533 PIII (.18 micron fab) c/w 256 megs sdram, any 32 meg 128 bit or higher v card, and all should be okdoki...

haha... however, this said, it would be rediculous to get a 533 when for all intensive purposes one can pick up any 1 ghz or better, bare bones box, for 300.oo more or less and swap over some of the parts such as HD, cd rom etc and thus have one very capable little work station... the most important part to deciding which box... is...choosing one with a motherboard that isn't all integrated, but rather allows for one to upgrade processor, and also making sure said board does not have shared memory or video... and as Ross has pointed out, does it support various features such as AGP what X ? and... go for the widest bus as you can get to figure in with the price overall...

Finally it is interesting to note here that while I have seen some very cool worx being generated on some of these new super fast computers I happen to know there are also those out there with all the power in the world beneath their fingers yet really do not know how to use such...

... thus, in my personal opinion, it is far more important to purchase a few decent apps and practice your little tush off on any PII MMX based machine or better, before really concidering to spend hard earned cash on something you may not even fully realize through skill levels til say 6 months, a year or in my case much longer lol... ah, the wonderfull road of the learning curve...

Add the price of a new puter to the cost of a few good apps, and on top, your internt expences, and wowsers, you are sure paying to learn...

something to think about... In otherwords don't get sucked into the machine aspect of things too much, but rather go for the learning the basics and beyond of creating digital arts first... your new machine will be more than worth the effort and the savings are retro...

And for your more experienced types, you know this all too well already, thus please ignore all the above and happy creat'n eh...

And for you gaming types already having the big rigs... yahooo, how goes the levels? Anything new or exciting we should know about ? What's your favorite game and why? Is it the strategies or the graphics or how many others are also involved... Curious minds wish to know....

Till then,
gidgit

[RAMWolff44]

for the edjamication!!

OK, so my MB supports 2X/4X AGP and the cards Bus Interface is an AGP2X/4X and my board manual mentions the gold finger hook which this card has, so I think I'm OK.

The only thing I have to remember if I want it to be at top performance is to make sure the jumper on the MB is set to the 4X slot and I should be set to go.

NewEgg.com is FAST and FURIOUS with getting stuff out in a timely manner, I ordered quite a few things from them that I couldn't get from Fry's when I was putting together my new box. So I know and trust them and recommend them as well!!

So I hope I got all this figured out and I will let all know what happens when I put er' in.

Hey Gidget!!

Richard

---Wolff On The Prowl---

[Ross Macintosh]

Sounds like you have the AGP right Richard.

I just bought a new card too. Installed it two days ago. My computer is a pentium III-866 so I bought a card to match the processor's non-state-of-the-art status and my limited budget. I bought a GeForce4 MX440 64mb DDR. It is a noticable improvement over the TNT Riva card that it replaced. A nice feature of the new card is hardware monitoring which allows me to see various card temperatures onscreen. It also came with an overclocking utility --- I've jacked up the card a bit without any problems so far.

Regards, Ross

<a href=http://www.designstop.com/>DesignStop.Com</a>