Graphics Cards

[robert_parker]

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Hello Everyone

 

I'm considering building a new machine for business reasons and was wondering if a particular graphics card was preferred for colour fidelity, etc - it would have to be a PC card because I only run that platform.

 

Any thoughts would be gratefully received

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[jank]

Few points for consideration:

 

In past, when we were using analog monitors, the build quality of the analog circuitry, the badwith, and use of high quality capacitors were very inportant.

The Matrox cards were usually the best.

Nowdays, with high resolution monitors and digital interfaces it is inportant to consider cards capability to drive monitors with resolution higher than 1900x1200.

The Dell 24 in 1900x1200 monitor could be bought for less than $700 US.

Anything above that requires Dual DVI capabilty.Check for that!

You may end up with 30in 2400x1600 ! It goes now for less than $1400.

The new bus, PCIx is also 2x faster than that of AGP8.

As far as color rendition is concerned, I believe it is more dependent on the monitor , since the card only "passes" the data to the monitor itself.

Jan

[robsteve]

Robert:

 

Which ever card you buy, if it supports dual monitors, make sure it can profile both monitors separately. Most dual head cards do not have this capability, so the profile for you main monitor is also applied to the secondary monitor. A year or two ago the Matrox Parhelia was the top end card that could profile both monitors.

 

I am just using an Nvidia Geforce 6200 with the 1900x1200 24inch Apple Cinema display. It is not an expensive card and the profile only supports the main monitor, which is fine for my needs. I am on a PC.

 

With a PC you have to be careful you don't spend a lot of money for a gaming card because Photoshop or other similar programs do not use 3D graphics.

 

Robert

[wparsonsgisnet]

I am also using an nvidia card. It offers both DVI and 15-pin connections. The DVI has about twice the resolution of the old interface standard. The card also has its own memory, therefore not stealing from the nominal amount of ROM you thot you had.

[cbretteville]

Which ever card you buy, if it supports dual monitors, make sure it can profile both monitors separately. Most dual head cards do not have this capability, so the profile for you main monitor is also applied to the secondary monitor. A year or two ago the Matrox Parhelia was the top end card that could profile both monitors.

 

For a dual head DVI to be individually profilable the card should be a PCI Express card. Older AGP cards can't do that - this according to Colorvision (Spyder's maker).

 

- C

[johnjs]

Hi Robert,

Have you decided on what mainboard you are going to build the new machine around yet? If not, I would suggest the Asus P5N32-E SLI mainboard (UK edition) which supports SLI if you wish to run dual graphics cards. It also has an Nvidia N-Force 680i SLI chipset, supporting current Core-2 and upcoming Quad Core Intel chips, and 2 PCI-E slots. For the graphics card, several new cards are coming that are built for Windows Vista and DirectX 10. The new Asus 8800GTX card utilizes 768mb of DDR3 memory and has dual DVI out, but looks to be very new and might be a bit difficult to obtain right now. Over the past few years, I've built several systems based on Asus boards with Nvidia N-Force chipsets, and have always been impressed with the level of quality and compatability. Of course, you'd want a good chassis and extra large power supply for the above rig (think Cooler Master), but you'd be set for a couple years or longer, depending on your computing needs.

Best-John

[robert_parker]

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Thank you everyone for your comments, which are very useful

 

John - I'm planning on using a Asus M2N32 - SLI Pro board, which is the first time I've moved away from Gigabyte and Via chipsets, if I go for an nVida card too as seems likely, it will be my first move away from the ATI radeon family !!

 

Amazing how things evolve !!

[gogopix]

Robert:

 

Which ever card you buy, if it supports dual monitors, make sure it can profile both monitors separately.

Robert

 

I have Matrox, Nvidia and others on different machines and the Matrox (with my samsung 24" dual) are really great

The issue on dualmonitorptofiling is that XP doesnt support it, even if the card does.

 

that changes with Vista I believe

[johnjs]

Hi Robert,

I just read up on the Asus M2N32-SLI and it looks like a beautifully-made and very advanced board with alot of headroom, excellent choice. You'll not be disappointed with Asus; building a machine around one of their boards is always exciting and their documentation is very thorough. I switched to the N-Force chipset a few systems back in order to take advantage of dual-channel memory, which they seemed to be the first out with. It definitely adds a little kick to the system's responsiveness. Most of my recent builds have been AMD-based as well, but I think my next one might be on the 775 socket. I'm intrigued by the black PCB and all that (presumably) copper in the fanless chipset cooling system. I'll also speculate that the N-Force will be highly compatable with whatever Nvidia GPU(s) you throw at it.

 

Good luck, and report back with a few benchmarks when you get it all together.

Best, John