video card?

L

lucid

New member
besides using my computer as a DAW i also play the odd compiter game with it. however, my aging voodoo 3 is startin to show its age, and cant play any of the new games smoothly, if at all...

so, what is the best video card i can get the will not hinder DAW performance and will also be relatively quiet (i hate how the new cards al have fans)....
 
For DAW work, I highly suggest a duel head video card like the Matrox G450 or G550. I can't recall the models of the other brands. I have the G450 and love it. With Nuendo, I do the project window on one screen, mixer, fx, etc., on the other. Or I can have an Editor like CEP or a MIDI program like Sonar open and make changes to files used by Nuendo all at the same time! Plus, it saved my old 15" monitor from the dumpster. I found my G450 for $65. I've seen other brands for about the same.
 
Matrox G450 and G550 videocards aren't good choices when it comes to serious gaming. The can't compete at all with the latest nVidea or ATI chipsets.
The G400 on which the G450 and G550 are based is already a few years old. It hit the market around the time that nVidea released its TNT2. The G450 and G550 have some extra features but are not faster than the G400.

I love my G200 though so Matrox would still be my personal no 1 choice. Games are a waste of my time.
 
lucid said:
and how do the matrox cards perform when it comes to games?
Click to expand...

Depends on the games. I'm not much of a gamer, so I don't know how the new slew of high end gaming cards perform. I get good results with Unreal Tourny and I've done a few Quake III engine type games, but I had to do some tweaking with OpenGL drivers and patches to get them work. I recently tried the new Jedi game and it will need to be tweaked.
 
Matrox will do fine on games that aren't heavy into 3D. That said, Matrox is scheduled to release their new video card tomorrow which will compete head to head with the top nVidia cards in 3D and presumably will still wipe the floor with them in 2D.
 
Games and 3D --> Nvidia
Serious 2D, dual monitors ---> Matrox
The best compromise for all of the above ---> Ati

I play games, record audio and watch movies all on the same computer so I went for an Ati Radeon 7500. It's good for games and supports dual monitors (useful when you buy a new monitor : you can still use your old one!), and it generally has better 2D performances than Nvidia cards (which is good for displaying those waveforms!)

Just make sure you buy an Ati card that is 'built by Ati', as opposed to 'powered by Ati', as the latter have dodgy drivers.
 
Just make sure you buy an Ati card that is 'built by Ati', as opposed to 'powered by Ati', as the latter have dodgy drivers.
Click to expand...
That should be reworded to read:
Just make sure you buy an Ati card that is 'built by Ati', as opposed to 'powered by Ati', as the latter have drivers that even more dodgy than ATi's drivers.
 
I wouldn't recommend an ATI product to my worst enemy!

Their support is terrible to say the least. I was stuck without being able to use full capabilities of my All-in-Woner 128 for almost a year because ATI could not get working Win2000 driver and the Multimedia Center App out on time.

I have no intentions whatsoever of ever buying another ATI product. I have owned older Matrox cards and their support for products is ten times better. Their products are more dependable/reliable as well. It was normal to see new drivers for my Mystique 220 every 4-6 months before the product was discontinued.
 
I would recomend an ATI Radeon 8500 dual-monitor card, or any generic Geforce 3 card. The Geforce 4 cards are too much $$$ for me.

However, I have to backup brzilian on his story - I had a similar situation with a ATI TV Wonder VE card. I replaced a Voodo III card with a ATI Radeon DDR card. Then found out that the ATI TV Wonder card and the Radeon each wanted their own version of the ATI Media Center software, and wouldn't work right with the other's version. I eventually fixed that by replacing both with a Radeon All-In-Wonder - and then found out that ATI had released a patch the day before that fixed my problem. The truth was I was stunned that they had even bothered to fix it at all, given how old the TV card was.

I'll say this about ATI - while they have been accused of pushing out new cards before the drivers are fully done, no other company I have ever seen continues to support its older cards with driver updates as well as ATI does. So getting a new card may mean watching for driver updates, but their cards get good support as they age.
 
All geforce cards are pretty much the same regardless of brands. You may find a difference in fans on them. That is one of the few things they change. Otherwise they are all copies of the reference design from Nvidia.

You will not get a fast 3d card without fans. Those suckers have more processing power than computers did a few years ago.

My GF3 rocks on all new games. For serious games Geforce is the only way to go for driver and feature compatability.

Check out www.tomshardware.com and www.firingsquad.com for reviews and specs.
 
JR#97 said:
For DAW work, I highly suggest a duel head video card like the Matrox G450 or G550. I can't recall the models of the other brands. I have the G450 and love it. With Nuendo, I do the project window on one screen, mixer, fx, etc., on the other. Or I can have an Editor like CEP or a MIDI program like Sonar open and make changes to files used by Nuendo all at the same time! Plus, it saved my old 15" monitor from the dumpster. I found my G450 for $65. I've seen other brands for about the same.
Click to expand...

Hey, JR#97,
I have a question to you, and to everyone familiar with Matrox cards.
I picked up G550 not for it dual head feature but to compare its 2D with my current ECS SIS315. The text looked so much sharper, even at my current max resolution of 1600x1200 on 21" monitor. At the same time I found Matrox to be MUCH slower than SIS. Whenever I zoomed in the project view in Nuendo, response was painfully slow.
Is it because of high resolution?
Did you have a chance to compare Matrox to other cards?
Thanks
 
webstop said:


Hey, JR#97,
I have a question to you, and to everyone familiar with Matrox cards.
I picked up G550 not for it dual head feature but to compare its 2D with my current ECS SIS315. The text looked so much sharper, even at my current max resolution of 1600x1200 on 21" monitor. At the same time I found Matrox to be MUCH slower than SIS. Whenever I zoomed in the project view in Nuendo, response was painfully slow.
Is it because of high resolution?
Did you have a chance to compare Matrox to other cards?
Thanks
Click to expand...

I didn't compare the Matrox G450 to anything else. I upgraded my pc from a pII 350 to an AMD 1.7 gig and added the card then. My old card was an 8mb something or the other. Not a legit comparison. If you're only running one monitor, I don't know why you'd be slow since the card would be allocating all of the resources to the one monitor. On my setup, I have the project monitor getting most of the resources and the mixer and everything else monitor getting only a sliver. I've had no performance issues whatsoever.
 
The GeForce4's smoke ATI in every way... :p

And now, with the release of the GF4 Ti 4200, you can have one of these "ATI spanking" cards for a mere $169... but wait... there's more... :eek: Towards the end of May, more Mfg's are releasing their versions of the Ti4200 and street prices are expected to drop to around the $150 range... that's a crazy price/performance ratio... (nothing else comes close)

And yes.. the Matrox is gonna release a card that will spank both ATI and nVidia... but they haven't even released the official specs on it, or any reference samples, so no confirmation of this "spanking" can be shown yet. (not that I doubt it will spank them both, I'm just saying...) And on top of that.. it's supposed to start at 400 bucks... just a weeeee bit more than even the GF4's. :p (the Ti 4600's are goin' for $299 now.)

But like someone else said... it depends on what you need it for.. nVidia doesn't really make a "stellar" dual display card.. and it's 2D capabilities can be topped by some ATI cards... but I'm a gamin' man... all I care aboot it FPS's :p (and detail) and you can't get a better deal, for that, than the current GF4's.

WATYF
 
ok, so geforce 4 is the way to go? how loud ar ethe fans on these suckers? anyone know a db rating?
 
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