Getting ready to upgrade my Windows machine and wondering what the concensus is on a "decent, moderately priced" video card that supports dual monitors. Thanks in advance for the opinions.
I suppose to a certain extent it depends on the monitors as some 30" ones seem to need a big graphics card to themselves.
However, I was able to pick up a nVidia 8800 something or other with gobs of memory last year on sale for $100. Its a pretty high end card for games and everything else.
The truth of it is that both nVidia and ATI make good cards and they'll get the job done and most of these high end cards are built for video games and the 3D rendering they require. We don't need those features and most any card will do a fine job of supporting Photoshop.
Thanks Mel. I'll look at those this weekend. Should be no problem for memory as I'm only planning on running a couple of 20" LCD's. I appreciate the input.
With two (identical?) monitors you may not have any problems, but when I upgraded my motherboard & CPU the video card I'd been using happily for a year with my monitors (a CRT & an LCD) simply didn't work; it displayed the primary-monitor image on both monitors. My computer-shop guy had to swap out his own video card. So I'm suggesting only that if possible you make sure the video card you buy will work in practice as well as in theory.
For a good, relatively inexpensive graphics card, I recommend a Matrox Millennium adapter such as the P690 or better. It is a dual head card. Unfortunately, you will need to either order it directly from Matrox at http://www.matrox.com or you might be able to find it at CDW. There are other real graphics cards, but they cost $200-300 USD versus about $100 for the Matrox.
Last December, I had to buid a new box with an AMD 6000 (?) CPU. The electronics place where I bought the mainboard, etc., assured me that an nVidia e-GeForce card would provide excellent graphics. WRONG! It stank with poor display of thin black lines, particularly text. And, this was at the setting for best graphics as opposed to best speed.
Besides photography, I do a lot of work writing text documents and producing CAD designs. Both require sharp graphics, otherwise the text and drawings will be illegible.
I observed that thin, vertical black lines would go from a light gray-beige background to black then to WHITE before returning to the light gray-beige background. The white areas in the thin lines made text unreadable and made some of the thin lines on drawings almost disappear.
The requirements for a game card are different than those of a graphics card. There is a second order damping factor which controls the output to produce square waves. But, that damping factor slows the response which is not good for fast moving video games. I do not have an oscilloscope to test my suspicions, but replacing the nVidia card with the above Matrox card immediately solved the problem.
Again, if you want quality graphics, avoid the popular nVidia, and I suspect ATI, video cards which have been optimized for gaming and fast video response. Even when set for best text quality, they are poor. You can easily test the card by reseting the Windows desktop to use the "Windows Classic Style" with "Windows Standard" Color Scheme. The gray-beige background is dark enough to show a white area after the leading edge of black text if there is a problem with ringing. If the text letters are well formed and easily readable, then you are good. I suspect Microsoft went to their XP color pallet and colors because the Standard scheme would not work with most video adapters.
Discussion
4 repliesHowever, I was able to pick up a nVidia 8800 something or other with gobs of memory last year on sale for $100. Its a pretty high end card for games and everything else.
The truth of it is that both nVidia and ATI make good cards and they'll get the job done and most of these high end cards are built for video games and the 3D rendering they require. We don't need those features and most any card will do a fine job of supporting Photoshop.
Last December, I had to buid a new box with an AMD 6000 (?) CPU. The electronics place where I bought the mainboard, etc., assured me that an nVidia e-GeForce card would provide excellent graphics. WRONG! It stank with poor display of thin black lines, particularly text. And, this was at the setting for best graphics as opposed to best speed.
Besides photography, I do a lot of work writing text documents and producing CAD designs. Both require sharp graphics, otherwise the text and drawings will be illegible.
I observed that thin, vertical black lines would go from a light gray-beige background to black then to WHITE before returning to the light gray-beige background. The white areas in the thin lines made text unreadable and made some of the thin lines on drawings almost disappear.
The requirements for a game card are different than those of a graphics card. There is a second order damping factor which controls the output to produce square waves. But, that damping factor slows the response which is not good for fast moving video games. I do not have an oscilloscope to test my suspicions, but replacing the nVidia card with the above Matrox card immediately solved the problem.
Again, if you want quality graphics, avoid the popular nVidia, and I suspect ATI, video cards which have been optimized for gaming and fast video response. Even when set for best text quality, they are poor. You can easily test the card by reseting the Windows desktop to use the "Windows Classic Style" with "Windows Standard" Color Scheme. The gray-beige background is dark enough to show a white area after the leading edge of black text if there is a problem with ringing. If the text letters are well formed and easily readable, then you are good. I suspect Microsoft went to their XP color pallet and colors because the Standard scheme would not work with most video adapters.