Hello ALL,

I'm new here this is my first post, pls help me out thx :>

My work place staff use Adobe Illustrator and InDesign a lot, everytime they open the file it takes 10 second to open, I'm not sure if this is related to the low end video card we got, if thats the case, what video card shd I pick???

We had a DELL Precision PC with 250mb AGP Video card, running adobe CS2; the file they work with are quite big and sometime it contain links to otehr file, make it even harder to open quick... the DELL PC bought in 2005 with P4 HT and 2GB of DDR2 RAM;

I'm looking at ATI FireGL 7300 w/512mb or 7350 w/1Gb; they are so xxxxing expensive, but if thats the solution to it I will go for it, but if any one of you knows the answer pls update me...

I do not want to buy a gaming video card, I need a video card for desktop publishing graphic desinger grade, any suggestion???

ty in advnace :>

from c0w.

In Illustrator, a super expensive FireGL will not give you any better performance than a $70 Radeon X1300.

Get the cheapest card you can find that has it's own memory (Not hypermemory or turbocache!) and you'll be fine.

Expensive cards like the firegl will help in 3d apps like Maya or 3dsMAX, not 2d stuff like illustrator.

Cleeve is correct - the video card does not have any bearing on the performance of Adobe Illustrator..

It's the CPU that is the issue with slowness not the VPU.

For graphics card I would recommend you get a 512MB version of the X1300 or X1600 for as cheap as you can find, and better yet get a passive one. The only limitation for you will be the AGP connection as to what you can easily find.

You want the X1K cards because they give you access to all the full features you need for good 2D work, especially 10bit per colour channel support (nVidia added that to their G80 series).

IMO this is the best bang/buck for what you need fromm NewEgg;
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814161032

But if you could get an X1300, X1550, X1600, X1650 with 512MB (for large textures and multiple layers) and with a passive heat sink, then that's the way to go. You just may need to shop a little harder since passive is not a big thing for gamers, but a good idea for 2D pros.

Arggh, started my reply but before sending got called away from my desk. Oh well pretty much agree with what you said, it's just going to be a little hard finding the perfect card. AGP makes choices difficult, there's a ton of perfect passive large memory X1300s in PCIe but they are harder to find in AGP.

Heheh. Yeah, having AGP isn't as fun as it used to be.

Illustrator is a 2D program and so is Indesign as it is related to web design layout.

If your Illustrator is slow to load is is more related to your system memory and CPU working to process a large AI file. Also a fast hard drive system will help in pulling the file up for the CPU/memory to "layout".

You won't get any benefit from a faster video card unless you just have a very old slow card. You could get way with a Matrox as far as Illustrator is concerned. Color accuracy is more important for it.

Large AI files like large Publisher files take a long time to parse when opening which is more related to CPU/memory, especially memory. If the file is very large or being pulled off a network then its your hard drive subsystem and your network bandwidth that are the issues.

You will be wasting your money on video cards unless you require them to display very high resolution on large screen monitors or lcd's for which speed is not as crucial as the amount of texture memory of the video card.

Yeah, didn't wanna do the 'AGP sucks' thing here, because I know this will be it's biggest market for a while.

I just thought of something and went... 'wait he doesn't needthe X1K he could get the X700 or R9600 is he can find one', the only problem will be memory size if he works with complex multi layer content. Surprisingly it does matter on some of our geomatics stuff.

While I'd prefer he get a 128bit 512MB X1300, he may be better of with an older card, but then it comes down to passive being more valuable than 512MB vs 128 only he can make that call.

Personally I'd get the best X1300 for the lowest price and then rip off the cooler and add passive cooling, but I woldn't recommend that to anyone else. The R9000 did fine for me in my editing rig, I'm sure an R9600 would be ok for him too as long as it's nothing too memory intensive.

BTW, you know there's no Hyper Memory on AGP eh.

Yeah, I jumped the gun and missed the whole AGP thing the first go-round.

Hey guys, thx a lot for such super speed quick reply

Sounds like all I need is a new system for them, which is not so hard in todays market.

My plan would be getting them a INTEL Core2Duo System with 4GB DDR2 RAM and ASUS m.b. and a SEAGATE SATA2 250GB-xxx; and a reasonable PCI-E video card. (and save the rest of the dor$$ to my game PC at work, hahaha.... pls do not let my bosh know 8) )

Thx a lot guy, so helpful... I shd have register in here long ago...

Sounds like a good idea, and when building that new system since it's PCIe, then this is your best choice IMO, and should last forever (baring some defect) since there's no parts to wear out;

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814161042

Good balance of power performance and lotsa memory for even the most complex tasks.

If you don't mind a little less grunt and a little less memory you can get a cheap X1300, or even a cheaper X1050 to do the job.

I like the X1600 w/ 512MB as a forward looking part unlikey limit future apps. The only thing to remember is likely a little larger thermal load than the X1300 and especially the X1050.

I would rather go for this...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814131046

As fast and high quality in 2D as anything available, 2 x DVI ports when you get a second monitor, 256MB is enough for 2D, silent cooling (using a very low power 80nm chip), 'Vista Aero' compatible... Does everything you need

Depends on what you're doing with the card.

2D can require large buffer for certain situations, like I said it depends on what he's using it for.

If he doesn't need the power of the one I posted, then getting an even cheaper X1300 or even X1050 would be fine too.

As for Vista, it'll depend alot on what he's doing again, but I doubt he's using vista right now or anytime soon.