Graphics card for non gamer

I need some help in deciding on a graphics card. I'm running XP Pro on an 820 D box with 2 gigs of ram. My current card is an NVidia 6600 with 256 megs of memory. I don't do any gaming but do still image editing and some video work. Nothing major, just for personal use. Will I see a difference in performance if I move up to an Nvidia 8800GT or 8800GT OC each with 512 megs of on board memory. The new card would then be used in a new box I intend to build later in the year with a Quad core.

Any help would be appreciated.

+1

Thanks for the input. I want to upgrade to speed up redraws and to see if I can generally get snappier performance.

Well, you could get nice, low cost, passively cooled 8600GT and you'd have all 2D power you'd ever need if you're feeling like the 6600 is holding you back. ...but to be honest I think even the 6600 has pretty snappy RAMDACs so I'm not sure how much more you'll get.

Try rolling back to 16Bit color and see if your performance improves noticably.

If you're set on upgrading and have good airflow consider something like this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814121076

It should accelerate Vista's Aero (if you decide to use that) and give you solid 2D performance. I have one of these in my 8-year old daughter's rig driving a 22" and a 15" LCD, she gets rock solid 2D performance and can even play her occasional Dress Up the Barbie games.

From what I can tell (I just replaced my 6600GT with an 8600GT last month) there is no difference with the redraw speed in 2d mode.

You would likely need to upgrade the CPU/motherboard/RAM/disks to see a signifficant change in redraw speed.

The 8600GT is an excellent card for 80EUR. It doesn't do well in games but there are alot of passive cooled versions that don't even run too hot.
That's the main reason I swapped the 6600GT with an 8600GT. The 6600GT fan was dying. I could hear Scotty from it "Captain! I can't give you more powah! We're already doing 120%" with a silly scottish accent. GREASEJOB!...

I've never cared much for "3D pink elephants in yellow thongs carrying fully rendered 3D folders from one edge of the screen to the other" while I was waiting for my filecopying it to finish. Eyecandy FTW. Overdoing it is what the problem really is.

I'd rather see a small popup in a corner of the screen displaying average and current transfer rates and an accurate time estimate!

The problem is it doesn't really offer anything to me right now. I need my programs to work flawlessly for work.

As for time, it was the same with XP (came out in 2001) my first install was a disaster in Late October 2001(nothing worked, no drivers, every other click caused some annoying sound ..., alerts, popups, ... BLARGH!). I waited until SP2 was out and the major issues with it were worked out. Second install was April 2005. Never looked back. Stupid 137GB limit in WIN2K.

I think the same will happen with Vista 64bit in about a year or when the next service pack comes out.