Best card for displaying geographic information

[Huh]

I'm looking for the best card in the Low Midrange ($100-$200) price range to use with ArcGIS an ESRI product. My assumption is that any card that works well for gaming will work well for this product.

ArcGIS displays 2D geographic information. For example: new street paving on a map that shows the streets, council district, lakes, rivers etc. All this data is in 2D format and all lakes are stored together, streets are stored toegther and all this information is pulled into a workspace to be displayed as needed.

What $100-$200 graphic card will work best for me?

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

$100-200? The Matrox P650.

For less than $100, anything from the ATI R9000/9100/9200 or nVidia FX5200 will do fine for 2D.


- You need a licence to buy a gun, but they'll sell anyone a stamp <i>(or internet account)</i> ! - <font color=green>RED </font color=green> <font color=red> GREEN</font color=red> GA to SK

 

[priyajeet]

You should worry more abt the processor than the display. Geo info especially 2d will require physics, and the CPU handles that more than a GPU.
eg: for the NEC earth simulator, nobody cares what graphics it uses -> just the processor count n parallelism matters.
So just get the best(latest) ATI/nvidia for your budget.

<i> <font color=blue>Futile is resistance,</font color=blue><font color=red> assimilate you we will.</font color=red> </i>

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

The first bit makes sense, but your conclusion totally goes against that.

So just get the best(latest, most expensive) ATI/nvidia for your budget.

Why should he buy a $150+ R9600Pro/XT instead of a $50 R9200SE/FX5200SE for 2D work?

Buying the cheapest modern card makes the most sense, and with the remaining money buy more RAM for the system.

And if he's maxing out his budget then the P650 would make more sense for 2D than either the ATI or the nVidia solutions, but even still it won't matter TOO much.

Latest most expensive, why? The R9800XT and FX5950U offer no advanatage, and I doubt even the X800 and GF6800 offer anything more.


- You need a licence to buy a gun, but they'll sell anyone a stamp <i>(or internet account)</i> ! - <font color=green>RED </font color=green> <font color=red> GREEN</font color=red> GA to SK

 

[priyajeet]

I just wanted the guy to have a more latest product. I am an early technological adopter (as long as I dont have to change my entire system for that).

So i have taken back my words.

<i> <font color=blue>Futile is resistance,</font color=blue><font color=red> assimilate you we will.</font color=red> </i><P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by priyajeet on 07/26/04 02:38 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[Crashman]

Nearly any card with a moderate amount of RAM should do fine, I'd probably slap an old Radeon 7500 64MB card in your machine if it was cheap enough (under $50).

<font color=blue>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to a hero as big as Crashman!</font color=blue>
<font color=red>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!</font color=red>

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

True, the reason I pick the R9000/9100/9200 is due to their availability and also no confusion.

I wouldn't recommend the R7000 or 7200 because of their slower RAMDACs, but you're right the R7500 and above would be fine.

Usually the cheapest new thing I see is the R9200SE.

But I did notice there are R7500LEs out there now that I check NEWEGG for a little less, and yes they would do fine as well.


- You need a licence to buy a gun, but they'll sell anyone a stamp <i>(or internet account)</i> ! - <font color=green>RED </font color=green> <font color=red> GREEN</font color=red> GA to SK

 

[Crashman]

Not to forget the Radeon DDR on which those cards is based!

<font color=blue>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to a hero as big as Crashman!</font color=blue>
<font color=red>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!</font color=red>

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

But the Radeon DDR doesn't have 400mhz RAMDACs does it?

I thought it had the old (325/350mhz?) one.


- You need a licence to buy a gun, but they'll sell anyone a stamp <i>(or internet account)</i> ! - <font color=green>RED </font color=green> <font color=red> GREEN</font color=red> GA to SK

 

[davemar14]

GeForce2 Ti would work pretty good.

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

Ugh!

Any Geforce below the FX series will have worse 2D quality than the R7500 and above.

Sure alot of cards will 'do', but if you're buying a new one, might as well get the best minimum standard quality you can get. Of course like I said the BEST quality would be the P650/750/Parhelia.


- You need a licence to buy a gun, but they'll sell anyone a stamp <i>(or internet account)</i> ! - <font color=green>RED </font color=green> <font color=red> GREEN</font color=red> GA to SK

 

[Huh]

Thanks for all the responses.

I think I will go with the Matrox product.

I left out some information that I thought was not relevant to the discussion.

The information I left out is that the graphics card will be used in a Dell Optiplex GX270 that is leased from Dell. This GX270 has a P4 3.0 GHz (HT not enabled), 1 Gig of memory and the embedded Intel Extreme2 Graphics controller.

This is not a personal computre. This a computer leased by work for the workplace.

My assumption that may have been incorrect is: "For the same price, 1Gig of memory and a decent graphics card is better than 2Gigs of memory".

Am I right or wrong or both?

Thanks for your help.

 

[Fallen]

I've been using ArcGIS for a while now, so I may actually have some useful input. The Matrox is your best bet for graphics. The drawing fo map documents is completely software based, so there is little difference in speed between a 6800 and Rage128. Auality will be your concern. As far as the computer goes, you will want a high FSB and plenty of memory. A P4 will probably do best, based on high memory bandwidth and general number crunching power. My computer has a Gig of RAM, and I wish that it had more. Anyway, that's my $.02.

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

YEah and that makes sense. Good to hear from someone who uses the actual software in question.

While I love Matrox quality, he may not notice 'much of a difference between a P650 and an R9200SE (or R7500LE) it may be like the ever so slight gradient difference. If he's really torn, do you think that a radeon with quality RAMDACs with 2GB would be better than the Matrox with 1GB or would extremely minor hue issues matter much?

Of course the best would be to get 2gb for cheap, and stick with the P650 of course. But if you had to chose?


- You need a licence to buy a gun, but they'll sell anyone a stamp <i>(or internet account)</i> ! - <font color=green>RED </font color=green> <font color=red> GREEN</font color=red> GA to SK

 

[Fallen]

Tough to say...I'd figure that if the job was paying for it, go for broke. The quality difference between a Matrox and Radeon are almost an elitist point; most people won't notice the difference.