Need Help choosing Graphics card!!!

Matrox dual head vid cards are great for 2D. Why teh 1024 RAM though- don't think you'll need it, maybe 512 would be better.

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That is a nice amount of ram, but I would stick with the 512 MB of Ram and get a Radeon 8500 AIW. It includes a firewire port, remote control, and a ton of other features to help you make the movies like the professionals do. but just as important as the Video card( actually most important when doing Digital Video Editing) is the Harddrive system that you use. If you have the money, I would go for SCSI, if not, setting up a RAID HD system will work as well. Tom has more info about <A HREF="http://www6.tomshardware.com/howto/01q3/010906/index.ht..." target="_new">RAID</A>, how to set it up, and the beniefits of having it under Windows 2000. If you alread have access to a video board, and don't need all the features offered on the AIW, go for the Radeon 7500 or 8500. Having multiple monitors is great for that kind of stuff.

If it works for you then don't fix it.

i have the hercules prophet kyro ii card and it is okay, nothing special. ati makes a couple of great radeon cards that are priced about the same as a kyro ii card. however i would simply wait for the new radeon cards to come out, which should be with in the next month I think.

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It appears as if he'll be dealing w/ 2D though, and Matrox is really nice in that. Plus cheaper than teh 8500 Radeon, which hasn't proven itself yet.

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You brain on drugs: Mac

Sweet System setup. I would go for the Radeon 8500 also. $300 at launch is a steal.

Nice Nvidia and ATi users get a Cookie.... :smile: Yummy :smile:

That is just waaaay too much ram. 512 is more than enough for anythin other than a full time file server.

For 2D editing i'd go with a Matrox G550. But i think you'll be interested in some of the 3d graphics as well so i would recommend one of the Radeon boards. I agree with the others that have posted here: drop the ram and get a Radeon 8500 when it comes out.

  <font color=blue>I for one run Quake 3 on a P133(No MMX)</font color=blue>I have no affiliatioin w/ Intel

Haven't seen any concrete reviews on Radeon 8500/7500, so don't recommend it yet. In my book it doesn't exist till I have seen what it does in real life. You'll be happier w/ Matrox.

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You brain on drugs: Mac

the g550 is probably what i'm going to do for my new box. was hesitate before about it, but the tiny bit of 3d work i will do i'll have this box still. as far as the radeon 8500 goes for capturing. if you're going to be doing anything more than capping mom and pop's home video's, get a dedicated capture board. dv raptor is a good starting point. for ram, it depends how intensive you're going to get. if you're going to be working with 200-300mb images in photoshop, or 30min clips or 2k images in premiere it might be a good idea to go with that amount of ram. if not, 512 would be fine, maybe just start with 512 and if you need more get it?

ewww, put that thing away, you're in public!

um if you havnt bought it allready, i would hold out for a few weeks till the motherboards based on the KT266A chipsets come out.

minor letter revision, MAJOR increase in performance!!!!

if not... well i reccomend some geforce 2 pro. good middle range card with overclocking potential. leadtek or gainward.

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To answer your question the GeForce2 Pro is a great card without spending too much $. The Gainward GF2 Pro/450 is $136.

Ignore the comments on having too much ram. If you use a program that access's ram directly like Photoshop then you can never have enough. Just recently my coworker was applying about 22 or so filters to a Photoshop project and his ram usage was 2 GIG!
And with video editing, on the H.D. side, if can sustain 6-8 mb/sec then it is capable of 30fps even using MJPEG. Any HD today well surpasses that. I would recommend a RAID setup for speeding up the final rendering process though.

I bought my Gainward GF2 Pro/450 from PowerUp.com for $136.

Good luck,

DREW