Dual head choice

[jheine]

I'm trying to put together a new workstation for home. I'm trying to decide between a Matrox G550 or a ATI 8500LE. Their both about the same price ($91/$90 respectively @ newegg), so my concerns are more towards performance. I'll be putting it into a Athlon XP 2100+ system with 512MB PC2700 memory, Asus A7V333 Mobo, WD800JB 80GB Specials X2 in RAID 0, Dual Yamaha CDW-F1 burners, Lite-On DVD, SCSI tape backup and external Zip, and I'll be using dual displays along with Mark of the Unicorn USB MIDI Express Midi interface and 828 Firewire 8-In/Out Audio interface. This is obviously an audio workstation, with double duty to work on websites, graphics, and other random projects. I don't expect any games to hit this system, so I don't really need the "latest and greatest". But I am concerned about the video dragging the system down and affecting the audio throughput. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Jarrett

~My version of Hell flashes Blue~

 

[wildog]

I would not recommend Radeons for any workstation, because of questionable quality drivers. If you are into OpenGL 3D, consider Fire GL 8700 (http://www.pricegrabber.com/search_getprod.php/masterid=584156/search=fire gl/ut=43f1d87e8560231b/), which is only slightly more expensive, but offers first class stability. Another possibility is buying a second-hand Fire GL3, or Quadro DCC which offer about the same performance.

However, if you don't want 3D, Matrox is a very good choice.

 

[Spitfire_x86]

If you don't want 3d performance, I recommend Matrox G550 for you.

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