Graphics Card

fjcvisual

Hi Everyone,
Looking for some guidance. It is time to replace my desktop and while I am comfortable with what I want from a general performance aspect, I would like some guidance on what Graphics Card to include in the new Desktop.

looking online, most of the 'better' desktops seem to come with an ATI 5450, but I have seen some people post comments that this may not be such a good choice. Other configurations will include an integrated NVIDIA or an ATI 4200 series.

I am a light photoshop user, but plan to increase my post processing workflows and eventually include Lightroom.

My current Desktop, before it fried, rendered the images very slowly when post processing RAW files. So I would like a significant improvement here. I assume some of the configurations make better use of the hardware to render the images.

Understanding your experience with various graphics cards would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks, Jim

Oh, for what its worth, this is a configuration that caught my eye.

http://www.frys.com/product/6410662?site=sr:SEARCH:MAIN_RSLT_PG

Newsy

If an ATi card, ensure that it will reliably support "Eyefinity".

If you ever want to run more than one monitor soon, Eyefinity ensures that there is a dedicated LUT (Look Up Table) for each port on the card. The LUT is used to hold calibration data.

When you have two or three monitors hooked to the card and you want them to look the same, the separate LUT's ensure that for each monitor you can use a hardware calibrator, like a Spyder3 or i1Display2, to create and assign a unique ICC profile for each monitor.

I believe the latest Nvidia cards offer a similar feature set but just try to confirm that. At this writing I have not looked for a several months so I may be out of date but for a couple of years I've tried to confirm the LUT's on Nvidia cards and never found anything to confirm there are more than one and how many on a card.

.

fjcvisual

Thanks Newsy,
That is good information.

I found this on the net

Eyefinity is the marking name for a feature that will definitely appeal to many potential buyers, and the Radeon HD 5450 is perhaps most attractive to non-gamers with a practical need for a triple-monitor setup (artists, day traders, multi-tasking technology writers, anyone?). With an abundance of older 17" LCD monitors--perhaps around as spares or up for grabs on the used market--the appeal of an inexpensive triple-display configuration undeniable.

So it looks like we are covered here. This review is mostly from a gaming perspective, but gives the needed information. It is also reviewed as a low end card, but that may just be from a gaming view. here is the article:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-hd-5450,2549-2.html

basflt

i prefere nvidia

not intergrated that's useless , but a normal card

witch one i cant tell , its all about money

http://www.nvidia.com/object/builtforadobepros.html

angevin1

fjcvisual wrote: »

Hi Everyone,
Looking for some guidance. It is time to replace my desktop and while I am comfortable with what I want from a general performance aspect, I would like some guidance on what Graphics Card to include in the new Desktop.

looking online, most of the 'better' desktops seem to come with an ATI 5450, but I have seen some people post comments that this may not be such a good choice. Other configurations will include an integrated NVIDIA or an ATI 4200 series.

I am a light photoshop user, but plan to increase my post processing workflows and eventually include Lightroom.

My current Desktop, before it fried, rendered the images very slowly when post processing RAW files. So I would like a significant improvement here. I assume some of the configurations make better use of the hardware to render the images.

Understanding your experience with various graphics cards would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks, Jim

Oh, for what its worth, this is a configuration that caught my eye.

http://www.frys.com/product/6410662?site=sr:SEARCH:MAIN_RSLT_PG

Hi Jim!

My experience/s and my latest-Adobe reading tell me to save the cash on the graphics card and spend it on Processing Power and RAM!

I use a monitor as of late to see how much my GPU is used during Adobe-play and find that it rarely gets about 6% usage with most of the time finding it @ 0%. Meaning my Processor and RAM are doing the work. Looking at my power-monitorS tell me this is so. If you follow the Adobe Engineers BLog, they'll tell the same tale.

My System:
Corei7 930
12GB RAM ( just pulled the trigger for double at Newegg)
2/SSD 160 GB for Adobe play and OS: FAST!
Nvidia Quadro FX3800: ($1000 poorly spent!) I'd just go with an ATI hd 5730 or some such. even the nvidia GTX cards are fine enough.

fjcvisual

Yea, looked at my configuration and decided to up the processing speed to a 6 core running at 3.0ghz. over a better graphics card. I can always upgrade the graphics card later if this one does not suffice.

I had spoken to a few tech engineers I know and they mentioned that running several SATA drives in a Raid config will give similar performance to the SSD. Combined with the fault tolerance benefit and the extra capacity, I think i will look to lay the foundation for this system with room to grow in the future.

Thanks to everyone for your valuable feedback!!

Jim