Help me pick a Video Card

Goliath666

anyone??

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Building A PC for Video Editing, Audio Production, and Graphic and Web Design on a budget

Swansen

To be completely honest with you, if you are planning on doing serious HD video editing, then your are going to want to look at ether Nvidia's Quattro line, or AMD/ATI's FireGL line of cards, as that is some heavy stuff there, as yes, more video memory is better for what your doing. On that, if that not so much on the HD editing, than i'd suggest ether an 8500 shouldn't work out to bad for your other areas of interest. However, of the choices you've given, i'd go with the 9600, as is has a lot more memory.

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Goliath666

why is the quadro FX 1700 soo expensive when theoretically speaking the 9600 has better specs to it?

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Building A PC for Video Editing, Audio Production, and Graphic and Web Design on a budget

Swansen

I'm sorry, actually, i had some misinformation. Anyways, Since your just doing video editing, which is pre-rendered, almost all of the processing will be done by your CPU, so, if you want to increase performance, you'll want a beefy CPU vs a beefy GPU. Which makes a lot of sense, sorry for the confusion, and just for the sake of conversation, the Quattro line of cards cost so much more because they are aimed at professional use, 3D rendering, CAD, ect. However, i'm not completely sure how you get your video, but you might want to read up on HDCP, ether way, any Gforce 8 series and up support HDCP, so you probably want to go that route. On that, your going to want a lot of memory (ram) the more the better, but 2gb will fine 4gb would be awesome. For video cards, your not doing anything graphically intensive at all really, so you can just pick up an 8500gt and have no problems, in turn saving you some money, as they are cheap.
What is HDCP? - A Word Definition From the Webopedia Computer Dictionary
What is HDCP (high definition copy protocol)?

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Goliath666

well this is the memory im picking up for the build...At least i think im gonna be picking up. (thats another thread to start) 4gb ddr2 the mobo can support GDDR3 soo once the DDR3 costs level out and comes down ill be able to upgrade to that ram down the road. but the graphic design will include some 3D application to it and for down the road i am going to school for mechanical engineering soo im starting to use cad a lot more lately and having that beffier GPU mite NOT be a bad idea as of rite now.

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Building A PC for Video Editing, Audio Production, and Graphic and Web Design on a budget

Swansen

Ok, i guess we should start from the top, what all do you have picked out right now?

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Goliath666

Heres what im thinking... im open to ur input

CPU - Intel Core 2 Quad Q6700 i mite be getting the Q6850 Extreme (friend works for entel soo i mite be getting a sweet hook up.
MoBo - GIGABYTE GA-EP35C-DS3R LGA 775
Ram - mushkin 4GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500)
GPU - EVGA GeForce 9600 GT


and then a 10k 150GB rpm master with 2 500GB slaves

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Building A PC for Video Editing, Audio Production, and Graphic and Web Design on a budget

Eagle

Memory on a graphics card is useful but not essential. I'm not sure of the performance difference between the two cards, so google for some benchmarks. Can probably find some on toms hardware or something like that. Personally i have an 8800GTS and its a very good card, but i dont do what you do.

As he says, if you are doing video editing, beef up the rest of your computer and get a cheap graphics card. And if you get really good stuff on the rest of your computer, its a lot easier to upgrade just the graphics card than 4 different parts

Swansen

That all looks pretty good there, one thing to consider again is how soon you plan to use CAD, as saving 100-200 dollars would be a good investment towards a really nice card, and by that time, hardware prices will have propped. On that specific series of card, the 9600 with 1gb of memory, apparently it has some problems right now, so i might steer clear of it until they get figure out. Something like this is a pretty good alternative Newegg.com - EVGA 512-P3-N860-TR GeForce 9600 GT 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card - Desktop Graphics / Video Cards
I wouldn't really worry to much about availible video memory as you are going to have a lot of ram to cover whatever is needed.

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Goliath666

but lets say i try to play some games on that system on my down time. the 9600 you recommended should be able to handle them at mediocre-elevated settings rite?

any recommendations on the ram(i dont know how the timing listed on the specs function)/mobo department?

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Building A PC for Video Editing, Audio Production, and Graphic and Web Design on a budget

Warmonger41

u cant go wrong with either the 9600gt or 8800gs...or the new 8800gs with a diff name(9600GSO)

Swansen

OK, first thing, i misspelled good with "goof" in a pretty "goof" alternative. Anyways, yeah, your memory is really fast, and actually, DDR2 and DDR3 have about the same performance, and DDR3 has higher latency currently. As far as your memory goes, thats pretty quick, and i looked around, and the memory you picked out has pretty standard timings for performance memory. I just thought about this, but AMD/ATI's new HD4000 series cards are really nice. You were looking in the 200 price range, well HD4850 cards are around 190, and have GREAT performance and energy efficiency. On that, i didn't even think to ask, but what display (monitor) are you using?

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Goliath666

i have a 19LCD but not widescreen i wanted to go dual 19" widescreen but its not in the budget soo mite pick up another standard 19" to have two of those

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Building A PC for Video Editing, Audio Production, and Graphic and Web Design on a budget

Swansen

ok, well at 1440 x 900 there really isn't going to be a big difference in performance between the AMD and Nvidia card, so you might as well stick with the 9600GT.

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