Video cards for digital photo work / System building

[roger.a]

My ATI Radeon 9800Pro (128 Mb RAM) video card died this week (the fan

stopped and it overheated).

 

It cost me a small fortune a year ago, it was a noisy brute, and I

was never entirely happy with the sharpness compared to previous

Matrox cards.

 

I pulled an old Matrox MGA 400 card out of the cupboard (probably 5

years old, 32MB RAM). Not only is it marginally sharper than the ATI

card, it's running a 2560x1024 pixel desktop very acceptably over two

22 inch Iiyama monitors.

 

I've just ordered a new Matrox P650 64MB dual head card - mainly for

the improved dual head software. It's cheap compared to top end

gaming cards, it's low power use, so it doesn't need a fan, and I

think it will fill my needs for graphics work as I don't do games.

 

Based on my experience, I would suggest avoiding high power cards for

photoshop computers as being unnecessary.

 

The rest of my system has a Pentium 2.8 MHz, 1 GB RAM, two SCSI disks

(Programs and Scratchdisk), a big internal IDE disk for image

storage, several external disks for image backup.

 

With hindsight I should have saved money on the video card and bought

an extra Gigabyte of RAM. Otherwise I think the system will serve my

needs for the forseeable future.

[kelly_flanigan1]

Big expensive gamers cards for Photoshop tend to be pushed here by some folks; like a cult must have thing. Here I have about 19 computers; with a broad spectrum of cards; mustly not that high end. Some are just Fanless old Number Nine AGP cards with 16 or 32 megs; that came on surplus computers. With the office box store experts; many get spifs commissions on video cards; and not on memory. Thus They fixed my neighbor up with a P4 2.5Ghz box; with a gamers 256meg card; and only had 128Megs of ram; with two 64 meg chips; filling both slots. This was a gamers dream 2 years ago. I have a pentiun with 128 megs of ram; and a pentium pro with 1 gig of ram. There is money made in pushing high end video cards.

[gene_brewer1]

I've always been happy with my Matrox G400 and now a G550 card. These are realtively inexpensive, compared to a high end gamers card which isn't needed for PS work. The dual head feature is nice to use one monitor for workspace and another for displaying photo itself.

 

Gene

[sl attanapola]

If you do not play games why did you buy such a high spec card?

 

It strikes me as very stupid if you buy a card that is optimised for 3D gaming(and not 2D work) and complain!

 

You should have got a low level card such as ATI 9000/9200.Even something like a passively cooled Geforce 4 mx440 works OK.Many people who own such cards have years of good service.

 

The Nvidia cards also had the twinview feature which enabled you to run two displays at once to increase your "deskspace".

 

I had a MX440 variant on my old notebook and I could run both the LCD and an external LCD with no issues.

 

The high end cards run hot due to high clock and memory speeds.I have noticed people tend to have more issues in terms of reliablity with high end cards as a result.

 

Why didn't you buy a Matrox Parhelia in the first place if you do video/photo work?

 

I bet the cost would have been competitive with a 9800 pro.

 

Kelly Flanigan - who the heck runs a P4 2.53ghz with only 128mb of RAM and a 256mb GRAPHICS CARD?

 

Even my old notebook from early 2003 which had a 2.53 ghz P4 had 512mb memory.

 

Even at that time it was not a "top-end" notebook!

 

You can barely run XP on 128mb and any "application" that would even barely use that card would need more memory.

 

Even my friends 3-4 year old P3 notebook had more memory!

[sl attanapola]

Also not all 256mb cards are necessarily gaming cards!

 

Something like a 256mb ATI 9200 has such a weak GPU that it is not worth the effort.It is just marketing hype!

 

It is like people going mad about the megapixel count of digital compact cameras and not considering noise.

[smedly64]

This is a good question. have used many cards and computers over the years and now have a big fast PC with a high end gamer card. I have thought that large monitor, lots of Pixels (1280 X 1024) high scan rate made the images crisp and easy to work with, but maybe dealing with fixed images don't require the high end card. What I do know is that a fast processor and lots of Ram is necessary for power hungry graphics programs. I am a fan of paint shop pro and moving lots of image bits around puts a big drain on PC power.

Oh I actualy do play games so the card is not a complete loss.

[mdickerson]

<p><i>Kelly Flanigan - who the heck runs a P4 2.53ghz with only 128mb of RAM and a 256mb GRAPHICS CARD?</i></p>

 

<p>I've got plenty of machines with oddball combinations like this. One reason it happens is because when a component fails, you can never get anything as small or as slow to replace it. No, it probably wouldn't run Windows XP very well, another excellent reason not to run Windows. That machine would make a fine router or firewall, for example.</p>

 

<p>Anyway as for the original topic, I run about 100 machines that have a museum's worth of video cards from the last 20 years. I can't see that it makes any difference to Photoshop whether you have an eight year old Diamond Stealth card or a $20,000 SGI O2. The expensive monitors are nice, but equally so when I switch them with some old junk PC.</p>

[sl attanapola]

I didn't know that 256mb SDRAM sticks were in such short demand.

 

She was referring to a system that her neighbour bought - not one you cobbled together from the spare parts bin.

 

Why do people have to ALWAYS poke some underhand comment at XP?

 

I have used Mac OS9 and OSX and they too have their idiosyncracies!

 

The fact that the hardware configurations of Macs are so tightly controlled means there should be less issues in the first place.

 

Look at the SHEER NUMBER of different hardware configurations windows runs on.

 

What is going to happen when Mac OS is fully ported to AMD,Intel,VIA and Transmeta processors.Do you think there is not going to be any problems?

 

What happens if people buy more Macs and find that more hackers start targetting them - then what?

 

 

If you only want to run Photoshop,word processing and surfing the internet then any system will do you fine.

[kelly_flanigan1]

Here I have a 19 computers; one has an old Pentium III with 450Mhz; and filled up with 768megs of ram. It has CS2; XP with service pack 2 too. It has only integrated video; ie NO video card. Is is a decent box for retouching work. Many folks need those gamers cards; salemen need spiffs and commissions. it is abit funny when folks dont have any real sense of money; and basically waste it. some of us actually like alot of ram for photoshop.

[sl attanapola]

The fact of the matter is that many people of my generation DO play games occasionally.It can be either on a PC,full size or mobile consoles or a even a phone.

 

My dad who is in his sixties does not see the point of anyone above 16-18 years playing a games.He only considers a computer useful for word processing,internet,photo work and maybe even video editing.

 

But alot of university students do and especially my friends from Malaysia and Japan.

 

It is like many people think that cartoons are only for children;in fact they do not realise the first cartoons were for adults anyway.

 

To say that buying something other than a 2D card is for giving money to salesman is utter nonsense.In that case one should never buy any new hardware as it will mean lining someone's pockets.

 

The fact of the matter is alot of people have computers for multiple uses.Not everyone has the space or even the money to have a computer for very occasion.

 

Virtually ALL current generation ATI/Nvidia cards can provide decent 3D acceleration.

 

It is cheaper to buy a slightly faster card for your PC rather than even buying a console with it's overpriced "software".

 

People who bought a 200USD ati 9500 pro's in late 2002 can run any game made today.

 

Moreover when Longhorn comes along they could still use this card if the rest of the system is upto scratch.

 

I bought my one secondhand early last year at a bargain price compared to what I could have got.

 

The big commisions only go to the salespeople on the very expensive cards- not low and medium "value-added" segments.It is the same with processors and RAM too.

 

You should include medium level and high level film and digital cameras and lenses in the above too.

[lex_jenkins]

My first "serious" photo editing PC was a sub-100 MHz Dellosaurus Pentius Uno, 1 GB hard drive, with 32 MB RAM and a Number Nine video card with only 8 MB, which I later maxed out to whatever it would hold, 16 or 32 MB. Number Nine also gave me a freebie upgraded ROM BIOS for my card just before they went out of business. The card also came with a video driver that was reasonably useful for setting the gamma, color balance, etc., appropriately for photo editing.

 

With that meager computer I was able to 20 MB TIFFs from my 35mm scans on Corel Photo Paint 8. Unlike low end stuff from Adobe, Ulead and others, Corel PP8 never choked on large files, even when using multiple undos, etc.

 

The Number Nine card was one of the top dogs at the time, excellent for photo editing. If I recall correctly Number Nine provided the video workings for the big Sony monitor in Times Square in NYC for a few years.

 

Since then I've had newer, faster PCs that were less competent.

 

While I agree that 3D gaming cards are unnecessary for photo processing, some of us enjoy playing games occasionally, so we have to consider both aspects.

 

One thing's for certain: Don't saddle yourself with incompetent video grafted onto the mobo. Yuck. I don't know that I've ever seen one that was any good for anything except word processing and web browsing.

[smedly64]

I am offended by the "my generation" stuff. I am 60 years old, run an AMD64 powered machine 1GB or ram and a High end gamer card because I play Doom 3 when I am not working on Pictures from my D300 Canon.

 

Yes I believe that I can see the images in Paint Shop pro9 better on my rather expensive video card, and the horsepower of the AMD64 with lots of ram makes my image work easy and quick. I remember haveing to go for a cup of coffee when asked the program to rotate bits in a lesser powered computer a few years back. I like the power and I like blasting the baddies in Doom even though I will probably die of old age next week.

[sl attanapola]

I didn't mean to offend anyone but everybody seems to like having a right go at people who like to have a half decent graphics card on their computer.

 

I only played the Half Life 2 demo but Doom 3 scared the bejeezers out of me when I played it.At time I thought I would get a heart attack playing it and I am only 23 years old!

 

Not is it only so dark in the game but what about all the demon talk,women crying and those devil babies! Those really are freaky!

 

A really intense game although Halo is still the best!

[smedly64]

I am to old to play halo, (slow hands)In Doom just a bigger gun.

Thanks for the comment.

Back to the question.

Come on guys (oops and ladys) I find that lots of CPU power and Lots of Ram is more important to the graphics program. I use a big fast video card but believe that the moving of bits is harder on the computer than the video image. I most likely would see a crisp picture with a mid level video card as well as with my 6800GT.

For those not into this, you still need to use a good monitor.

Spend the money buy a good trinitron matrix tube.

Oh yea what about the LCD monitors.

[kelly_flanigan1]

Re <I>Why do people have to ALWAYS poke some underhand comment at XP?</I><BR><BR>Here I bought a 1000 dollar HP 2.5Ghz computer several years ago; when 2.5ghz was the fastest CPU. I had several HUGE printing jobs to run batche files with; and the 667Mhz boxes we had were boxed in with 1 gig of ram. The images were boxed in and bogged by the wimpy 1 Gig of ram; processing the files was taking too long; the scratch drives going nuts. So we bought the fastest bix locally available; and used 2 gigs of DDR ram; to hoss out the files quickly. The added ram freed up the bottkeneck. This HP box had XP pro; and was abit of a disaster. it would lock up if one was doing retouching; go intosllep mode; and one would loose the file one was working on. We had an evel combination of a poor HP box; a poor controller on the MOBO that was faulty; and totally jackass XP pro. the computer would go into all these weird restores without ANY reason. The unit was never eve on the internet; accept for the several days worth of updates on dialup. Old Windows 2000 we used on other slower P$ and piii were a billion times more robust than this damn XP junk we toined with. Even an Ebay Piii 450Mhz box I got for 30 bucks has XP; and works great. One would come to the shop; and the XP box would be writting to the hda at 7am; one would turn the monitor on and it would be in a restore mode. This auto restore event happened about 6 times; before we ripped the box appart; and just used the CPU; drives; ram; and threw the case; mobo; in the trash. Each restore event would move all ones files into different places; and rename them with weird names. Of all the Microsoft software since dos 1.1; the initial XP variant we used was the worst; it cost money; it had dozens of hours of updates on dialup; it was a disaster for some of us; an experimental product with a huge mess of bugs. <BR><BR>Many of us use computers for photoshop for a living. Using alot of memory in ram; and just what is required for video is common in commercial printing. One would rather dump 200 bucks in ram that directly gives photoshop more working space; than adding 200 bucks more to a card; that shows NO net gain in production. To handle large files in printing; the added ram helps. <BR><BR>Video cards are always dropping in prices. One that I bought about 10 years ago is a PCI Diamond Stealth card with 2megs of ram; and an extra 2meg module; for 4 megs total. This was a state of the art card; cost about 260 bucks new; the module a sweet 120 extra. It is on a P4 2.5Ghz box we built; dual boot win98se; and win2000. This old card works with the older DOS printer program I use still; were two new 128 and 256DDR fancy "modern cards" just dont have what it takes; to handle older software. This box is used to make calendars each summer and giant maps; which can be 100 to 700megs for a huge wall map. <BR><BR>The gamer crowd often gets mobo ram and video card ram mixed; and least the "experts at the office box stores" Thus they loaded up my neigbors new custom P4 computer with a big game card; and little MOBO ram. Many a time I have heard one of these experts say that one needs 4 pr 5 times the VIDEO RAM; as the file size one is working on. This gets them to make the value added video card sale; the spiff; the commission. Lieing is a profitable thing for many salefolks. <BR><BR>PS there is now a class asction lawsuit against HP for their screwup with the box we had; for recovery problems; XP problems; <BR><BR>

[smedly64]

Just a note from the old gamer. You are right about balancing the computer to what you are doing. If you are a gamer and are playing a game that demands lots of horsepower (ie. fast video card) most people forget to add more ram to the motherboard as the file sizes to the modern game such as Doom are HUGE. Guess what if you are dealing in raw, Tiff, or other such image files they are also huge.

 

My suggestion for PC users running Win2000 or XP is 512 meg minimum and 1 gigabyte or more for large image work. (or game playing)