Trying new vid cards! got quad + 2 gigs!

[bullcrew]

Here's the situation, I run photo/illus cs2 and flexi pro I load big files (I meen huge) and it gets lines when moving it.
Yesterday I put (2) 1 gig ddr 3200 ram modules in along with a nvidia quadro fx 540. I have a amd 2600 (being upgraded to 32/33) and a 7200 rpm hard drive, I have run it a little and so far it screams.
What video card seems to be the best for printing and graphics.
G-force/pny nvidia quad fx 540 or ?.
Need help or options.
Is the card overkill and what other card would be just as effective.

 

[Cadmn]

bullcrew your question is a good one, the problem lies herein opinions on cards are like opinions on software I think www.Tomshardware.com offers actual testing & data. their opinions are respected on the net

 

[Sabre]

I did as much research as I could find on this subject when I built my design machine and I could not find any definitive tests or results. I found a lot of opinions that pointed us towards the Matrox line. I cant tell you which one is best for certain applications; we went with the Parhelia and are pleased with it's output.

Unfortunately, most sites are testing 3D rendering performance and antialiasing and the like for game performance. Resources are extemely limited when it comes to testing for colour purity or the stuff that's important to a graphic professional.

 

[alanzhao]

I built my dual CPU workstation (Intel XEON 2400), the onboard graphic card 512MB and 1G memory work just fine with some over 2MB .bmp files.

 

[bullcrew]

Yeah the vid card is a considered a graphics pro workstation.
128 bit floating point pipeline
12-bit sub pixel
8 pix per clock
programmable gpu
agp 8x/4x and texturing support
dual monitors
digital output
2048x1538 at 85hz
etc... yady yady ya!

 

[2NinerNiner2]

I did the same thing last week; 2 x 1GB ddr 3200 on a new ASUS motherboard. Can't recall the model (I'm writing this from my iBook while having my requisite coffee at my fave sidewalk café But what I'm wondering is, if you are manipulating large files like that, do you then design at full-size? I am not familiar with Flexi, but I routinely end up with multi-GB files from ColoRIP, but after it has scaled up my Corel or PS files that I design at a manegable size. Just wondering which way is better.

 

[alanzhao]

Just wondering if you guy could really actually end up with "multi-GB" files? How many files are there? What kind of files are they?

 

[mfarney]

File Size

We Create and Print alot of Billboards and Buswraps. Some are huge even before they are ripped. After they are ripped some are now 4, 6, or 8 files containing the color separations. Our Printers are file mode printers so the press operators drag the files into a program after they are ripped.


Multi GB files for us are very common.

 

[2NinerNiner2]

OK...back at the PC now. Here's the specs:
ASUS K8N board with 2.01GHz AMD Sempron 3300+, 2GB 3200 DDR RAM, nVidia GeForce 5200 AGP 8X with 128MB, Acer AL 1912 19" LCD.

With this setup, I have had no lag or display issues when dealing with very large files in Corel or P-Shop. I was a bit amiss in my earlier post in that the Corel and P-Shop files can get up to 500 - 700 MB (after being exported as EPS), but when RIPPED, are 2 - 3 GB in size. But the RIPPED files are not 'manipulated' per se, just opened in the output queue and sent to the SP-300.

'mfarney' - do you design the boards and wraps at full size or scale them up in the RIP?

 

[Pro Signs & Graphix]

Here is the bottom line. There are two major video chip manufacturers. ATI and nVidia. ATI gears towards professional businesses, and their apps. nVidia gears towards entertainment, movies and gaming.

Both are good cards, but we have better luck, meaning no conflict issues with ATI. Most will never know the difference. As for video memory, most will do just fine with 128. We run 256 only because "I" have no intention of changing next year, and most likely for another 3.

System memory is also an issue, that can affect the whole deal. Most have 1GB, and never really "use" it. More never hurts, but isn't necessary. I am getting ready to drop another GB, on top of the current 1 GB, ONLY because I like to open Corel, PhotoShop, and a couple other memory hungry apps at the same time.

The point - 1gb memory + 128 video + 1 app at a time, should be sufficient.

Techman, who truly worked on these "anchors" would be able to better elaborate - if he agrees.

 

[bullcrew]

I don't play games, but am familiar with the g force cards and the pny graphics card is made for cad/3d/graphics and rendering. My concern is that is it better for graphics than a gforce?

 

[Cadmn]

with the right program /setup all should be able to be tweeked to give color of print = to moniter color

 

[bullcrew]

I said $cru it and got a asus amd 64 x2 board coming in and 2 IBM hard drives in raid 1 configuration with max memory. I believe it's 4 gig ddr.
Overclock with a bigger fan on cpu as well as an aluminum case (laim li) with the oversize power supply and 5 fans.
Built a monster before but it's been a while since so I am until today

 

[Bobby H]

If you're doing strictly 2D stuff, Matrox is by a very wide margin the best out of anything available.

The 3D thing in a production environment can become an issue if you need any OpenGL acceleration. 3D gaming is not the only thing which demands this.

If you mess around with 3D applications like Maya or Lightwave3D then a Quadro card can be a good investment. Also, Adobe After Effects demands heavy utilization of RAM and OpenGL functions in video cards. AE is a pretty crucial tool in creating motion graphics for things like full color LED electronic message centers and POP kiosks with video displays.

 

[bullcrew]

This card has: programmable gpu (microsoft open gl 1.5 direct x 9.0), agp 8x/4x (4 gig up and down data transfer), microsoft open gl overlay planes, 2 sided lightning, hardware 3d window clipping, advanced scene anti antialiasing, dvi output, unified driver uotput (UDI), and more..
It's designed for 3-d, cad, graphics, designing etc...
Here's a link:
http://www.pny.com/products/quadro/fx/540PciExV.asp

I was wondering only because it cost me $239 from a buddy at his comp. shop.

 

[bullcrew]

I opened a photoshop file (picture) today, 24mb before and increased image to 40k pixels (5.4gig) then rendered it. As fast as I could click it was done with the function. It took 4 seconds for it to increase to this size and ZERO gliching from the computer as I moved and altered it. All this was done with flexi sign pro open in the background and 3 files open for load bearing.
I brought flexi to the front and altered the files there and NO GLICHING or lag time.
I love this card, memory help's too!

 

[bullcrew]

Here's a blurb about it: Thoughts and comments are appreciated as I haven't built a computer in a long while.

NVIDIA QUADRO FX WORKSTATION GPU
Full 128-bit floating-point precision pipeline
12-bit subpixel precision
8 pixels per clock rendering engine
Hardware accelerated antialiased points and lines
Hardware OpenGL overlay planes
Hardware accelerated two-sided lighting
Hardware accelerated clipping planes
3rd-generation occlusion culling
16 textures per pixel
Hardware-Accelerated Pixel Read-Back

NEXT GENERATION SHADING ARCHITECTURE
Fully programmable GPU (OpenGL 1.5/DirectX 9.0 class)
Long fragment and vertex programs (up to 65,536 instructions)
Looping and subroutines (up to 256 loops per vertex program)
Dynamic flow control
Conditional execution

HIGH-LEVEL SHADER LANGUAGES
Optimized compilers for Cg, OpenGL shading language, and Microsoft HLSL
OpenGL 1.5 and DirectX 9.0 support
Open source compiler

ARCHITECTURE
x16 PCI-Express
128MB high-speed DDR frame buffer
128-bit IEEE floating-point precision graphics pipeline
128-bit color
32-bit floating point frame buffer
12-bit subpixel precision

PACKAGE CONTAINS
NVIDIA Quadro FX 540 PCI Express graphics board
PNY Technologies HDTV Video Breakout box
DVI to VGA Adapter
CD-ROM Containing:
Drivers for Windows XP, 2000 & NT including DirectX 9.0 and OpenGL 1.5 support
Detailed Installation Guide
Quickstart Installation Guide


MINIMUM SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
PC compatible with Intel Pentium® 4/Xeon® or AMD Athlon®/Opteron® class
processor or higher
PCI Express x16 lane bus
Microsoft Windows® XP, 2000, NT4.0, (Service Pack 6) or Linux®
128MB system memory
50MB of available disk space for full installation
CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drive
VGA or DVI-I compatible monitor
350W Power Supply

 

[Cadmn]

awesome bullcrew only thing I see & its just preference not AMD