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PCBUILD - Personal Computer Hardware discussion List <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Wed, 28 Nov 2001 13:15:28 -0800
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On 28 Nov 2001, at 21:19, Ultra wrote:

> If you do not run windows XP, and do not play games, I'd say get a
> Matrox card. The best price/performance card for you might be a
> G450 dual head. You would get both speed and image quality
> increase.
>
> Jun Qian
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Charles Bennett" <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: [PCBUILD] Video card suggestions
>
>
> > I've got a basic 4meg Trident 2D/3D card.  I don't play games it's
> > strictly business.  Lots of graphics, digital images and Photoshop.
> >
> > Would I gain anything by going to a 16 or 32 meg card?  Is it speed or
> > clearer images I would obtain?

  Image quality is *largely* a function of resolution and colour
depth, and 4MB of video RAM should be enough for that.  Of course,
the digital colour depth in the video RAM must be converted to an
analog signal to the monitor, and a better-quality card may improve
image quality by performing this conversion with better fidelity than
a more "basic" card.

  There are a number of ways that an advanced graphics chip can use
additional RAM to improve the performance of the display subsystem --
and of the system as a whole.  Windows defines a whole bunch of
display subtasks which it is prepared to offload to the display chip
if the driver indicates that it is able to manage them on its own; if
not, the Windows GDI component and the main CPU will be used.
  When you close a window, it is necessary to re-display whatever the
window was covering.  If that hasn't changed since the window opened,
it may be possible to refresh it from cache on the video rather than
asking the program that owns the hidden area to re-draw it.  (This is
one of the optional tasks; it happens to be one that needs more video
RAM than video "CPU".)

  I have an impression that Photoshop likes lots of CPU to work its
magic, and it seems to me that if you're doing lots with "digital
images and Photoshop" then visual fidelity could be important.  (Some
of the higher-end cards I've got recently have included strips for
tuning your monitor to make sure that colours on your screen look the
same as they will when printed on paper.)
  So while your Trident card is adequate for spreadsheets and word
processing and even web-surfing, I think your image work and/or your
view of the results will benefit from something better.

  [Recommendations:  Around here, our Win98SE workstation machines
have ATI Rage128-based cards in them.  The various NT/2000 and Linux
boxes all have various Matrox models -- my main 2000 Pro workstation
has a G450 dual head, in fact.]

Dave Gillett

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