Best Video Card for Abby Winters

[willow934]

Hello all.

Can anyone provide advice on the best video card to purchase in order to fully appreciate both the photos and videos on this website? I already have the top monitor (Eizo CE240W) which provides astonishing quality photos in their full size glory. However, I am not sure if my three year old video card (ATI 9800 Pro AGP) is allowing me to experience the clearest, sharpest, jitter free movie downloads.
Several months back I downloaded the NVIDIA purevideo codec and this seems to have made a significant improvement in the picture. In addition, the increased bitrate of the downloads has made an even more significant improvement. Recently I purchased an ATI 1600 with the AVIVO technology and this seemed to improve the picture slightly. However, this card recently died and I am now looking at getting a whole new rig with PCI-E, Core 2 Duo etc.., and of course the all important GPU. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

Rich

[Gerza71]

I don't know that the 125 MB ATI Radeon X300 will do. It seems working fine for this computer so far. But this computer I got its only a P4 3.2 with HT with 512 MB Ram. I got a 17 inch Diamond Digital LCD set at 1280x1024. The stills are great and the wmv movie file is a lot clearer then the the mpg. What I got is only modest because I have to watch out what games I get.

Gerza71

[WesHet]

Your old video card is absolutly fine. Unless you're rendering the aw models with pixel or vertex shaders (I kid) you don't need a high-end GPU for decoding the videos from aw.

NVidia's purevideo primarily shifts video decoding to the (supported - ATI is not) GPU and thus frees up CPU resources. It also does some other stuff which is important for post-processing etc. I highly doubt there will be an actual difference to a decent mpg decoder.

[Diablo]

In my experience, all that really matters about video cards when it comes to still images is pixel depth, amount of video RAM, and perhaps dot-clock if you want a fast refresh rate. Any video card made within the last 8 years or so should easily be able to display 1280x1024 or 1600x1200 at 24bits-per-pixel, at a reasonably comfortable refresh rate. The time taken to decode the JPEG images is pretty much trivial with today's CPU's.

For video, it helps to have hardware overlay (which takes care of scaling/colour correcting the video output), which most video cards made over the last 7 or so years have; NVidia's TNT/Geforce line all have them, as well as ATI's equivalents of the time.

If you want to watch AW's WMV videos, you'd only really need at least Pentium-III 500MHz or thereabouts, which can easily keep up with the decoding in software (my desktop PC at home is an Athlon Classic 500MHz, which had no problems at all with playback consistency).

This assumes that any other apps on your computer will be mostly idle while you watch the videos (eg. web browsers, etc). If you want to be able to do other CPU-crunching stuff while watching the videos, and want to minimise CPU drain, then that's where getting a much faster CPU or hardware decoder would help. But personally, I don't really think you'll need to go as far as getting a hardware decoder (unless you plan to watch a lot of DVDs on your system, and care about image quality).

[waltercp3]

One of the best of the oldtime aurguements was which looks better, Panasonic, Sony, or Magnavox monitors? They are all different looking and all look good. Panasonic is clear with added grain. Magnavox is clear but extra filters for smoothness, Sony is crystal clear in every respect. ther are just as many people who like one as the others. The reason I bring this up is to illustrate a point, Diablo is correct. Any of the Video cards of today will give you a good picture. Even the less expensive cards. I would help if you could see examples before you buy, but this is a dreamworld consept. The more expensive cards are for games and for normal things are not that much better. If you are able to do so, try to shop for cards and monitors where you can see examples before you buy or at least from a company that will allow returns if you are not satisfied. I have used cards from S3, ATI, Nvidia, and STB and most look OK for most work. The term "the best" is not really relavant as most people can not tell a differnce in the cards or monitors. Match the card with the processor and memory requirements and any modern card should be OK!!!!!

[Frans]

Hello all.
picture slightly. However, this card recently died and I am now looking at getting a whole new rig with PCI-E, Core 2 Duo etc.., and of course the all important GPU. Any help would be appreciated.

For viewing wmv movies most any videocard will do indeed. However if you're buying such a high-end setup you want a videocard that can perform accordingly (or almost anyway). You will require a PCI-Express videocard due to the mainboard need for a Core2. A cheap NVidea 7600GS should do fine, go for a 7600GT if you intend to play more games, the GTX is much to expensive unless you play games for a living All three cards should be fine for Vista if you ever want to run that, I would recommend getting 2x1Gb paired memory btw. easier to do that right away since you can buy a true pair then.

[willow934]

Your old video card is absolutly fine. Unless you're rendering the aw models with pixel or vertex shaders (I kid) you don't need a high-end GPU for decoding the videos from aw.

NVidia's purevideo primarily shifts video decoding to the (supported - ATI is not) GPU and thus frees up CPU resources. It also does some other stuff which is important for post-processing etc. I highly doubt there will be an actual difference to a decent mpg decoder.

I would have to disagree with you concerning Purevideo. It does work with ATI and makes a significant improvement in the quality of AW web videos. Regarding my original post, I am now back to using my old ATI 9800 Pro and the performance seems to be close to the 1600 Pro which died. In considering a new rig, I am looking several years down the road. Vista, downloadable HD movies etc... I'm worried that a decision now to go with something a few hundred dollars cheaper will be cause for regret in the future. My monitor is a keeper though. The Eizo Coloredge 240W is worth every penny with it's 24 inch color calibrated screen it makes a huge difference when viewing AW photos.