which graphics card

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Bolerus

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I have been asked to build a new pc for my camera club (we have been given a decent grant)

Any suggestions for a good graphics card specifically for photography.

The Matrox Cards used to give pristine quality, is this still the case ?
 
I'm not sure with hptography, but with gaming the best method at the minute is using multi GPU technology. With Nvidia it's called SLI (Scalable link interface) and with ATI it's called crossfire. Basicaly you use 2 graphics cards to power the display. I use Nvidia SLI, it works by using one GPU to render the top half of the screen and one for the bottom.

As I said, I use it for gaming, so not sure whether it'd have any merit for use in photographics.
 
am supplying a 22" montior, was going to go for a 24" but I think the 1900 x 1600 display will be too much for some of the older eyes, you can of course reduce the resolution, but tfts are designed to run at their native res. If you reduce it you start to lose quality.

part of the grant is also covering a projector, for group tutorials etc, all in all it is going to be a nice set up (i do have £1500 to play with) we also got some for lighting :)
 
chrism,

sli is good for gaming, but can cause anti aliasing problems with photography work and defo not the way to go, this system certainly wont be gaming lol
 
I've always stuck with Nvidia based cards, no fussing about trying to find the right drivers since one does them all. Personally I'm running a 256mb 8600GT that cost me £99ish a while back and it's more than I'll ever need for photo editing work. Concentrate on a decent processor and as much memory as your O/S will use effectively, that will be your money well spent.
 
think ill probably just go for a 8600 with it, thanks for the advice

incidentally I have opted for a quad core, 2x 250gig hard drives (need to figure out how to set up the scratch drive ) xp64 (so i can put extra memory in without the unfamiliar peeps having to learn vista) and 4 gig of ram oh and a 90 in one card reader lol

It's going to be a nice machine.
 
For speeds sake, avoid a built in card reader, any one I've used seems to have been very slow compared to an external one.
 
go with vista 64 otherwise you're just building a pc with what is essentially a bridge gap solution with half arsed support, properly configured it'll run like xp and to be honest microsoft software isn't particularly hard to learn (press f1) and if they're that dim vista will probably do them better anyhow

as people have said any of the nvidia 8000 series will be fine and the 8600 is a reasonably good choice

main concern would definately be a worthy monitor (samsung, nec, dell etc) and a calibrator if you're going to be hooking it up to a printer.

most graphics cards since about 2004 have had enough power to render 2d in decent enough resolutions and most of the gubbins gone into developing them is geared towards 3d which frankly you're not going to need (apart from the new nvidias but thats a different story all together)

another point i'd say is the new samsung f1 drives are a worthy addition as well @ 750 and 1tb sizes they're wickedly fast, quiet and reliable and if you've got a group of people using a pc i'd imagine you'll go through 250 quickly enough.
 
Bolerus said:
chrism,

sli is good for gaming, but can cause anti aliasing problems with photography work and defo not the way to go, this system certainly wont be gaming lol
Click to expand...

There you go, you asked for help and you've endded up helping me...I'll just be turning SLI off until I play a game then..:bang:

Seriously, thanks for that, I never even thought of it.
 
no probs chris

quite funnily, my name is mike clark, and my sons name is chris...it isnt you is it lol?


with regards to vista. that is definably a no go If possible. the camera club is largely populated by older people who really would not be up to learning vista.

I have used personally windows X64 for several years now and have only ever had driver issues with Wireless dongles (wireless cards are fine but usb dongles arn't) and web cams (not an issue here) I am only considering x64 for the extra memory BUT 3 gig and windows xp may well be safer bet (have till tuesday to decide)
 
Honestly, I think there's little new stuff to learn with Vista, although some menus are now buried even though they should be shouting at you: 'Here I am!'
I ran x64 since it came out for about half a year, maybe up to a year (as a trial version), I don't remember anymore, scanner drivers weren't there (Epson), printer drivers were promised but not there (HP), so in the end I got XP Pro 32-bit and tried Windows 2003 as a workstation OS (which wasn't bad at all, just some games didn't see the version of DirectX I had installed).

What will all those people be doing on that PC?
 
i presume at some point they've learnt the differences between 98 and xp etc and as previously said it's a microsoft product and with each release they add more primary colours and safety features for people who know nothing about computers if they're having a problem hitting f1 really isn't a big learning stretch surely?

adding to the fact that vista has more inbuilt support for plug and play items and will be updated for longer you're protecting your investment.

it's obviously your choice but they're not ready to learn new things and use new technologies i don't think they deserve the benefit of the grant :/
 
This is me speaking from experience but if it is going to be a Vista-based machine then you really need to cram as much RAM as the motherboard can take it. In other words, 4 gb or even more.
My Duo Core Vista PC had always struggled with it's supplied 2 gb RAM, even though it has it's own graphics card (a 512 mb Ati X1600) bearing in mind that Vista hogs 800 mb of RAM just for sitting idly alone.
So rather than risk buggering up my system by installing XP (I tried it and it went horribly wrong, but managed to get Vista back on), I got hold of two lots of 1 gb RAM and now my system flies along (although the graphic card does leave a lot to be desired, hence why I've got my eyes on an Nvidia 9600 :p).
Like what others had said in here, it's really more to do with the quality of the monitor, the quality of the connectors themselves and how that monitor calibrates well for photography rather than highly powered graphic cards. Although it does help to have a fairly high spec PC but it doesn't have to be the most powerful thing there is on Earth.
 
to be honest this thread didnt go as i had hoped, i was hoping somebody would post their experience of a matrox card (which used to be touted as a graphics editing card)

I wont be going with vista, there are simply no benefits other than it is the "latest" op system.

It is slow compared to xp, it is harder to find your way around than Xp and it has too many layers of security for "casual" users. I personally have used it many times and thoroughly know my way around it and will be avoiding it for this build.

As for saying if they dont want vista they don't deserve a grant, will I will treat that comment with the contempt it deserves.

the op system will either be xp or xp64 (may load it with a full 8gig of ram on X64 for max speed) btu will check driver issues with an epson printer first (my older epson works no probs but I am looking at a R285 so will have to check that first)
 
My advice with RAM: Check the QVL list for your mainboard. I didn't. Result? 4gb of useless, burned out RAM. It's an easy place to skimp, but resist the temptation. I'd love to be able to recommend a card, but I don't feel sufficiently qualified to do so. I have 2x Nvidia 6800GT, and they work a treat for everything. They'll be fine with an XP platform too (drivers supplied are XP, I had to DL drivers for Vista. And yes. Vista is awful).

What about Linux :cuckoo: Or are you scared of Penguins?:D
 
Bolerus I think Matrox (from the looks of their website) have steered towards more specialist markets. I too remember them being the dogs danglies but times move on and any half decent graphics card will do you proud for photo editing these days. There are many more things you can spend the money on that will make a bigger difference to the work you will be doing.
 
thanks steep. I'm glad somebody else remembers, I was beggining to think I was going insane again.

RE linnux, personnaly I like linux but same issue, dont want to have to start to teach a room half full of oldies (well ok maybe not a room half but certainly some) how to use a completely new op system. Before I know it I'll be teaching an IT class, not enjoying a camera club (no thanks):bonk::bang:

there is another issue, which is a bit of a strange one, I have a budget that I have to completely use or lose it. (which I am sure some of you have worked with govenment grants before and knwo how it works).

Think I have the system in mind now, may well go for a cheap g.card (maybe an ati or a 8600) and stick a huey with it (was just going to calibrate the monitor every once in a while)

any way, thanks for the food for though R.E the matrox cards.
 
If you're worried about losing the grant if you don't use all of it, why not go for a GPU that'll run 2 monitors to split the desktop. If you're working in hotoshop you can have the image on one screen and the tools boxes, layer windows etc in the other?

You could also find lots of usefu little bits to tie in with it; memory cards, card reader, stuff like that.

And I was only joking about Linux :D
 
There again, my 8600GT runs two monitors just fine.

If you have to spend the budget have you allowed for a bigger monitor, a decent A3+ size printer, scanner and Photoshop?
 
If the people there aren't too used to Photoshop, Linux might not be too bad for it. You could actually set up a dual boot environment for a few people who'd be willing to try it.

I run Arch Linux and it's very fast even with full Gnome installation, I mean just as fast or faster than XP after tweaking on my machine. I've recently switched to LXDE, which is very lightweight yet easy to use. That combination (Arch Linux with LXDE + Opera + OpenOffice.org + ePDFView and a few more things maybe) similar to Windows 98 in terms of speed but rock solid on a 350 MHz Pentium II machine with 192 MB of RAM and nVidia 440MX (PCI edition). If I didn't plan on doing some more .NET development, I'd probably just ditch Windows for anything but some games that won't run under Wine well.
 
Don't forget the price of any software you are going to use - including the OS... if you're looking at running CS3 that's a fair chunk of your grant gone!!
 
set up pc wise, is pretty much just photoshop (and storage space) with a printer (we already have a licensed cs2 on the old system, so will just transfer that over)

budgeted in elements as well so we can just put elements on the old pc and cs2 on the new one, and run them both at the same time

already have scanner, and an old printer (which will be replaced with whatever printer i get)

have a projecter and screen.

(also have a darkroom set up already with 4 magnifiers (is that what they are called, sorry film photography isnt my area ) and a lastolight set up ordered.

we really dont need a machine as powerful as is being built, but the money has to be spent on pc or it is lost
 
ChrisMClark said:
I'm not sure with hptography, but with gaming the best method at the minute is using multi GPU technology. With Nvidia it's called SLI (Scalable link interface) and with ATI it's called crossfire. Basicaly you use 2 graphics cards to power the display. I use Nvidia SLI, it works by using one GPU to render the top half of the screen and one for the bottom.

As I said, I use it for gaming, so not sure whether it'd have any merit for use in photographics.
Click to expand...

You don't even need 2 GPUs for dual displays.

A nVidia 8000 series GPU will be fine for photography. What's more important is a fast multi-core CPU, fast RAM and a fast HDD for Photoshop's scratch disk.
 
FruitFlakes said:
You don't even need 2 GPUs for dual displays.
Click to expand...

I know, I was saying that I use 2 GPUs to run 1 display, each card renders half the screen :) I can run up to 4 displays if I REALLY wanted to...can't think why I would though...:cuckoo:
 
ChrisMClark said:
I know, I was saying that I use 2 GPUs to run 1 display, each card renders half the screen :) I can run up to 4 displays if I REALLY wanted to...can't think why I would though...:cuckoo:
Click to expand...

Yeah it makes sense for gaming (even if the gains aren't that substantial), but for photography and illustration one GPU is more than enough. Though that may change with CS4 offloading more work to the GPU now.
 
Id go for couple sata 10k hard drives bit quicker , and have a look at some external storage few terabyte ones out now at reasonable prices.Stick with xp :) im an oldy and prefer it to Vista and a 512 mb8600 be more than adequate for what you need.
 
If you still need to spend money, have you got enough for a second monitor? A second one can be very useful for photo editing.
 
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