Shovel
Can't get enough of FH
- Joined
- Dec 22, 2003
- Messages
- 1,350
Hi all,
Not often I ask for PC component advice these days but my brother is in the market for a graphics card. It's not a gaming machine: He uses it for high level music production type stuff. He has a a dual monitor set up (2x Samsung flatscreens, but they take VGA input not DVI). At the moment he only card we could find that would run 2xVGA was an old Geforce 4200, running through a DVI converter (since the ATI 9200 that it came with had a DVI-I output that can't be converted).
Aaaanyway. He's unhappy with image quality and critically the difference between the VGA out and converted DVI. Also, I think he'd rather have something without the whopping great cooling fan (and associated heat production), since he's been having dust and heat issues of late as it is.
It needs to be AGP too.
Now I've not looked for a while, but I always understood that ATI had better image quality than nVidia, but that Matrox could also be worth a look.
Obviously we're looking at 2D performance in Windows XP, but since we don't want to close the door on upgrading to Vista, I guess it'll need reasonable 3D processing and 128MB onboard as well. Bloody Vista.
And, obviously, we're looking for something not-too-expensive. Not that we're demanding at all.
Advice much appreciated.
Ben
Not often I ask for PC component advice these days but my brother is in the market for a graphics card. It's not a gaming machine: He uses it for high level music production type stuff. He has a a dual monitor set up (2x Samsung flatscreens, but they take VGA input not DVI). At the moment he only card we could find that would run 2xVGA was an old Geforce 4200, running through a DVI converter (since the ATI 9200 that it came with had a DVI-I output that can't be converted).
Aaaanyway. He's unhappy with image quality and critically the difference between the VGA out and converted DVI. Also, I think he'd rather have something without the whopping great cooling fan (and associated heat production), since he's been having dust and heat issues of late as it is.
It needs to be AGP too.
Now I've not looked for a while, but I always understood that ATI had better image quality than nVidia, but that Matrox could also be worth a look.
Obviously we're looking at 2D performance in Windows XP, but since we don't want to close the door on upgrading to Vista, I guess it'll need reasonable 3D processing and 128MB onboard as well. Bloody Vista.
And, obviously, we're looking for something not-too-expensive. Not that we're demanding at all.
Advice much appreciated.
Ben
