video card recommendation

ontoy · #1 (**permalink**) 07-05-2004, 06:13 PM

i'm looking to buy a new video card for my system. cuz i have been having some problem with my ati aiw 8500dv. so now i'm just looking for a regular video card. price ranging from $69.99 - $130. right now i'm looking at the ati 9600pro with 128mg or any of the nvidia fx5600. i was just wondering when looking at the specs on the cards. what is more important the amount of ddr ram that the card has or the core clock speed. does the core clock on a video card acts like the cpu unit or what, im just a little confuse. cuz most of the cards out there are geared towards gaming and i'm not a gamer. i just want to be able to edit video and have a midrange card to do the job.

Crusty · #2 (**permalink**) 07-06-2004, 07:16 AM

I think just about any AGPx2 or AGPx4 card will do for just video display. The ram won't matter much since anything above 32meg is only used for 3D rendering.

For video editing you need at least 16 bit color with 24 bit prefered. Display resolution should be at least 800x600 with 1024x780 usual. More is even better if you have a large monitor.

A dual monitor capable card comes in handy, letting you have your editing program in one and your actual video showing in the other.

I use an ATI Radeon 9000 Pro with 128meg ram. It has dual monitor and NTSC output which comes in handy from time to time.

The core frequency doesn't have much bearing on video work, only on 3D games does it count.

Today's video cards are almost seperate computer systems, ones that are highly optimized for making 3D graphics. For video editing it's a waste, since all the actual editing is done by the main computer and only the results are displayed with the video card.

Marc Peters · #3 (**permalink**) 07-06-2004, 07:45 AM

Informative answer as always Crusty

MoJoe · #4 (**permalink**) 07-06-2004, 04:18 PM

just go to your local computer parts store and find the shittiest cheapest graphics card you can buy and get it. everything else is just for gaming. hell a geforce2 mx would do just great for what u need

p4ocer · #5 (**permalink**) 07-06-2004, 05:57 PM

But if u want either of those cards, 9600 Pro is the better of the 2

MoJoe · #6 (**permalink**) 07-06-2004, 07:51 PM

...for gaming

ontoy · #7 (**permalink**) 07-07-2004, 01:41 PM

thanks everbody for the response i'll probably go with the 9600 pro card. since in video editting transistion is kind of like a 3d stuff, so the ram on the card should help right.

Crusty · #8 (**permalink**) 07-07-2004, 02:29 PM

It won't hurt, but also it won't help. The 3D transition effects are all done with the PC's processor, not the video card.

(It's darned hard to get the video card's 3D processing results, ie the screen, /out/ of the card and back into the PC's memory at realtime speeds now. I used to do it just fine 5 years ago with an old Riva TNT card. I could get 60 and 85 frames per second, but ever since Microsoft pushed DirectX down all the card maker's throats they changed their drivers so that I'm lucky to get 5 frames per second screen capture today. This really sucks because I wanted to use OpenGL 3D animation programs to render and capture in realtime. Now I have to record the NTSC output from my video card then transfer that back to my PC.)

MoJoe · #9 (**permalink**) 07-09-2004, 12:04 AM

it's not gonna make a freaking difference!