Graphics cards

[romanstopme]

i have been wondering what kind of graphics card i should get. i was looking at the 8800 gts and seen they are really popular. but also the 9800. im going to have SLI so what card should i consider to have? im really big with video editing and occasionally some games like medal of honor. my case is going to be a armor lcs and my mother board is a nforce 780i sli 775 a1 with a quad core intel. so what is my best option? also im going to have a water cooling system in there so should i consider water cooling my graphics cards or no?

[edDV]

...im really big with video editing and occasionally some games like medal of honor.

What kinds of video editing?

Most of this is for games.

[johns0]

8800gts if you play just a few games and 9800 if you are a serious gamer.

[steptoe]

I was going for an ASUS 680i Nforce chipset motherboard, but all reviews say the chipset runs very hot before overclocking, so spent be bit more time and decided on the Asus P5K Premium motherboard, but that doesn't support SLI though but does squeeze more overclocking and works better with the Intel chips

I'm going with the Intel Q6600 Go Stepping quad core as I do intend to overclock anyway and have bought the ThermalRight Ultra 120 Extreme as thats come across as one of the best CPU coolers wsithout going water cooling

As yet there is really no software that uses the GPU of the GFX cards for video editing unless you go with a GFX card designed purely for video editing and thats plenty of money as its software and hardware based to work together

Apparently the next release of PhotoShop does use the GPU and it makes editing massive images very fast and in real time and gives a big increase in speed


As for water cooling try these links I've looked at as watercooling kits that would probably suit my needs sometiem in the future

http://www.cluboverclocker.com/reviews/super_cooling/swiftech/H20-220Compact/index.asp
http://www.overclock3d.net/reviews.php?type=3&id=69&page=1&desc=battle_of_the_water_cooling_kits

The Swifttech H20-220 Compact and teh next model up in their range look very good value for money and unless you go crazy with overclocking seem to be ideal, but may struggle with two GFX cards and the CPU

[edDV]

Not a pretty picture at NVDA. Stock is down 30% this month due to late new products and heat failures on the current line.

Per http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2008/07/08/nvidia-explodes.aspx

Happy July 4th!
But was the news really all that bad? Bad enough to justify wiping out more than $3 billion in market cap overnight? Let's find out. NVIDIA's earnings warning consisted of two parts:

First, citing "end-market weakness," "delayed ramp of a next generation MCP" (multi-chip package), and a price war on graphics processors, NVIDIA took an ax to sales forecasts for the fiscal second quarter 2009. NVIDIA now expects to book between $875 million and $950 million in sales; about 17% below analyst expectations. NVIDIA did not say how much it would earn on those sales, but lower economies of scale are rarely a boon to profit margins, and price wars never are. (The two main culprits for the supposed price war, Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) and AMD (NYSE: AMD), got dragged down by NVIDIA's report, but not nearly as far.)
Second, and further threatening profits, NVIDIA confirmed that "warranty, repair, return, replacement and other costs and expenses" for certain defective MCPs and GPUs (graphics processing units) will subtract $150 million to $200 million from this quarter's earnings.

Nowhere to go but up? Rumor is Intel may buy them in their weakened state.

[rallynavvie]

The Adobe apps have been using GPUs for acceleration for years. They're called workstation video cards. For a while you could hack your GeForce into a Quadro but the engines have grown apart in recent years. You ever wonder why Quadros cost so much? They are built with instruction sets and hardware made for workstation applications. I doubt Adobe is suddenly going to create something that works with consumer cards anytime soon. Besides Photoshop is mostly 2D editing and the limited 3D effects it does use are pretty tame when compared to Lightwave or something. If they do implement something to take advantage of consumer GPUs it isn't going to be much.

If this new machine is for video editing then you only need the cheap card. Video editing isn't GPU-intensive at all, at least not on the consumer side of things. SLi would be complete overkill on a video workstation. However for gaming the 8800GTX in SLi is one of the best economic setups available. Or you may want to wait for the upcoming 9800GTX+. Don't get one of the new GX-series cards yet, they're not quite mature yet.

[RabidDog]

Go for an Amd 4850, cheap and Good, doesnt heat up everything, doesn't require in-line nuclear generator(power)
WC <shrugs>?

[romanstopme]

well im still in high school for my last year thank god and im going to do our schools senior video. im very familiar with preimre cs3 but my current pc has vegas and i like it alot. im not going to be a hard core gamer but im planing to do alot of small and big video eddtinig projects. but should i get two cards or just not waste my money and use one. i have the money for two cards im just deciding whether the 8800 or the 9800 is better. im probably going to wait for the new 9800 model so ill keep on reserching

[romanstopme]

also i had a question. if im going to have two 9800 will i have room to put in a SOUND BLASTER X-Fi Platinum on my mother board 780 i sli

[rallynavvie]

Don't bother with two if you aren't going to be a "hard core gamer", spend the cash on something else. Right now a single 9800 is plenty to play any game on the market and should last at least a year or two before it needs replacing. They also will have PhysX acceleration built-in once the driver is released (you can use the beta version now if you need it) so that will help some games that take advantage of that.

Another thing to consider is that SLi does not support dual displays so if you ever want to add a second display to your video editing machine you'll have to disable SLi everytime between gaming and work. That's the major reason I didn't choose to go SLi.

[edDV]

No reason to buy more than a single 8600GT for your video projects. Don't waste money.

If you really wanted to go the video/animation route (future), you would forget about games, SLI and GeForce.

You would consider Quadro for vector processing and forget games outright. Don't overinvest in gaming hardware.

[Seeker47]

Not a pretty picture at NVDA. Stock is down 30% this month due to late new products and heat failures on the current line.
. . .
No reason to buy more than a single 8600GT for your video projects. Don't waste money.

If you really wanted to go the video/animation route (future), you would forget about games, SLI and GeForce.

You would consider Quadro for vector processing and forget games outright. Don't overinvest in gaming hardware.

I think I have some recommendations like this from you from another thread, some time ago. But now I'm revisiting this issue, in part because one of the systems I expect to be assembling will be an SFF box, where space is fairly tight, the PSU is probably going to be limited to 300w, and heat buildup is a problem I hope to avoid. (I've already taken one step in that direction, by selecting a 65w dual-core CPU.) That rules out any video card that takes up 2 slots -- by blocking use of the adjacent slot, I mean -- and probably also most of the fanless designs, because I think they may be problematic on the heat issue. The cooling solutions for the XPCs are not great, and I don't want to mess with any mods -- beyond possibly changing to better fan models with the same form factor, which I've done in the past.

Games ? Forget it, no interest. In that prior thread, we were talking about the ability to play back different levels (?) of HD video. But, I might even be willing to sacrifice that, in this case. I do want to be able to run a lot of the kind of video apps commonly discussed here, with a good view of what I'm doing. Other than that, I'd say the major relevant factors here are: low heat, a lower current draw from the PSU, and (hopefully) much better video than you'd get from the built-in video chip found on some of these models. (This particular one has none, so I have to put a video card in there.) And pretty good reliability.

It needs to be PCI-E. ATI would be a preference. It does not need to be a current model. (I see a lot of models that were discontinued at Newegg etc., available for sale on Ebay, and elsewhere.) Given these parameters, how might your recommendations change ?

Oh, one other question: PCI-E came in when ? The 2006 models ?

[edDV]

Not sure of the current SFF (micro) motherboard options but if h.264, etc. playback isn't needed, the current mobo graphics chips run cool and can probably handle MPeg2 HD playback. This will reduce alot of heat and power demand that is better directed to a larger multicore CPU for processing. Go with the minimal display chip solution that you need.

Also look to eSATA to get the active project (not the OS) drive heat out of the box. These things run hot.

[Seeker47]

Not sure of the current SFF (micro) motherboard options but if h.264, etc. playback isn't needed, the current mobo graphics chips run cool and can probably handle MPeg2 HD playback. This will reduce alot of heat and power demand that is better directed to a larger multicore CPU for processing. Go with the minimal display chip solution that you need.

Also look to eSATA to get the active project (not the OS) drive heat out of the box. These things run hot.

Thanks for your reply. The point about e-Sata (which I will have) is well-taken: I may then be able to get away with just one HDD inside, even though some have been stuffing 2 or 3 into their SFF boxes. The one I've purchased could take 2, plus an optical drive, but -- like a number of the 2006 or later XPC models -- has no graphics chip on the mobo. So I've got to add a PCI-E video card of some kind.

I know that -- even if based on the same graphics chip -- different vendors' design implementations are going to differ, in regard to the factors I cited. But let me toss out a few general examples for you. (I can get more specific, if necessary.) Might any of these fall in line with what I was looking for ?

Radeon x800 series, or x700 series.
Radeion x1650 series.
ATI 1800 XT
Radeon 9600 Pro or 9700 Pro.
HD 2600 series
(Brands would be like Sapphire or Powercolor, to name a couple.)

In non-ATI (mostly Nvidia chips ?):
Leadtek PX6600 GT
7100, 7200, or 7300 series
7600, 7800, or 7900 series (like EVGA 7900 GT)

All of these would have fans -- hopefully not excessively noisy ones -- rather than being fanless designs.
I did not pick these examples out of a hat, but had other reasons for considering them . . . .

Many of these still might not meet the criteria I described, but I'm inclined to think that the 8600 or 8800-based cards are for sure going to run hot and suck up too many watts ?

Assume about 256M of RAM onboard any of these cards. I don't want to be leeching away system RAM for the video.

[edDV]

All of these cards have power consumption specs. *

Other than OS drive, the others inside can hold data. Just spin them down while doing heat intensive work.
This assumes you have a heat problem.


*A clear clue the video card is a heat hog is a power connector other than the PCIe-AGP bus.

[romanstopme]

so i should just buy one 9800 and thats it? im thinking about getting a second monitor so yeah but my other question that was not answered will the sound card that i listed above work with a 780i sli evga mother board?

[rallynavvie]

Pretty sure that Creative Labs sound card is going to work just fine with that gaming board. It has a PCI slot to put it in doesn't it?

[edDV]

You haven't defined what the card will need to play. Choose for power consumption. The x800 may not play 1080i HD preview but probably will. You want minimal required performance vs. heat generated.

[rallynavvie]

He's referring to the GeForce 9800, not the Radeon 9800. The nVidia card is nearly-current gen and can run pretty much anything. Power consumption on mine hasn't been bad at all considering what else is in the box.

[edDV]

so i should just buy one 9800 and thats it? im thinking about getting a second monitor so yeah but my other question that was not answered will the sound card that i listed above work with a 780i sli evga mother board?

Why do you need even one 9800 if gaming isn't the goal. Why isn't a single 8600GT enough fo you. Likewise, what kinds of audio editing are you planning? The Sound Blaster X-Fi Platinum is a home entertainment card not an editing card. Look at something from M-Audio or Mackie that is supported by Vegas, Sound Forge or the Adobe CS3 suite.

[Seeker47]

*A clear clue the video card is a heat hog is a power connector other than the PCIe-AGP bus.

Thanks. I had noted in some descriptions that a particular card was said to get its power from the slot alone (?), but had the impression that these were a relative minority of the cards on the market since 2005. (It is longer ago than that, since my last video card purchase !) If that is not the case, it should make this easier.

[romanstopme]

well the sound card is not for sound editing its for watching movies