geforce or quadro... and which one?

I am planning a new system. It will be used for several different
tasks. Specifically, I will be using Photoshop and Premiere Pro. I
also will be using Dragon Naturally Speaking (voice recognition) all of
the time.

I want the best video card I can get but I am not sure...

The two that I have heard the most about at the high end (sticking with
nVidia) would be the geForce 7900 and the Quadro 4500. The Quadro is
much more expensive. I understand that is supports dual link x2 but
other than that, what is the better card and why?

for background, the tentitive plan for the PC is:
Dual AMD Opteron (dual core) processors
4 GB DDR 400 ram

I am running a 24" LCD and may (would like to) add a second one
(side-by-side) in the future.

Anyone with a recomendation for motherboards, cases, cooling, power
supplies, etc feel free to chime in. I can use all the info I can
get.


Thanks,
Jeff

'Jeff' wrote, in part:
| I am planning a new system. It will be used for several different
| tasks. Specifically, I will be using Photoshop and Premiere Pro. I
| also will be using Dragon Naturally Speaking (voice recognition) all of
| the time.
|
| I want the best video card I can get but I am not sure...
_____

For your stated applications, a 7900 would be no real help. The Quadro 4500
is a professional board (better images, more choices for color and contrast
matching.) The 7900 is much better at 3D acceleration than the Quadro, but
that isn't what you need.

A good CRT display is much superior. Put your money in a good professional
display adapter (better support, more settings, color and contrast matching.
Make sure ahead of time that there ARE color matching profiles that work
with your scanner, printer, and CRT monitor so that what you see is what you
get. You can still use your LCD monitor as a second monitor, but LCD
monitors are not yet ready for professional artwork and photographs (digital
and film.) Expect to spend more for a good 'correct color and contrast"
monitor than for Photoshop. Get a monitor with trustable color, contrast
and brightness and that has color profiles that work with Photoshop,
your printer, and scanner. Also, an LCD monitor is really only good for
working with images when it is running at its native resolution, or an
integer division of the horizontal and vertical native resolution; the pixel
size is fixed. With a GOOD CRT monitor the size of the electron dot changes
with resolution but is more or less limited by the pitch of the screen, but
ANY resolution lower than that pitch works fine, unlike an LCD monitor.

The more memory the better for Photoshop, as long as the motherboard and OS
can use it.
Get the fastest hard drive you can afford. It need not be SCSI since a lot
of your disk accesses with PhotoShop will be sequential as you swap images
and image versions in and out (yes, even with 4 GBytes of RAM.)

Choose your CPU and display adapter according to the recommendations of
Adobe - which ought to be whatever combination of CPU, display adapter, and
memory size their optimizations work the best.

Always chose your system by what your applications need, then work out a
balance between cost and performance you can afford. The shorter the
response time between when you enter commands and when the system responds,
the better you can concentrate and the more productive you will be, so speed
is important. But an display device you can trust is the most important;
along with your skill, of course B^)

Phil Weldon

wrote in message
oups.com...
|I am planning a new system. It will be used for several different
| tasks. Specifically, I will be using Photoshop and Premiere Pro. I
| also will be using Dragon Naturally Speaking (voice recognition) all of
| the time.
|
| I want the best video card I can get but I am not sure...
|
| The two that I have heard the most about at the high end (sticking with
| nVidia) would be the geForce 7900 and the Quadro 4500. The Quadro is
| much more expensive. I understand that is supports dual link x2 but
| other than that, what is the better card and why?
|
| for background, the tentitive plan for the PC is:
| Dual AMD Opteron (dual core) processors
| 4 GB DDR 400 ram
|
| I am running a 24" LCD and may (would like to) add a second one
| (side-by-side) in the future.
|
| Anyone with a recomendation for motherboards, cases, cooling, power
| supplies, etc feel free to chime in. I can use all the info I can
| get.
|
|
| Thanks,
| Jeff
|

Phil Weldon schrieb:
'Jeff' wrote, in part:
| I am planning a new system. It will be used for several different
| tasks. Specifically, I will be using Photoshop and Premiere Pro. I
| also will be using Dragon Naturally Speaking (voice recognition) all of
| the time.
|
| I want the best video card I can get but I am not sure...
_____

For your stated applications, a 7900 would be no real help. The Quadro 4500
is a professional board (better images, more choices for color and contrast
matching.) The 7900 is much better at 3D acceleration than the Quadro, but
that isn't what you need.

That's nonsense. A Quadro card has no better images, and screen
calibration can be done the same with a Geforce card. Neither Photoshop
nor Premiere does have _any_ benefit from a Quadro card. Nothing. Zero.

A good CRT display is much superior. Put your money in a good professional
display adapter (better support, more settings, color and contrast matching.
Make sure ahead of time that there ARE color matching profiles that work
with your scanner, printer, and CRT monitor so that what you see is what you
get. You can still use your LCD monitor as a second monitor, but LCD
monitors are not yet ready for professional artwork and photographs (digital
and film.)

TFT displays _are_ suitable for picture processing and other "artwork".
There are enough professional TFT displays especially made for that
market, and there also are dozens of professionals that use them (even
in the film business).

Benjamin

schrieb:

I am planning a new system. It will be used for several different
tasks. Specifically, I will be using Photoshop and Premiere Pro. I
also will be using Dragon Naturally Speaking (voice recognition) all of
the time.

I want the best video card I can get but I am not sure...

The two that I have heard the most about at the high end (sticking with
nVidia) would be the geForce 7900 and the Quadro 4500. The Quadro is
much more expensive. I understand that is supports dual link x2 but
other than that, what is the better card and why?

Go for the 7900. None of your applications benefit from the Quadro
features (no, even not Photoshop and Premiere) so you would just waste a
lot of money for nothing. The Quadro 4500 is based on the Geforce 6800
Ultra so it's getting a bit aged now and the 7900 is certainly the
faster alternative, so better go for this one.

for background, the tentitive plan for the PC is:
Dual AMD Opteron (dual core) processors
4 GB DDR 400 ram

If you plan to run Winxp x64 better inform yourself about the drawbacks.
If you want to use 32bit Windows then 4GB is probably just a waste of money.

I am running a 24" LCD and may (would like to) add a second one
(side-by-side) in the future.

No problem, this already can be done with a cheap low end card like a
PNY 6600GT PCIe...

Benjamin

Might consider the fact that LCD monitors don't have any color
range no matter what you do. I'm running Solidworks on 6600GT
cards, and it works great.

johns

I mentioned Dragon, not because of its use of the GPU but to illustrate
the need for processing power overall. As to knowing very little about
computers, I'll let that slide (I've been building PCs for years and
have been coding since 1980). Enough about that...

My preference for nVidia is simple. I have owned Matrox and had
nothing but problems.
I owned two different ATI cards and ended up returning both. They both
had seperate problems (two different models, two different times). I
have owned several nVidia cards and never had a problem. That is why I
am here.

My current thinking lies between the:
geForce 7900 (not clear about the difference between GX & GTX, etc)
Quadro 4500 (really don't want to spend that much and don't need 2-
dual link dvi ports)
Quadro 3450 (seems like a nice compomise (most of the performance of
the 4500 w/o the dual link which I won't be using).

I am considering adding a second 1920x1200 LCD (identical to the one I
have) so I would need a card to support that.

My other question (which I guess should really wait until I figure out
what GPU I need) is what are the distinctions between various makers
cards? I mean if five makers make cards based on a GPU, which do I
get? Any tips would be useful but I think I have to wait til I get a
firm idea of what card to get.

Thanks,
Jeff

jeff22 schrieb:

I mentioned Dragon, not because of its use of the GPU but to illustrate
the need for processing power overall. As to knowing very little about
computers, I'll let that slide (I've been building PCs for years and
have been coding since 1980). Enough about that...

My preference for nVidia is simple. I have owned Matrox and had
nothing but problems.

Matrox is crap. The cards are expensive, have a low performance, and
also crappy drivers. Even for 2D work they are just not worth the money.

I owned two different ATI cards and ended up returning both. They both
had seperate problems (two different models, two different times). I
have owned several nVidia cards and never had a problem. That is why I
am here.

My current thinking lies between the:
geForce 7900 (not clear about the difference between GX & GTX, etc)
Quadro 4500 (really don't want to spend that much and don't need 2-
dual link dvi ports)
Quadro 3450 (seems like a nice compomise (most of the performance of
the 4500 w/o the dual link which I won't be using).

I am considering adding a second 1920x1200 LCD (identical to the one I
have) so I would need a card to support that.

You don't need DualLink for a 1920x1200 LCD because even SingleLink DVI
supports that just fine. You need DualLink if you want 30" displays, though.

My other question (which I guess should really wait until I figure out
what GPU I need) is what are the distinctions between various makers
cards?

Overclocking capabilities, analog signal quality (doesn't matter if you
use TFTs over DVI), fan noise, price, software addons liek games that
come with the cards, warranty.

I mean if five makers make cards based on a GPU, which do I
get?

The one that fits your needs best. I formyself use Nvidia cards from PNY
because I don't overclock and PNY makes very good cards and also offers
3yrs of warranty.

Any tips would be useful but I think I have to wait til I get a
firm idea of what card to get.

Forget the Quadro as you will just waste a lot of money for something
you won't need or use at all. For your applications eeven a 7900 is just
a waste of money, every low end card would give you the same
performance. For your applications there is absolutely _no_ performance
difference between a Quadro FX 4500, Quadro FX 3450 (which is basically
a GF 7800GTX), Geforce 7900 and a Geforce 6600GT which is around 120$ now.

Benjamin