Recommendation - mostly 2D

Building a new system around an Asus P4C800E. It will mostly be used for 2D
work, ranging from text to Photoshop, to the occasional (??) game. On most
of the systems I've built to date I've used Matrox boards, largely for the
high-quality 2D performance and general stability. However, on recent
systems the Matrox and Asus boards do not necessarily play nicely together
in certain graphics modes.

Bottom line - for general purpose use, but very high quality and stability
2D (NOT high-performance, high-end gaming), what board(s) out there would
you all recommend? I'm leaning toward considering an Asus board for
possibly better compatibility. For this system, I'd like to keep the price
to a max of about $150 (Web price, OEM or retail). Any recommendations
appreciated.

Thanks.

I've used,
Matrox G400
Voodoo5
Nvidia 5200
ATI 9100
and now an ATI 9600 PRO AIW.
So I would say to get an ATI 9600 PRO or even an 9600 XT

"ke" wrote in message
news
Building a new system around an Asus P4C800E. It will mostly be used for
2D
work, ranging from text to Photoshop, to the occasional (??) game. On most
of the systems I've built to date I've used Matrox boards, largely for the
high-quality 2D performance and general stability. However, on recent
systems the Matrox and Asus boards do not necessarily play nicely together
in certain graphics modes.

Bottom line - for general purpose use, but very high quality and stability
2D (NOT high-performance, high-end gaming), what board(s) out there would
you all recommend? I'm leaning toward considering an Asus board for
possibly better compatibility. For this system, I'd like to keep the
price
to a max of about $150 (Web price, OEM or retail). Any recommendations
appreciated.

Thanks.

Building a new system around an Asus P4C800E. It will mostly be used for
2D
work, ranging from text to Photoshop, to the occasional (??) game.

Doesn't sound worth doing to me. If you are not a gamer,
why go to an expensive mobo? I've got Gigabyte integrated
mobos ( run around $45 to $65 ) that are really stable running
AutoCAD, Solidworks, and Office, and they are holding up
well. The Intel Application Accelerator that comes with those
boards, make booting and loading of apps quick, and the
integrated graphics runs most OpenGL games very well. They
are good little workhorses, and very affordable. A fully
integrated board like that, has been tested completely, and
tends to be bug free. On the ones I'm using, I can install
Linux Redhat 9 without a hitch and all functions working
and stable. Now that is a test of reliability if there ever was
one, because RH 9 is a joke regards compatibility with
most hardware. I've had dual boot with WinXP up and
running for months without RH crashing and burning.
Think about it :-)

johns

johns wrote:
Building a new system around an Asus P4C800E. It will mostly be
used for 2D work, ranging from text to Photoshop, to the occasional
(??) game.

Doesn't sound worth doing to me. If you are not a gamer,
why go to an expensive mobo?

One word: Photoshop.

I've got Gigabyte integrated
mobos ( run around $45 to $65 ) that are really stable running
AutoCAD, Solidworks, and Office, and they are holding up
well. The Intel Application Accelerator that comes with those
boards, make booting and loading of apps quick,

Intel Application Accelerator is just a replacement ATA driver with extra
buffer cache -- you can do the same with third party utilities, or even
better[1] by setting Windows to do aggressive ("server") caching. Extra
RAM-eaters is NOT what you want if you run Photoshop, cause you want all the
memory to be available to PS to do its own caching.
Oh, and besides that, IAA is incompatible with a whole bunch of programs,
including (but not limited to) Veritas/Stomp BackupMyPC, various packet
writing software for CDs/DVDs and ejectable harddrives.

[1]: For one thing, Windows FS caching will release the memory when it's
needed for other things.

Regards,
--
*Art

On Mon, 12 Apr 2004 09:42:43 -0400, "Arthur Hagen"
wrote:

| johns wrote:
| Building a new system around an Asus P4C800E. It will mostly be
| used for 2D work, ranging from text to Photoshop, to the occasional
| (??) game.
|
| Doesn't sound worth doing to me. If you are not a gamer,
| why go to an expensive mobo?
|
| One word: Photoshop.
|
| I've got Gigabyte integrated
| mobos ( run around $45 to $65 ) that are really stable running
| AutoCAD, Solidworks, and Office, and they are holding up
| well. The Intel Application Accelerator that comes with those
| boards, make booting and loading of apps quick,
|
| Intel Application Accelerator is just a replacement ATA driver with extra
| buffer cache -- you can do the same with third party utilities, or even
| better[1] by setting Windows to do aggressive ("server") caching. Extra
| RAM-eaters is NOT what you want if you run Photoshop, cause you want all the
| memory to be available to PS to do its own caching.
| Oh, and besides that, IAA is incompatible with a whole bunch of programs,
| including (but not limited to) Veritas/Stomp BackupMyPC, various packet
| writing software for CDs/DVDs and ejectable harddrives.

IAA is also incompatible with Intel's 865 and 875 series of chipsets.

Larc



§§§ - Change planet to earth to reply by email - §§§

"Larc" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 12 Apr 2004 09:42:43 -0400, "Arthur Hagen"
wrote:

| johns wrote:
| Building a new system around an Asus P4C800E. It will mostly be
| used for 2D work, ranging from text to Photoshop, to the occasional
| (??) game.
|
| Doesn't sound worth doing to me. If you are not a gamer,
| why go to an expensive mobo?
|
| One word: Photoshop.
|
| I've got Gigabyte integrated
| mobos ( run around $45 to $65 ) that are really stable running
| AutoCAD, Solidworks, and Office, and they are holding up
| well. The Intel Application Accelerator that comes with those
| boards, make booting and loading of apps quick,
|
| Intel Application Accelerator is just a replacement ATA driver with
extra
| buffer cache -- you can do the same with third party utilities, or even
| better[1] by setting Windows to do aggressive ("server") caching. Extra
| RAM-eaters is NOT what you want if you run Photoshop, cause you want
all the
| memory to be available to PS to do its own caching.
| Oh, and besides that, IAA is incompatible with a whole bunch of
programs,
| including (but not limited to) Veritas/Stomp BackupMyPC, various packet
| writing software for CDs/DVDs and ejectable harddrives.

IAA is also incompatible with Intel's 865 and 875 series of chipsets.

Not true.

Get a P650 and do all the stuff that Matrox's TS says and then it works for
2D. I'm running two P4C800E Deluxes(1016)(XP, W2K3) with P650s.

"ke" wrote in message
news
Building a new system around an Asus P4C800E. It will mostly be used for
2D
work, ranging from text to Photoshop, to the occasional (??) game. On most
of the systems I've built to date I've used Matrox boards, largely for the
high-quality 2D performance and general stability. However, on recent
systems the Matrox and Asus boards do not necessarily play nicely together
in certain graphics modes.

Bottom line - for general purpose use, but very high quality and stability
2D (NOT high-performance, high-end gaming), what board(s) out there would
you all recommend? I'm leaning toward considering an Asus board for
possibly better compatibility. For this system, I'd like to keep the
price
to a max of about $150 (Web price, OEM or retail). Any recommendations
appreciated.

Thanks.

Ron Reaugh wrote:
"Larc" wrote in message
...
IAA is also incompatible with Intel's 865 and 875 series of chipsets.

Not true.

You can't just make a statement like "Not true" without qualifying it -- you
make yourself look like an idiot.

For i865/875 with a plain ICH5, or with an ICH5R without running RAID,
there's no compatible IAA.

There's something called "Intel Application Accelerator Raid Edition" for
i865/875+ICH5R with RAID 0 or 1, but that's just Intel's RAID driver with a
new name, and has nothing to do with IAA as discussed here.

--
*Art

On Tue, 13 Apr 2004 02:36:19 GMT, "Ron Reaugh"
wrote:

| IAA is also incompatible with Intel's 865 and 875 series of chipsets.
|
| Not true.

You can check at Intel for yourself:

http://www.intel.com/support/chipset.../CS-009312.htm

Included on this page listing chipsets IAA supports is the following
statement:

Note: The Intel Application Accelerator is not compatible with the
Intel® 875P, 865G/P/PE, 852/855 GM/GME, 855MP, 848P, 815EM chipset,
the Intel® 440 chipset family, or any earlier Intel chipsets.

Larc



§§§ - Change planet to earth to reply by email - §§§

Kind of where I was leaning (Matrox 650). But I wanted to get some input to
assess whether it made any sense to consider an Asus video board, in the
(unfounded) hope that there would be more seamless compatibility with the
Asus P4C800. I've been using older Matrox boards (400, 450, 550) with Asus
mobos, with generally solid results, but recently built a system around a
P4C533 and a Matrox 550 that experienced a hard crash (full power down)
whenever WMP 9 was used to view a video. (realPlayer handles the same video
with no issues). Never solved the issue, regardless of drivers used, etc.
This and other little annoyances led me to look at options other than the
Matrox 650 before plunking down the $.

Thanks for the input.



"Ron Reaugh" wrote in message
...
Get a P650 and do all the stuff that Matrox's TS says and then it works
for
2D. I'm running two P4C800E Deluxes(1016)(XP, W2K3) with P650s.

"ke" wrote in message
news
Building a new system around an Asus P4C800E. It will mostly be used
for
2D
work, ranging from text to Photoshop, to the occasional (??) game. On
most
of the systems I've built to date I've used Matrox boards, largely for
the
high-quality 2D performance and general stability. However, on recent
systems the Matrox and Asus boards do not necessarily play nicely
together
in certain graphics modes.

Bottom line - for general purpose use, but very high quality and
stability
2D (NOT high-performance, high-end gaming), what board(s) out there
would
you all recommend? I'm leaning toward considering an Asus board for
possibly better compatibility. For this system, I'd like to keep the
price
to a max of about $150 (Web price, OEM or retail). Any recommendations
appreciated.

Thanks.