Video card for Asus CUSL2

I have a 2-year-old Asus CUSL2 motherboard with 1GHz Coppermine CPU
with 512MB PC133 Micron Memory. Here is the list to be accurate.

Asus CUSL2 Solano
Intel 1GHz Coppermine CPU
IBM Deskstar 75GXP 46.11GB HDD
Western Digital 80GB WD800JB
2 256MB Micron PC133 Memory
Sony DRU-510A 4X DVD Burner
Pioneer DVD-106S Slot DVD
Standard Floppy (Sony) 1.44MB
NEC 100MB Zip Drive


Now, I am a bit puzzled about the video card. The Asus motherboard has
an on-board 4MB video card, but I wanted to upgrade to something a bit
better. I am wondering if some one to clearly explain to me on what to
look for in a video card. I am not a gamer, so I am not worried about
high-price video card I must get. However, I am getting into video
editing and so I need a card that will help me make my life a bit
faster.

I know that this motherboard has a connector that can be installed so
the on-board video does not steal RAM memory from the system. However,
what I am puzzled about is that the motherboard has 1 x 32-bit AGP
Pro/AGP 4X slot. So would it matter for me on what kind of video card
I use?

I know that some people used 3dfx Voodoo3 and some used NVIDIA GeForce
256 SDR or AOpen PA 256 Deluxe Geforce2GTS, but no one has said
anything about the video card. Can some one explain this and maybe
recommend something for me? I would highly appreciate it.

Thanks..

If you are going to be doing video editing you *might* want to get a card
that allows you to capture analog video (Ie via an RCA or Svideo jack).
But if you have say a digital video camera you should just buy a firewire
card (This is not Video card related its just like USB) which will allow you
to download the video right onto your system.

Since you said you're not a gamer I can't see any reason to get a new video
card, the 4 mb of shared video memory is nothing notworthy out of 512 megs
of ram.

Also if you do want to do capture from analog devices you might want to
start with an older (Say 2 year old) pinnacle systems pci capture card.
These cards are nice because they work with your existing card so you can
install it into your next system.

Last note, video editing speed is a result of CPU speed, unless you buy a
professional editing card, and these are VERY expensive a new
cpu/motherboard would be a better investment.
"Kamal" wrote in message
om...
I have a 2-year-old Asus CUSL2 motherboard with 1GHz Coppermine CPU
with 512MB PC133 Micron Memory. Here is the list to be accurate.

Asus CUSL2 Solano
Intel 1GHz Coppermine CPU
IBM Deskstar 75GXP 46.11GB HDD
Western Digital 80GB WD800JB
2 256MB Micron PC133 Memory
Sony DRU-510A 4X DVD Burner
Pioneer DVD-106S Slot DVD
Standard Floppy (Sony) 1.44MB
NEC 100MB Zip Drive


Now, I am a bit puzzled about the video card. The Asus motherboard has
an on-board 4MB video card, but I wanted to upgrade to something a bit
better. I am wondering if some one to clearly explain to me on what to
look for in a video card. I am not a gamer, so I am not worried about
high-price video card I must get. However, I am getting into video
editing and so I need a card that will help me make my life a bit
faster.

I know that this motherboard has a connector that can be installed so
the on-board video does not steal RAM memory from the system. However,
what I am puzzled about is that the motherboard has 1 x 32-bit AGP
Pro/AGP 4X slot. So would it matter for me on what kind of video card
I use?

I know that some people used 3dfx Voodoo3 and some used NVIDIA GeForce
256 SDR or AOpen PA 256 Deluxe Geforce2GTS, but no one has said
anything about the video card. Can some one explain this and maybe
recommend something for me? I would highly appreciate it.

Thanks..

In article ,
(Kamal) wrote:

I have a 2-year-old Asus CUSL2 motherboard with 1GHz Coppermine CPU
with 512MB PC133 Micron Memory. Here is the list to be accurate.

Asus CUSL2 Solano
Intel 1GHz Coppermine CPU
IBM Deskstar 75GXP 46.11GB HDD
Western Digital 80GB WD800JB
2 256MB Micron PC133 Memory
Sony DRU-510A 4X DVD Burner
Pioneer DVD-106S Slot DVD
Standard Floppy (Sony) 1.44MB
NEC 100MB Zip Drive


Now, I am a bit puzzled about the video card. The Asus motherboard has
an on-board 4MB video card, but I wanted to upgrade to something a bit
better. I am wondering if some one to clearly explain to me on what to
look for in a video card. I am not a gamer, so I am not worried about
high-price video card I must get. However, I am getting into video
editing and so I need a card that will help me make my life a bit
faster.

I know that this motherboard has a connector that can be installed so
the on-board video does not steal RAM memory from the system. However,
what I am puzzled about is that the motherboard has 1 x 32-bit AGP
Pro/AGP 4X slot. So would it matter for me on what kind of video card
I use?

I know that some people used 3dfx Voodoo3 and some used NVIDIA GeForce
256 SDR or AOpen PA 256 Deluxe Geforce2GTS, but no one has said
anything about the video card. Can some one explain this and maybe
recommend something for me? I would highly appreciate it.

Thanks..

A simplified view of a video card, is it consists of a frame buffer
(a memory with a picture of the screen) and a DAC (digital to analog
converter to make the analog video signal). That is enough to make a
static picture on your computer VGA monitor.

Add to this 2D acceleration. Two dimensional information is what makes
up your desktop picture, the contents of a picture of a word processing
document etc. The acceleration part can consist of drawing a line of
pixels into the frame buffer, using hardware in the video chip only.
Or, in some cases, the hardware figures out what pixels need to be
turned on, to make a character appear on the screen. 2D acceleration
is kind of a "dead art", in the sense that most video cards have
the same performance when it comes to 2D stuff.

Video editing, for the most part, simply dumps a group of pixels into
the frame buffer, so other than doing this via DMA transfer, there is
little the video card is doing to help.

3D acceleration is what the games rely on. Highly complex effects
like shading, textures, and lighting, consume most of the silicon real
estate inside the video chip. Here the differentiators are memory
bandwidth to the video card onboard memory, and the number of pixel
pipeline and other resources that work in parallel. These are not
generally effects needed for video editing (although there is
at least one piece of video editing software that is somehow coupled
to what kind of video card you use).

A slight exception might be playing back some kind of digital video
that involves compression. Some video card chips have DCT (discrete
cosine transform) support, and if you have a "wimpy" processor,
the DCT support can make the difference between smooth or jumpy
playback of DVDs and the like.

For raw video, even an old Matrox card would be good enough.

Virtually any modern ATI or Nvidia card now has some acceleration
support for playing back DVDs and the like.

Perhaps your video editing software has stated somewhere, what
kind of video card support is required ?

In terms of AGP voltages, i think your motherboard is universal
and will accept either 3.3V or 1.5V cards. This means virtually
any video card will fit in your AGP slot. Your computer could
look like case (F) when a modern video card is plugged in:

http://mirror.ati.com/support/faq/agpchart.html (scroll down)

Even an AGP 8X card will plug in there, but the funny thing is,
some of them may only run at 2X, because the AGP status register
that shows the max speed of the card, the coding for 8X is
missing the MSBit of the speed field, and the card instead looks
like 2X to the software. So, sometimes, buying a 4X card may
actually allow a faster AGP speed to be set up than with an
8X card that is crippled by certain vintages of Northbridge chips.

As with any purchase, do plenty of Googling using the make, model
number, or type, to find out if there are any issues. Even an old
Ti4200 or an ATI Radeon 8500 would be good enough for video editing.
For example, you may want to check whether your motherboard/BIOS
has any issues with getting an AGP 8X card to run at 4X, instead
of being stuck at 2X.

HTH,
Paul