What graphics card .... non-gamer

I'm building a PC that I intended to build a few months ago, until real life intervened, and the graphics market seems to have moved on again. So I'm after opinions on the right level of card to get.

The criteria are :-

1) Colour fidelity. For digital photography, I'm putting colour accuracy at the top of the list

2) Reasonable noise levels.

3) Occasional gaming, but I'm not a gamer and getting bells and whistles doesn't bother me. If the card I end up with does it, great. If it doesn't, oh well. Not a problem. I'd up the budget by £20 or so IF it was going to make a significant gaming difference, but any more than that is not worth it to me. Put it this way, the last game I bought (or acquired, for that matter) was Quake 3. I've got a couple of HalfLife (not HL2) modules sitting on the shelf, still shrink-wrapped.

4) Budget. Within reason, whatever it takes. Stupid money is out, but anything reasonable (say sub-£250-ish) is OK providing I'm not just paying for features I won't use, like high-end gaming. However, as long as I get what I need, the lower the better. If I can do it for £100 or less, so much the better.

5) Watching movies. This is not an issue at all, as I don't EVER use a PVC for this.




Oh, and system spec. Core Quad with 4GB of PC8500, Raptor boot and a couple of 500GB drives, with main data storage on a big external Ultra-SCSI RAID box. In other words, the system spec is decently high-end but not state of the art, and I'm after quality but value for money.

My problem is I'm thoroughly out of touch with graphics cards. I'm inclined towards ATI chipsets, due to their historical reputation for colour rendition, but is this still the case?

So ..... :-

ATI or nVidia?

And which version?

I'm currently inclined towards the 256MB Power Color RX1950Pro Arctic Cooling (Scan LN19107), largely because of the cooler, and because XT versions seem hard to locate, but the 320MB EVGA 8800GTS Superclocked (Scan LN17576) also has my attention. Both are based on a very limited grasp of the state of things.

Any suggestions or comments, bearing in mind the above criteria?

Colour reproduction is far more monitor based than graphics these days. I've used both ATi and Nvidia on my monitor recently and i cant tell the difference (and is something i look for :))

are you looking for it to be fairly quiet/silent?

the GTS is a fantastic card for the money. You get all the game playing ability you could want and its fairly quiet especially when not gaming.

The 1950pro's are very good value for money especially if dx10 isn't a concern but If it were my money i would have the GTS as it will compliment your pc very nicely.

Thanks, Mike.

Yes, noise level is moderately important, but I'm not anal about it. DX10 isn't an issue and nor, really, is gaming. I certainly wouldn't double the budget for the GTS if gaming were the only benefit from the GTS.

Thats the only benefit the GTS has unless you were doing some intensive 3d work.

The x1950pro will be prefect as you will be able to game quite nicely on it if you want to.

Had you considered the Quadro Cards? They are aimed at the market you'd fall into, rather than gaming cards?

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Originally Posted by staffsMike

Thats the only benefit the GTS has unless you were doing some intensive 3d work.

The x1950pro will be prefect as you will be able to game quite nicely on it if you want to.

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No, I won't be doing any 3D stuff on this machine.

The 1950Pro is currently sitting on the order, but I wanted to get opinions before I committed to it. Thanks, again.

I hadn't considered the Quadro, mainly because I'd always associated it as a workstation card. I do have another machine that's FireGL2-equipped, and I put it in that category and dismissed it (subconsciously, as I didn't give it any real thought). But you do have a point, Dave. It's worth looking into .... at least at the lower end of the price range.

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Originally Posted by Saracen

The criteria are :-

1) Colour fidelity. For digital photography, I'm putting colour accuracy at the top of the list

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Not an issue with the card itself, but more the interface you are using and the monitor.
If you are using DVI / Another digital input, what card you go for is irrelevant. The signal is digital all the way to the screen.
Say for example you output the same image on the screen using both a ATi and then a nVidia card, the only causes of any difference in the image would be caused by the contrast / saturation / gamma / ect.. setting profiles on each, which of course can be altered.
ICC and ICM profiles for your monitor can make a big difference - Don't forget about them :)

If accurate colour production is your thing, investing in something like the Spyder is a good idea.

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2) Reasonable noise levels.

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There is three main options with this part.

1)Buy a card and not worry about noise, then fit a Zalman cooler to it like the VF900. The Zalman products usually keep the card quieter and cooler than the stock cooling in a lot of cases

2)Buy a card that naturally has a low noise output. Less hassle than above, but can cost more, and may run warmer.

3)Go passive. There are cards on the market that are 100% passively cooled. If you have decent case cooling, this is probably the option i'd be looking at.

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3) Occasional gaming, but I'm not a gamer and getting bells and whistles doesn't bother me. If the card I end up with does it, great. If it doesn't, oh well. Not a problem. I'd up the budget by £20 or so IF it was going to make a significant gaming difference, but any more than that is not worth it to me. Put it this way, the last game I bought (or acquired, for that matter) was Quake 3. I've got a couple of HalfLife (not HL2) modules sitting on the shelf, still shrink-wrapped.

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Going on the Quake and Half Life comment, any modern card will cover your gaming needs :D

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4) Budget. Within reason, whatever it takes. Stupid money is out, but anything reasonable (say sub-£250-ish) is OK providing I'm not just paying for features I won't use, like high-end gaming. However, as long as I get what I need, the lower the better. If I can do it for £100 or less, so much the better.

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The only difference between the high end cards and the low end ones are almost purely the speed at which they run games at. The only other exception is for applications that use the GPU as another processor (Folding, Purevideo, ATi's Video encoding app, ect).

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5) Watching movies. This is not an issue at all, as I don't EVER use a PVC for this.

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Most app's are CPU based anyway, not GPU. This will only became an issue if you plan on decoding VC-1 / HD content for example and make use of something like Purevideo. With a quad core, you could do almost anything like this purely on the CPU anyway though, so that point is kinda mute.

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My problem is I'm thoroughly out of touch with graphics cards. I'm inclined towards ATI chipsets, due to their historical reputation for colour rendition, but is this still the case?

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This may have been true back in the analogue days to the monitor, but there is absolutely no difference since it went digital.
It was caused by the DAC/RAMDAC filters used on the cards (taking the signal from digital and converting it to an analogue based one). This process is entirely removed when using a digital connection.
See here for more on RAMDAC's.

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So ..... :-

ATI or nVidia?

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Either brand will be fine in all truthfulness.
The curent range of nVidia cards have the edge. Faster and less heat in most cases than the ATI equivalent, certainly when 'idle' (ie. on the desktop / doing 2d work, ect).
At load there is probably less between the two.

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I'm currently inclined towards the 256MB Power Color RX1950Pro Arctic Cooling (Scan LN19107), largely because of the cooler, and because XT versions seem hard to locate, but the 320MB EVGA 8800GTS Superclocked (Scan LN17576) also has my attention. Both are based on a very limited grasp of the state of things.

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The 1950 range are old tech now and a generation behind the 8800GTS you are looking at.
Purely based off knowing you do high end image production I'm guessing that you are using a fairly high resolution for your screen? If so, the 320MB of RAM will also help on the 8800GTS over the ATi in games.

Just some food for thought though:

A passive 8500GT will do the EXACT same job as a Pro-overclocked 8800GTS In everything but games and things that use the GPU as listed above.
So based off that, its simply how much you want to spend for the additional 3D power. Only you can decide that :)

The only other things that you've not mentioned which may make a small difference (again, in 3D only stuff) is screen resolution and the number of screens.
Note: I have assumed you are using a TFT and not a CRT when talking about 'digital to the screen'. If you are using a CRT monitor then i'll explain the things which can make a difference after you say :)

If you do go for the 8500gt passive idea the gainward silentfx variant is very good. Stays around the mid 40 degrees with normal use.. around 60 - 65 in games.

Got one in an antec p182 silent machine :)

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Originally Posted by Agent

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Note: I have assumed you are using a TFT and not a CRT when talking about 'digital to the screen'. If you are using a CRT monitor then i'll explain the things which can make a difference after you say :)

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At the moment, CRTs.

That'll likely change as part of this system build .... provided I can find TFTs (probably 2) that I'm happy with, at a sensible price. But that raises another issue - the card I'm looking for is probably going to need to support dual screens.

pretty much anything does these days.. but the lower cards like 8500gt have one DVI one VGA

8800 and x1950 have dual dvi

Frankly a £20 7100GS will do you for the colour reproduction, but you won't game on it at all. If you want to game, then any of the above choices will be better. As people have said, the monitor is much more critical, and I too can't tell any difference between ATi and nV outside 3D mode. :)

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Originally Posted by staffsMike

pretty much anything does these days.. but the lower cards like 8500gt have one DVI one VGA

8800 and x1950 have dual dvi

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This gets trickier as I go.

Okay, gut feeling tells me that I'm best off sticking to 2 DVI, especially if I go for 2 TFTs. But .... the only one on which I'm particularly fussed about colour accuracy is the image screen in Photoshop. So maybe it isn't critical.

On the other hand, I'm not going to much about for the sake of saving a few quid if it's going to cause issues down the line, so two identical outputs seems sensible.

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Just some food for thought though:

A passive 8500GT will do the EXACT same job as a Pro-overclocked 8800GTS In everything but games and things that use the GPU as listed above.
So based off that, its simply how much you want to spend for the additional 3D power. Only you can decide that

The only other things that you've not mentioned which may make a small difference (again, in 3D only stuff) is screen resolution and the number of screens.

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Agent speaks the truth here. :)

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Frankly a £20 7100GS will do you for the colour reproduction, but you won't game on it at all. If you want to game, then any of the above choices will be better. As people have said, the monitor is much more critical, and I too can't tell any difference between ATi and nV outside 3D mode.

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So does gav :)

My otherhalf is running a 1600x1200 viewsonic tft off an fx5200 126mb agp, she uses it for photoshop, painter and web browseing. once your remove gameing from a pc you can use pritty much anything, it just needs the base memory to support the colour depth and resolution. (I cannot honestly remember the figures for that but I'd guess that 256mb would be safe to run just about any 2 screens)
For some occausional gameing ether an
ati x1950pro or nvidia 7900gs for dx9
or
8600GT for dx10. (not sure what the new ati series are like)
The 8600gt is starting to look ok for an occasional gamer who wants dx10 the performance isn't great (currently looking around the same as the 7600GT) although we still have no dx10 games to realy test it on.

Personally anything £100 or below.

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Originally Posted by Saracen

This gets trickier as I go.

Okay, gut feeling tells me that I'm best off sticking to 2 DVI, especially if I go for 2 TFTs. But .... the only one on which I'm particularly fussed about colour accuracy is the image screen in Photoshop. So maybe it isn't critical.

On the other hand, I'm not going to much about for the sake of saving a few quid if it's going to cause issues down the line, so two identical outputs seems sensible.

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If you are moving to a TFT later, with the possibility of going dual screen, go dual DVI (you can use a DVI->Dsub converter for your current screen)

As for Photoshop - If you use the ICC / ICM profiles mentioned above with your screen and set up Photoshop to use these, you'll get fairly accurate colour. As mentioned though, a calibration tool are really very good though.

You mentioned possibly buying new monitors. In this case, have a look at my post here for the new Dell HC TFT's. The "HC" bit stands for High Contrast, and they really will be some of the best screens for colour reproduction. They colour gamut they have is impressive.
These will be more expensive than the normal range, but as someone who does 2D and 3D work daily, I will be buying one as soon as the money allows :D

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=417807 i would have thought that the 7600gs fits the bill exactly. Silent, ok in older games, dual DVI and only £45-60. Just because he says budget is £250ish i see no reason to go any higher than this, epecially when it means adding unnecissary fans to the system.