Good DVIe X 16 video card primarily for 2D?

[Suetonius]

First Post.

Questions, questions, questions . . .

I am looking for advice on the purchase of a video card to run largely in 2D.

Specifically, I am looking for a PCIe X 16 DVI video card to run a single 19? DVI LCD monitor (1024 X 1280 max). Video card budget ? $0-$150 (?).

I am planning on my first build soon ? probably an AMD 3800 X2 on a Gigabyte GA-K8NF-9 motherboard with 512 MB X 2 = 1 GB of RAM. Not going with an integrated video solution - I will need a discrete video card. No components bought yet ? I will likely buy largely from Newegg.

Quiet is good.

2D video card priorities ? TEXT, Internet browsing, email, word processing, office work, camera snapshots into email, Skype (possibly with a videocam). Nothing too intense as far as I can see.

Not much in the way of 3D ? no significant gaming, no DVDs. no media center, no HD video.

Last I looked, back in the era of PCI cards running CRT monitors, the 2D text sharpness quality reputation of different video cards seemed to be something along the following lines: Matrox >> ATI >> nVidia, with nVidia sporadically bringing up the rear. Is that still true in the current DVI/LCD era or has DVI output proven to be the great equalizer? Does a DVI/LCD setup make differences in video card 2D quality irrelevant ? or minimal compared to the CRT era, anyway?

Does 2D quality increase along with 3D quality (and price) in a manufacturer's line-up, or is similar 2D quality built in to most cards even at different price points in the same line of cards?


This video card will be hooked up to a single 19? DVI LCD monitor ? not yet purchased.

How much video card do I need? How much on-board memory? Cost? What to look for? What to ignore?

Specific brand and model recommendations?

Also - do I need something extra to be Microsoft Vista ready, or should I just go modest now and wait a few years and upgrade the card when Vista is finally a mature and seasoned product? I am in no hurry to go Vista.

Any guidance would be appreciated.


Thank you,

Suetonius


Current rig (to be replaced): circa 2002 $199 Walmart special with a few upgrades ? currently with a Gigabyte MB, 1000 MHz Celeron, ATI Radeon 7500 PCI video card, 384 MB RAM, Samsung SynchMaster 957MB 19? CRT.

 

[nullpointerus]

Read this:

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview...atid=31&threadid=1870565&enterthread=y

As for card recommendations, I would go with a passively-cooled 6600 if your case has decent cooling. If not, get a decent aftermarket cooler for it. Zalman makes some very good coolers ATM.

 

[Suetonius]

nullpointerus,


Thank you,

Suetonius

 

[hans007]

dvi is a pure digital signal. theres no real difference between any cards. the only real difference is some can do dual link, but you wont be using that on a 19" lcd.

if you really are just using 2d, i really do think you shoudl take a look at an integrated offering as it will be MUCH MUCH cheaper.

some of the nforce 6100 boards have integrated DVI and an x16 expansion port.

optionally if you decide to go with an intel chipset, you can get an i915 / i945 and soon i965g board, and add a $20 or so amm2-n dvi expansion card (i have one of these and for 2d it is razor sharp).

if you really must get a discrete card, you can get an x300se or something on ebay for about $15.

 

[Suetonius]

 

[Suetonius]

 

[ProviaFan]

I am using a card similar to this passively cooled Gigabyte 6600 (except mine has 128MB of video RAM) with Vista beta 2, and have used it with XP for a workload very similar to yours, but on a 21" 1600x1200 LCD. Even with the enhanced graphics of Vista, it manages to get along fine in terms of performance; the only issues I have seen have been general beta-quality quirkiness.

In short, you can choose a fairly inexpensive passively cooled video card today that will work in Vista next year, so I wouldn't bother with going cheap now and planning to upgrade later, unless you think you may be doing more 3D work at that time. Avoid integrated graphics, because current models (except perhaps the integrated Geforces - what do those compare to in terms of add-in cards?) will be much less desirable for Vista than a good budget add-in video card.

 

[Suetonius]

OOPS - those empty replies were an accident ( I am new to this board) - my apologies - if a moderator would be kind enough to delete them, that might be a *good thing.*

Can the poster edit his own posts on this board?
____________________________________________________________________________

hans007. Thank you for the excellent advice. The matter is a little more complex than that for me - I did not put forth all the details in the earlier post as I judged the earlier post to already be too long.

Here are the additional details:

(1) I do want to go dual core (for smooth computing and multi-tasking) and 64-bit (for some future-proofing). Looks like AMD 3800+ X2 is right for me from for those capabilities and from the heat (quiet) perspective - I do plan to undervolt. A little expensive, but I accept that. I do need to build now ? no more waiting.

(2) I primarily use Linux at this time. I find Linux works best on hardware six months old or older - it gives the gentlemen who put the distributions together time to get the newer drivers in place. When I looked at Linux and some of the newer chipsets recently, the Linux distributions I am using were not yet working very well (or at all) with the 6100 and 6150 integrated chipsets. Additionally, there are Linux issues with both ASUS and ABIT boards. DVI is only available on some of the 6100/6150 boards (weird!). I forget if there are any sound issues with the 6100/6150 boards (fans vs. passive cooling). Anyway - the 6100/6150 chipsets are out for me.

(3) I have had bad experiences with my current integrated graphics chipset motherboard in Linux. When I added my PCI ATI Radeon 7500 PCI graphics card and changed things over in the BIOS from the integrated graphics chip to the PCI graphics card, a lot of Linux distributions still only recognized the on-board integrated video chipset instead of the add-on PCI video card, and I get a blank screen on initial installation. There are work-arounds, but this has been a royal pain. This is a major reason that I do not want to build a computer with an integrated video chip - if I ever later do want to upgrade to a separate graphics card in the future, I do not want to gamble on facing the same kind of problems.

(4) Web surfing on my current machine is much faster with the add-on graphics card than with the integrated video chip. CPU goes to 100% for quite a while at times with the integrated video chip - long pauses - not so with the add-on video card. This is not subtle ? it is night-and day. I dunno why it happens - does typical web surfing involve a lot of 3D? (It doesn't look that way to me). One of life's mysteries, I suppose.

Any explanations?

Since I do a lot of web surfing, I would therefore prefer a separate graphics card in the new machine.

(5) On my current setup, all sorts of benchmarks - including hard drive benchmarks - run significantly faster when I am using a separate video card than when I am using the integrated graphics chip. That is true when nothing else is going on on the machine than running the benchmark in the command line ? not very graphics intensive! Benchmarks: HDparm and Bonnie++ in Linux, for example. Speculation is that the shared memory used by the integrated graphics chip or some aspect of graphics being done by the CPU may be may be slowing down the machine. Whatever the reason, non-graphics aspects of my current machine run faster when using a separate graphics card than when running the on-board integrated graphics. This experience encourages me to avoid integrated graphics with a new build.

I hope that all makes sense.
____________________________________________________________________________

To the present:

My major concern with the PCIe X 16 graphics board for this build is that Linux works best with nVidia cards, and nVidia cards - particularly Gigabyte nVidia graphics cards - have long had a reputation for fuzzier 2D (on CRTs, anyway) than Matrox or ATI. I do need good text 2D. If the DVI/LCD revolution had removed that concern, I should be able to proceed to this build with confidence.

I figure that I might as well get a passively-cooled Gigabyte card as I am getting a passively-cooled Gigabyte motherboard and I would think they would be compatible with each other. I do want to stay away for the Turbocache models ? I just want a discreet graphics card that does not use the computer RAM.

I am looking at two passively-cooled cards
GIGABYTE Geforce 6600LE - $75.99 from Newegg
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814125208
vs.
GIGABYTE Geforce 6600 - $87.99 from Newegg
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814125220

The second card is only $12 more that the LE card - it includes a bit more 3D capability which I doubt that I will make much use of at this time ? 256 MB of on board memory vs. 128MB with the LE model, 8 pixel pipelines vs. 4 with the LE model. I am wondering if it might make a difference down the road, however, if I ever want to go Windows Vista ? I understand that Vista is/will be fairly 3D graphics intensive but I am not really up on Vista requirements/optimal usage.

Also ? wattage and heat are concerns for a quiet build. Is there a way to find out the difference in wattage between the two cards? If the 6600LE runs significantly cooler than the 6600, that may influence me towards the 6600LE.


Any help would be appreciated.


Thanks again,

Suetonius

 

[Suetonius]

 

[Suetonius]

 

[Suetonius]

Again, my apologies for the empty replies - I seem to have been hitting the quick reply button instead of the regular reply button. I hope to avoid further repeating the error.
_____________________________________________________________________


ProviaFan,


My thanks.

I posted before seeing your post. It looks like you and I are thinking along the same lines.

May I ask your thoughts on the current Gigabyte 6600LE vs. the 6600 (both linked in my post, above?)?

Any way to learn about the wattage each card draws?

Any problem with your card in regards to the passive cooling?


And ? how do you feel about the 2D text quality of your Gigabyte 6600?

Adequate? Good? Excellent? Superb?


Thanks again,

Suetonius

 

[nullpointerus]

IIRC, Vista uses video memory to cache window drawing operations, so moving from 128MB to 256MB for $12 sounds like a good investment. Vista also uses shaders, so having a few more of those can't hurt. Having not used Vista, I can't tell you what to get, but as both Linux and Windows are moving to some sort of 3D-accelerated desktop, it's probably a good idea to get the better of the two cards.

The only other thing I would add performance-wise is to pick a motherboard with enough slots that you can upgrade your system memory to 2GB later (if need be). With mixed initial reports and beta software, it's hard to tell how much RAM you'd need with Vista. In Linux I've found that 1GB is enough, but whatever I was doing with Gnome caused it to eat RAM like crazy, and in any case that was before the 2.14 release.

If you are concerned with noise (since you are undervolting?), I would recommend going with a good case. Antec 3000BQE or 3000SLK-B are good cases; one of them comes with a good quality 350W power supply which should be more than enough for what you are doing with your PC. More importantly, those cases have *quiet* 120mm fans and don't resemble transformers or jet engines.

Ah, well, I'm going off topic...

 

[nullpointerus]

WRT wattage, I wouldn't worry about that at all with a 6600. I've only seen people needing to upgrade their power supplies above 350W when moving to cards much more powerful than a 6800GS. Pick a good brand-name 350W power supply, and you'll be fine. If you're going to use a Mini-ITX case or something like that, then those little 150-250W power supplies might be a problem...

 

[ProviaFan]

Originally posted by: Suetonius
May I ask your thoughts on the current Gigabyte 6600LE vs. the 6600 (both linked in my post, above?)?

If Vista is in your future, spend $12 and get the card with 256MB. My card is an [apparently now unavailable] model that seems to be slotted in between those two.

Any way to learn about the wattage each card draws?

Any problem with your card in regards to the passive cooling?

Neither of these cards should give you any problems with excessive power draw; I use a Seasonic S12 500 watt power supply which is perhaps overkill but provides plenty of headroom with very low noise output, albeit at some expense.

And ? how do you feel about the 2D text quality of your Gigabyte 6600?

With DVI, there have been absolutely no issues; I've never used the 2D output on a CRT of enough quality with a high enough resolution to be able to make any judgements about the analog output quality. There haven't been any issues with passive cooling, even in the accelerated Vista interface, though I haven't used Vista long enough to make that statement with 100% certainty.

Adequate? Good? Excellent? Superb?

I like it; I'd rate it as excellent in XP and somewhere between good and excellent in Vista with current beta drivers (but that should improve by release). I am considering going to dual displays, and may be doing more 3D work in the future, so chances are that it will be replaced eventually, but performance under a workload like yours is acceptable, and display quality is faultless.

By the way, I booted an XGL LiveCD on this system once, and XGL was more responsive than Vista, so there are no worries if you go that route (I actually use XGL full time on another system with much humbler specs including a Geforce FX5200 128MB, and it even runs fine there at 1152x864).

 

[Suetonius]

nullpointerus wrote:

The only other thing I would add performance-wise is to pick a motherboard with enough slots that you can upgrade your system memory to 2GB later (if need be).

The Gigabyte GA-K8NF-9 motherboard I am looking at has four RAM slots:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813128268

I figure I will stick in 2 X 512MB = 1GB of RAM to start with and I can always upgrade later to a total of two or three GB of RAM if need be by filling other two slots.

Am I missing anything here? That is, does this kind of motherboard prefer just two pieces of RAM such that I would be significantly better off getting 2 X 1GB = 2GB of RAM right from the beginning?

I would recommend going with a good case. Antec 3000BQE or 3000SLK-B are good cases

Great minds think alike. ;-)

(I plan on going with the SLK3000-B).

A single 120 mm intake fan in front of the hard drive with a Zalman fanmate to optimize fan speed for noise vs. cooling. The 120 mm fan on the power supply as sole exhaust if I can get a way with it. Possibly an internal fan aimed directly at the passive heat sink on the Gigabyte motherboard.

Samsung hard drive (quiet).

WRT wattage, I wouldn't worry about that at all with a 6600.

Understood.
I am planning on going with SeaSonic S12-330 330W - $56 from Newegg:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817151021

I figure that with the AMD 3800+ X2 having a maximum thermal design power of 89 watts, plus myself probably undervolting it, I should be fine.

However, it still sure would be nice to know the wattage on the Gigabyte 6600LE and Gigabyte 6600 graphic cards ? that is my one missing piece of the puzzle. I cannot seem to find that anywhere.

As it is, I will probably be fine just going with the Gigabyte 6600 graphic card.

______________________________________________________

ProviaFan,


Thank you for the information on your Gigabyte 6600.

Most helpful!

______________________________________________________


All.


Best regards,

Suetonius

 

[hans007]

i do have a linux machine as well. my main box is not a linux box, but i know that the i945g with dvi would work fine in linux (i made sure of this just in case i switched out).

the linux machine that i do have is a i915gv based one, (not using dvi, as it doesnt have a pci-e x16 port to install the add2-n in ). that said, i suppose if you are going to run linux, the ati chipsets from what i've heard aren't as good.

perhaps a geforce 6200 tc or something? i'm assuming you arent realistically goign to run linux games, as i dont think anyone well really does even though you can.



dual core linux could be pretty cool though. i'd also suggest you ujust get a am2 cpu for linux, might as well if you havent bought your stuff yet.

 

[Suetonius]

Follow-up on energy usage on the nVidia 6600 video cards -

I did a little more research and came up with the following, so I thought I would pass it along: DC power consumption on the nVidia GeForce 6600 cards seems to run at about 12.3-15 Watts at idle, 24.1 Watts at peak 2D and 27.6-43 Watts at peak 3D, depending on the article and on the card:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/gpu-consumption2006_8.html

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article314-page4.html

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article593-page4.html

It looks like the Seasonic 330 Watt PS (8A + 14A = 22A on the 12-volt rails) should handle an nVidia GeForce 6600 video card and an Athlon 3800+ X2 Manchester CPU without a struggle.

i'd also suggest you ujust get a am2 cpu for linux, might as well if you havent bought your stuff yet.

I understand that AM2 is a new platform. I think I'll stick with the 939 platform for now ? the bugs are probably pretty well worked out.


Thanks, All -

Suetonius