The best non-gamer cards are made by Matrox.  I would go for this one.

Looks like that card only has 128 megs of ram and Seth says "What I'd look for is a card with 1gig of RAM at least"

Matrox was great pre-2006. However, their cards don't support Aero for the most part, and they are very expensive.

FWIW the card that Kev linked to said on the bottom of the page that it only has 200 and XP drivers. Not much good in 2010, IMHO.

The big draw of their cards used to be that they supported three monitors per card. This was big in the days of AGP and when dual-head cards were a luxury. But now with PCIe and most cards supporting anywhere from 3-6 monitors per card, Matrox no longer has that edge.

Personally, I wouldn't purchase one of their cards these days.

ducatibruce2

Seth Perlstein [Cakewalk
]

Sven,

Yes, I would bet that upgrading your GPU will solve your issue. Again, you don't need a high-end card, just something with at least 1gig of RAM form the modern families of AMD or nVidia cards.

If possible, purchase from a store that allows returns in case your issue persists. Here in the States we have a chain called Fry's which absolutely rocks for this.

Seth,
 
Does the 1Gig memory suggestion apply to XP32 (ie without Aero)?

Great question. I would say yes, although XP uses the GPU's memory differently than Vista/ 7. From what I understand, though, the GPU engine in X1 is there regardless of XP/ Vista/ 7.

Quite frankly, though, I'm not sure if having 1gig of RAM would cause any harm in XP. It's been so long since I've used it for a DAW, my XP mind is kind of blank.

Karyn


So if we're not going to see CUDA support in the near future,  how long before get to use our GTX580 to display the console view in full photoreal 3D ( I mean real 3D) with audio clips floating by over the top like a shoal of fish in mid air?







(ok, maybe I need to log off and go to bed now...)

I'm not saying for sure that we won't ever delve into the CUDA waters. But I'm not saying it's on the docket, either. I understand how cool it looks on paper, but I think it's only fair to mention the downsides of DSP in a native system.

Not to mention the extreme amount of power we have with each new rev by Intel and AMD. I guess if we had to choose between getting SONAR hooked up with CUDA somehow and and coding SONAR to take advantage of the latest stuff Intel is doing, like AVX, I'd choose the latter.

Having said all that, being able to use one's GPU for video rendering would be awesome, although SONAR is not a video editing app like Vegas or Premier.

And the 3d thing would be pretty cool, too, as long as it didn't require glasses and would work with a Kinect-type system a la Minority Report.

koikane

Seth Perlstein [Cakewalk
]

Oh, and FWIW the cards I've got in my systems are 2 x AMD HD4350 1gig (fanless and dual DVI) and also 2 x nVidia 8600GS 1gig (fanless and dual DVI). They both run X1 exactly the same.

Good to see some recommendations. My card is definately not fanless and is a bit old as well. Can somebody that is a bit more tech savvy help me with a reccomendation for a new video card.  A link to my mobo's info is http://www.intel.com/cd/channel/reseller/asmo-na/eng/products/desktop/bdb/dg33fb/feature/index.htm.
My computer specs are below.
 
The most confusing part to me is if the card will work with my mobo. Any help would be great. I need to have a dual output as I currently have two monitors.
Thank you,

Good News, you're motherboard should be able to support any of the currently sold PCI express cards as they are backwards compatible with PCIe 1 spec slots. Go to newegg.com and serch for a card that is silent, has 1 GB of ram and requires no additional powersupply connections. Also, you should consider your monitor connection type. If your monitors have DVI or HDMI connections, it is best to use those over VGA, it just looks better. here is a search that I did that has cards that should meet your needs (no nvida/ati bias in search i swear): http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007709+600029795+600007779+600007856&QksAutoSuggestion=&ShowDeactivatedMark=False&Configurator=&IsNodeId=1&Subcategory=48&description=&Ntk=&CFG=&SpeTabStoreType=&srchInDesc=
 
 

A1MixMan

djtrailmixxx


I reccomend this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102882
NVIDIA drivers are responsible for the majority of BSODs in Windows since Vista and now Win 7

How do you know this? Is this a fact? Is there more info somewhere on this? I have NVIDIA 9600GT in Win7 do have some crashes now and then.

I'm not doubting your experiences with nVidia cards, but I use two 8400GS PCIe cards in my DAW and have never experienced a BSOD with them.

These are what I have ... http://www.frys.com/produ...sr:SEARCH:MAIN_RSLT_PG

Having said that, before I bought mine I did a bit of research and found out that a similar card with the same specs made by Zotac would frequently overheat and cause problems. People with the PNY card I ended up buying never had those issues, so I got them.

It could be that troubles with nVidia are due to a specific manufacturers card as opposed to the driver.

Seth Perlstein [Cakewalk
]

ducatibruce2

Seth Perlstein [Cakewalk
]

Sven,

Yes, I would bet that upgrading your GPU will solve your issue. Again, you don't need a high-end card, just something with at least 1gig of RAM form the modern families of AMD or nVidia cards.

If possible, purchase from a store that allows returns in case your issue persists. Here in the States we have a chain called Fry's which absolutely rocks for this.

Seth,

Does the 1Gig memory suggestion apply to XP32 (ie without Aero)?

Great question. I would say yes, although XP uses the GPU's memory differently than Vista/ 7. From what I understand, though, the GPU engine in X1 is there regardless of XP/ Vista/ 7.

Quite frankly, though, I'm not sure if having 1gig of RAM would cause any harm in XP. It's been so long since I've used it for a DAW, my XP mind is kind of blank.

Win XP 32bit will have to include the one gig of video ram into its total memory footprint (4 GB limit). So, if you have 4 gig of system ram, the bios/OS will end up excluding the one gig from available system ram. POSSIBLY an issue, most likely not. Thats the thing with no system ram based memory like hard disk/DVD drive buffers, UAD card memory and of coarse video memory. With a 4 GB limit, the OS can only address the amount not taken by said devices. This is why when someone has 4GB of RAM installed on a 32 bit OS, they never see the whole 4GB if they actually look for it.

Ah, ya, the whole shared memory fun of 32-bit living. If you;re still using XP then I'd say a video card with 512megs would probably suffice.

My Win7 system actually has two 512meg cards. One card powers a 27" 2048 x 1152 monitor while the other powers two 1280 x 1024 monitors. I've never had an issue with graphical related stuff on there on either monitor. X-Raying is smooth, moving windows, resizing stuff, etc.

Seth Perlstein [Cakewalk
]

A1MixMan

djtrailmixxx


I reccomend this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102882
NVIDIA drivers are responsible for the majority of BSODs in Windows since Vista and now Win 7

How do you know this? Is this a fact? Is there more info somewhere on this? I have NVIDIA 9600GT in Win7 do have some crashes now and then.

I'm not doubting your experiences with nVidia cards, but I use two 8400GS PCIe cards in my DAW and have never experienced a BSOD with them.

These are what I have ... http://www.frys.com/product/6105379?site=sr:SEARCH:MAIN_RSLT_PG

Having said that, before I bought mine I did a bit of research and found out that a similar card with the same specs made by Zotac would frequently overheat and cause problems. People with the PNY card I ended up buying never had those issues, so I got them.

It could be that troubles with nVidia are due to a specific manufacturers card as opposed to the driver.

Driver issues come and go, everyone gets bitten. This is the only thing I could find, but I remember a few different and more recent reports that were not very favorable to NVIDIA: http://www.engadget.com/2008/03/27/nvidia-drivers-responsible-for-nearly-30-of-vista-crashes-in-20/ . My initial reporting is of PERSONAL bias though. I havent used many NVIDIA cards since the 6800 days, and most recently, my onboard ATI video device on my work PC (Information tech nerd desktop) has issues with some flash content. Your mileage may vary. As Seth has said, for a dedicated DAW, get the card that meets your needs, price, whatever.