I'll admit that for personal/ gaming use I am indeed an AMD fanboy. I actually have the same MoBo as you (love it) in my HTPC with a Phenom II X4 810 and a Sapphire HD4890 (can't wait till the 6890s drop).

But for DAW use, I personally don't think it matters. It's all about what gets the job done.

Hi Seth,

I did some digging and the PNY 8400 is discontinued.

What do you think about this one http://www.newegg.com/Pro...400%20GS%20DMS%20512MB

I'm a little worried because I have a 9500GT with only 512 and it can't be chained. I believe it's non-sli if I'm getting my terms correct.

Bub,

That looks exactly like my card except its made by ECS instead of PNY. While the 8400 series are not SLI compatible, it really doesn't matter.

SLI, and AMD's Crossfire, essentially combine multiple cards to work as a single super-card. This is only beneficial when gaming, but has no effect on what we're doing with DAWs.

Having said that, video cards do not need to be SLI or Crossfire ready to be used in multiples in a system. Take my DAW, for example. My two 8400GS cards are not linked in SLI, but work as separate, independent video cards.

They show up in Windows as such and I can use all four of the monitor connections to separate monitors where in an SLI or Crossfire system, those are combined.

At the end of the day, don't worry about SLI or Crossfire compatibility for DAW use. And don't get hung up on buying exactly what I am using. If there's a newer nVidia or ATI card that's fanless and has multiple digital outs, then I'd probably go for that.

So I should be ok if I add a second 9500 GT do you think? It's cheap and has two DVI outputs on it, that would give me 1Gb total and 4 DVI outs if I'm thinking right.

I switched from PC gaming to a PS3 a long time ago so I'm really out of the loop on all the video card lingo and what's available.

Bub,

If you want to add a third and/ or fourth monitor to your system, then yes, adding a second 9500GT will be the way to go for you. But if you want to improve the performance of your video card and not add more monitors then adding a second card won't do anything. You'd need a new card.

Ok, I'm 99% sure I got it now. I had in my mind that putting a second 512Mb card in would up me to 1Gb. I was focused in on the 1Gb factor.

btw ... I have a Galaxy Nvidia 9500GT. I've had it for a year and it was horrible. Aero kept turning on/off by itself, I would have screen artifacts, and other things. I was about ready to yank it out and return it to Newegg but figured I'd try updating the drivers one last time. Glad I did because it fixed every problem I was having. It seems Nvidia is just getting the Windows 7 bugs worked out.

Seth Perlstein [Cakewalk
]

ducatibruce2

 

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.

 
It was the system memory overhead, as mentioned by djtrailmixxx, that triggered the question.
2 x 8600GT each with 512Mb here - monitoring utils such as RivaTuner indicate Sonar X1 running across 3 screens with lots of colour & movement uses less than 0.25Mb of video card memory, using latest NVidia drivers, under XP.
 
No emotional attachment to XP here, I'd be upgrading like a shot if only hardware manufacturers, such as Roland, released compatible drivers for some of their not so old gear ;)

Seth Perlstein [Cakewalk]

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.

I guess that I am speaking from a pre-2006 perspective, being an XP user.  I have been using a Matrox P650 128MB with dual monitors and it has worked great.  I still say that Matrox cards give the best image quality and colour depth.  Nvidia gaming cards have more up-to-date features, but are these features relevant when running Sonar?

Kev999


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

 
 
 
Absolutely NO!
 
WARNING! If you going to use Windows 7 you need NVIDIA or ATI! You need advance GPUs and a lot of Memory that take advantage of WINDOWS 7 platform on the graphic card. Matrox has non of that!
All graphic that you display in Windows 7 or VISTA runs by the GPU, not CPU as it did on XP32. You can have all graphic set to MAX, best graphic, and it will not take rescorces from the CPU. If you disable AERO in Windows 7 and VISTA that "some" fools do, all graphic will run on the CPU again like the same behavior as XP32. DONT DO THAT!!!! 
 
In WINDOWS 8 they say that they will disable the OPTION of disable AERO. To many fools out there think they are smart running XP32 tweaks on WINDOWS 7...then later on they come and say it doesn't work right... 
 
 
Also if you read the FINE PRINT that Noel have write, they already state that SONAR X1 and other products will come in a very near future with much more advance graphic then this first release of SONAR X1 "Skylight". This is just a start! I say: SWEET!
 
http://www.cakewalk.com/FinePrint/
 
Best Regards
Freddie    
 

Seth Perlstein [Cakewalk
]

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.

 
 
I'm more then happy that SONAR X1 take advange of AVX technology already. That's just awesome.
So today it make even more strong reasons to buy INTEL processor.  Who doesn't love and use INTEL already!
 
AFAIK you can run both CUDA and AVX in same platform. The problem is that CUDA are a time vampire if going to get the programing "right" in SONAR X1. DSP coding you don't do in one day exactly.
Anyway it would  be cool if we had that too in SONAR! After all its Christmas and you can always wish Santa for anything, right!
 
 
Best Regards
Freddie