If the system is powerful enough then onboard vid should be fine. Dedicated cards these days are more for the high end gamer crowd.

That said I bought a cheapo Gigabyte NVIDIA card for $30 for my rig just to be brutally cautious. Frankly I think the thing might actually take up MORE resources. lol

I don't recall having to disable onboard video. The audio, yes. It's easy. The control panel in Win 7 is straightforward and if you want it even simpler google CNET + Win7 God Mode and it'll show you how to enable god mode in win7. It essentially gives you access to every single adjustable feature in Win 7 in a list form control panel. It's pretty awesome.

Cheers.

Beepster with windows 7 or 8 you need to have a good quality graphics card to get the full benefits of graphics processing. A hard core gamer may have multiple graphics cards to get the fastest screen updates (Frames Per Second). They can spend more for the graphics than they do on the computer. For just general computing such as word processing an on board graphics card is fine. For doing DAW work or video work you do need a good graphics card. 

If you rely on on board graphics you will also be using system memory and the kind of screen updates needed for a smooth display for VSTs and the like will suffer.

Using a DAW is not general computing.  

Hi, John. I realize that but if there is enough processing power on the system already Sonar should run fine. Seriously my vid card sucks and everything is working great. I could probably get away with not using it at all. The i7s also have graphics acceleration or magical fairies or whatever it is that make things easier on the system.

What I'm saying is OP doesn't need an expensive graphics card to run Sonar if his system hardware is decent... particularly the CPU. Obviously a good graphics card is always ideal but Sonar isn't draining resources to display graphics like a high end modern game would. Even then if there are issues due to graphics there are options to lighten the load. I was shocked at the price of graphics cards these days. Totally unnecessary IMO.

YMMV

Check this out . It may help understand the point I am making. 

I totally understand what you're saying John but for most stuff in Sonar it's not that big a deal. If you're displaying a bunch of intense mastering tools GUIs that need crazy refresh rates or something sure but with a decent processor and things set up well you shouldn't need an expensive graphics card. I brought this up with Cake tech support and after I described my system to them and mentioned my crummy card they basically said it was a non issue with my specs.

IDK... I just wouldn't want the guy to spend extra money on something unnecessary. If things go wonky then maybe look into it.

Meh... JMO. Depends on the situation I guess.

Beepster


Hi, John. I realize that but if there is enough processing power on the system already Sonar should run fine. Seriously my vid card sucks and everything is working great. I could probably get away with not using it at all. The i7s also have graphics acceleration or magical fairies or whatever it is that make things easier on the system.

What I'm saying is OP doesn't need an expensive graphics card to run Sonar if his system hardware is decent... particularly the CPU. Obviously a good graphics card is always ideal but Sonar isn't draining resources to display graphics like a high end modern game would. Even then if there are issues due to graphics there are options to lighten the load. I was shocked at the price of graphics cards these days. Totally unnecessary IMO.

YMMV

Ever since Vista the idea that a cheap graphics card will do is wrong. Vista used Aero which off loaded the screen updates to the graphics card. This improved 2d apps and the desktop appearance in general. Many saw Vista as slow and unresponsive because it was being run on old under powered gear due to a low powered graphics card. This has not changed except that hardware developers have adjusted to the new requirements. Also CPUs have gotten a lot more powerful. With a DAW like Sonar it needs all the CPU it can get. By using a low powered graphics card you put added strain on the CPU that your OS is meant to avoid. 

This is not just to have a good looking desktop it is for increasing the overall performance of the system that will give big dividends to Sonar.  

You don't need the power of a hard core gamer but an upgrade to the graphics card will be very useful for all computing running a modern OS. 

Beepster


I totally understand what you're saying John but for most stuff in Sonar it's not that big a deal. If you're displaying a bunch of intense mastering tools GUIs that need crazy refresh rates or something sure but with a decent processor and things set up well you shouldn't need an expensive graphics card. I brought this up with Cake tech support and after I described my system to them and mentioned my crummy card they basically said it was a non issue with my specs.

IDK... I just wouldn't want the guy to spend extra money on something unnecessary. If things go wonky then maybe look into it.

Meh... JMO. Depends on the situation I guess.

This is the problem it is necessary. We can't use the same hardware that we used with XP any more. 

I understand the need to keep costs down but DAW work is very demanding and its not the cheapest thing to get involved with.  

I'm just going by what Cake support told me and what I've experienced so far. The guys at support just said with my specs the graphics card shouldn't even come into play. I've got an i7 2600k and 16 GB of RAM... just for reference. I forget my vid card model but it is indeed a cheapo.

Not trying to be argumentative and definitely if the money is there might as well snag a nice vid card but it doesn't seem to be causing problems on my system.

Cheers.

This is the vid card I'm using...

http://www.newegg.ca/Prod...x?Item=N82E16814125392

Beep that card is not an underpowered card. You have DDR 3 plus its 1 GB. Cost is not the important issue its the technology that matters. Would a faster one be better, yes, but that card is not a poor choice.