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Video Card Suggestions

post #1 of 7
10/2/07 at 11:56pm
Thread Starter 
I just ordered this monitor http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...647&CatId=2775 and I'm looking for video card suggestions to take advantage of its native resolution which I believe is 1680 x 1050. A card with both VGA and DVI is probably the wisest choice. I don't need anything for gaming; just video and photo editing along with web surfing. I have an older Dell P4 2.5 GHz running XP SP2 and am currently running dual monitors with a Matrox G400 card with 32MB. I don't think this will get me to where I'd like to go

Thanks for any suggestions. OBTW, under a $100 would be the ideal price range. Is that possible these days?
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post #2 of 7
10/3/07 at 5:59pm

Re: Video Card Suggestions

Any recent video card with current drivers should be able to do 1680x1050. It can have a single DVI-I (both analog and digital, with a DVI-to-VGA converter for the analog) or two separate DVI and VGA connectors. I would go for something fanless, unless your computer is so loud already you couldn't tell the difference

I just did a search on Newegg for PCI-E, fanless, between $50 and $75, and came up with 19 hits. Any of those would work. Drop the fanless and there are even more choices.

You might also make sure your current card has the latest drivers and see if it can handle 1680x1050. Normally, the configuration dialog will exclude modes that the monitor does not support. So boot it up with the new monitor and see what happens.
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post #3 of 7
10/3/07 at 6:33pm
Thread Starter 

Re: Video Card Suggestions

Thanks Ken.
I should mention that my computer is pre- PCIe so I guessing that I would be looking at maybe an 8x AGP card? Are there any chipsets to stay away from?
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post #4 of 7
10/4/07 at 2:57pm

Re: Video Card Suggestions

AGP will limit your options. For example, it looks like there are no AGP nVidia GeForce 8 series cards. But if you're only doing video and photo editing, it doesn't really matter. If you're actually watching a lot of video, as with a home theater PC, then there is the issue of nVidia's PureVideo vs. ATI's AVIVO to do cadence detection and deinterlacing. Although who's ahead in that game might vary from month to month.
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post #5 of 7
10/6/07 at 5:22pm

Re: Video Card Suggestions

Try here:
http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/10/..._under_100_tie

Looks like there are a couple nice choices in your range.
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post #6 of 7
10/9/07 at 8:34am

Re: Video Card Suggestions

Amazon has a bunch of AGP cards that will do all that you want and more.

I really like the Xfx Geforce 7600GT 256MB DDR3 Dual Dvi 560M Agp with DDR3 RAM dual Dvi outputs.
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post #7 of 7
10/9/07 at 11:16am

Re: Video Card Suggestions

Really, you could buy almost anything with an AGP connector and 128MB or RAM or more and it would do what you need.

The cheapest, few-tens-of-bucks-costing cards these days are wildly overpowered for normal desktop work already, and most of them are also quite sufficient to run Vista Aero just fine.

The only reason to go to a 7600GT even would be for gaming, IMHO. I had an ancient 6600GT and that was sufficient to game passably if you were willing to drop resolution and quality settings down. A 7300GS or even 6200 in Nvidias lineup would easily be powerful enough. Just make sure it has 128MB of RAM or more since you are going to run at 1680.
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