[Albert Lionheart]

I have been asked to produce a new system for someone who wants to do graphic design and video art, but not games. Processor will be something like a Q6600 on an Asus board with 2Gb fast memory, 10Krpm drive etc etc.
Anyone any opinions on a suitable graphics card, please?

[Daveskater]

You could go with a high end 8-series card, maybe an 8800GT if you can find one, or the nvidia Quattro or whatever it is they're called, they're supposed to be fancy pants graphic design/cad/etc cards. You could also use the 8800GTS 512MB if you can't get a GT.

Do they mind how much it costs?

[Albert Lionheart]

Good thinking Dave! ) fitted an Asus 8800 512 silent into a system the other day and it seems OK. I was looking for something with processing power rather than raw speed ans this would have an effect on the image rendering speeds.
I will have a poke at the Nvidia site although that is not going to be unbiased!

[Daveskater]

Cheers mate

I find that, even though it's a US site, Newegg is good for seeing what people think of products. And finding out what the amperage requirements of a card is

Either of the 8800's I said about would probably be able to render pretty well at good resolutions, seeing as they get good framerates on games and whatnot. You could always go with a GTX if their wallet stretched that far, seeing as it's pretty much the top 8 series model, other than the Ultra, which in my experience is nigh on impossible to find.

I really can't remember the name of those other nvidia cards if it's not Quattro, but I think it begins with Q and I think Ebuyer sell them.

[Albert Lionheart]

You have given me an idea - I have a shuttle box (subject of another thread somewhere) which is perhaps just the ticket for this dude as it has a 8800 card in it.
I just need to sort a screen now.......

[Daveskater]

Sounds good to me mate, off to Ebuyer it is then hehe.

[bushwhacker]

E6600, 8600GTS will be just sufficient.

[Albert Lionheart]

Cheers BW - the shuttle box I have in mind is already ready to go so might be the answer - CPU is a socket 478 Tsomething, 1 Gb DDR2, 8800 GT card. 200 Gb HDD. Stick a decent screen with it and off we go. Hopefully!

[Daveskater]

The only things I'd be concerned about is the amount of RAM and the CPU mate. Do you know what speed it is? On that socket I can't imagine it's speedy quick, but I don't know what they topped out at. The problem with having a too slow CPU is that it can bottleneck the GPU so it won't render the images as fast as it could with the Q6600, or even E6600.

Same thing with the RAM really, not enough and it might slow down the rendering, plus the program might use up a lot of RAM so you may need more. I wouldn't imagine a digital imaging rendering program is going to be easy on the resources

The rest of it sounds good, though!

Ooh, while I remember, here's the Ebuyer page for those cards I was thinking of, they're called Quadro. Close enough though hehe Graphics Cards Nvidia - nVIDIA Quadro/Matrox cards - Ebuyer. There used to be one on there for over £1,000

[Albert Lionheart]

I think it is a 2.13 Ghz.
This machine is not going to be used for gaming so I hoping that this will do.
The guy is going to run Corel Painter on it so according to the specs this is OK.
The specs from the Corel site are
Windows VistaTM, Windows® XP or Windows® 2000 (each with latest Service Pack applied)
Pentium® III, 700 MHz or greater - 256 MB of RAM (512 MB recommended)
Mouse or tablet 24-bit color display 1024 × 768 screen resolution 360 MB hard disk space CD-ROM drive

[Daveskater]

Ahh, that'll be alright then

What OS does the person want putting on it, or don't they mind?

[Albert Lionheart]

They'll have what I give them!
They are used to XP so will stick with that.

[Daveskater]

Haha fair enough mate

Personally I'd go with XP on that system too, Vista would be slower on the single core CPU and 1GB of RAM.

Albert = Jedi Master hehe