Matrox
wrote in message
I am going to build a Windows based PC for my father-in-law who uses
Photoshop. It will have 2GB memory, A64 processor with RAIDed SATA hard drives. My main question is which video card to use? The requirements for Photoshop does not ask for much. In some forums I’ve read in the past, some people claimed video cards used for CAD, like the nVidia Quadro video cards, work better with Photoshop. Does anyone know, or will any video card better than recommended requirements do as well? Any help or recommendations would be appreciated. Thanks!
Hi,
The best ones are nVidia Quadro FX and GeForce series and Wildcat. There are others too, but these are the best 🙂
There are others too, but these are the best
I wouldnt realy agree with this.
Yuo dont realy need anything with 3D on it, so dont spend more money jsut for 3D, unless you create 3D work or want to play games. But at the end of the day you dont realy have to worry to much, spend under £100 and you should still be ok.
The Matrox cards are good and the drivers are solid
spake thusly:
The Matrox cards are good and the drivers are solid
Absolutely Matrox. Best rated card ever for graphics. But if you want to play games too… you’re out of luck. Worst card for gaming, but they are made for the graphics pro, not gamers. And yes, there is a VAST difference. All of our machines run Matrox cards and I have one machine for games with an nvidia in it.
So in a nutshell
graphics = matrox
gaming = nvidia or ati
I agree with Len, haven’t used anything but Matrox and never had a problem. The suggestions by Vishal are ignoring some recent problems running CS2 with those particular video cards. Still being worked on.
If you check some of those posts, there was one guy (GLennUK I think) who tried a Matrox card in the same machine and it didn’t help. I think the problems are deeper than the video cards. I’m running a NVIDIA 5600 with no problems as I’m sure many others are as well.
Mick,
Are you using CS or CS2? I’m one of the many who are dealing with the performance issue on CS2. I ordered a Matrox Millennium P650 64Meg yesterday in hopes of getting CS2 to run properly.
I too feel the performance issue with the app runs deeper than the video card, but I wanted to upgrade anyway for dual monitor support. If it doesn’t fix the CS2 problem, no harm no foul. I’ll just re-install CS and wait for the fix to shake out of the trees.
Best regards
Larry
Larry, I’m running CS2 on an Athlon 2800 (18 months old) with 2 Gb of RAM, Asus V7-600 mobo, XPProSP2. I’m glad to say I’ve had no performance problems whatsoever and CS2 is slightly faster than CS. I suspect that the vast majority of users are probalby running fine as well. The threads here are not going to be a rperesentative sample but there is definitely a serious display refresh problem for some users. I hope you resolve your problems with the new card.
I appreciate all the responses! I’m sure my father-in-law will not be gaming with this PC. It will be mainly used for Photoshop. His main concern is what type of card will render the fastest, a gaming card (GeForce for example) or something like the Quadro that is better for things like CAD. He previously had an ATI 32mb Rage based video card which did fine, and the recommended specs do not call for much of a video card. I just thought that maybe something like a Quadro would be a better card for Photoshop. Thanks in advance for any other insight anyone can share.
I am in the same drill. building a new box.
I have nvidia at work, and have issues with getting up dated drivers. The most current is not available, and this is not unusual. How often do you all update drivers?
This seems to be a fix to cs2 running slow I am told?
How much mem on the card is good?
Thanks
Phil
Tommy,
I didn’t mean to hijack your thread, apologies. In most cases, and I believe that the general opinion would be that Photoshop doesn’t care how many thousands of 3D renderings a video card can do in a nanosecond, and in general terms responds better to a card with powerful 2D abilities. This would indicate that a card that’s great for gaming may not work well for Photoshop. I would concentrate on finding a card that geared toward 2D apps.
Mick: Thanks for the info. I also believe that the vast majority of CS2 users are loving life, and that I have the misfortune of being in the group who is not. I posted my system specs in my "Major slow down after upgrade" thread. I don’t have one of the "Super Boxes", but mine should, and has easily handled Photoshop. When I visit with other photographers I find the same mix of folks who are having the same issues as I am, and others with lesser machines that are running CS2 without any problems at all. Go figure.
I’m not one of those who is going to spew venum about Adobe all over the boards. It’s clear that there are many of us who are dealing with te performance issue and that Adobe is working on the problem. I’m sure that sometime soon Adobe will have a patch available and I too will be loving the CS2 life. 🙂
Adobe has a good track record for responding to the needs of their consumers, but an app as complex as Photoshop that requires a bit of tuning certainly wont happen overnight. But I’m confident it will come.
regards to you both
Larry
PS requirements are fairly low. If you have any name brand modern video card with recent drivers, it is likely to work. Often the decision needs to be the best card for a variety of software. Specifically, OpenGL requirements are important for video editing. Some cards work better in 3D environments including gaming, Maya, 3dMax, etc. Avid programs like NVidia cards better than ATI. Matrox is not ideal for video animation/editing programs. I discovered recently that Serious Magic Ultra 2 doesn’t like some NVidia Quadro cards.
So I would base my decision not on what is best for PS (which used to be an issue many years ago, but rarely is these days), but on what other programs you might run.
One of the determination factors in choosing a video card, is what the monitor is. There are various hi end monitors that require a certian level of card to perform properly. For example, if you got an Apple Cinema 30 (you should be so lucky :-), there are very few cards that can support it, and they are all pretty expensive.
Ron Hirsch
I am using CS2 on a wildcat and another one with nvidia quadro fx. it did initially give me a problem on the nvidia but wildcat is smooth. yes it expensive, but the results are fantastic. yes, i do feel that cs2 is a bit slow, even on my custom built machines (dual xeon 3.2 2gb ram 160gb hdd)but when i came back to cs on the quadro, it was fine.
Has anyone had a good experience with ATI X700 card?
They must be doing something very effective with it and catalyst 2.5 to generate quite so many blue screens of death?
For what it’s worth, I’m using a Radeon 7500 series card and it is working just fine. I don’t do any gaming, but apparently this card has some sort of fancy Open GL or something like that.
Fortunately for me, it likes Photoshop just fine.
In my case, from error notice to BSD in 7 days
Hey-ho it looks like it’s going back – the ‘puter I mean 🙁
deebs – can you present your problem in plain English please?
OK – it is not a difficulty (I hope)
I can get the system stable with no error messages or report options.
Any adjustment to hardware acceleration of the video card either
a) generates an ati error message instantly after OKing or APPLYing the change
or
b) generates an error message during close down (at the blue screen when desktop is no longer on display)
In the last few days a BSD screen {fatal system error} appears which requires a 10 second press on power button to close the computer.
At start up a report option appears when the above has happened.
At times the computer autoreboots if the BSD does not appear (reboots rather than shuts down I mean). Sometimes the machine does strange things like selects a whole row of icons rather than a single one, or the sound will just go off without being prompted. Yes, the weekend has been rapidly rearranged due to unforeseen circumstances 🙁
Present workaround is to go into msconfig disable most startup and non-Microsoft services. This seems to get the computer stable again.
Unwinding startup and services in msconfig one at a time with rebooting in between retains and keeps stability. Usually the drivers include bluetooth and Wacom tablet startup & associated services.
The system is stable or appears to be so. Adjust any hardware acceleration or video options on the X700 and BANG! = unstable system, stability returned by unwinding then restoring drivers/services in msconfig.
Usng the video card at zero, max or inbetween acceleration settings return spurious clumps onscreen and artefacts when using Wacom pen – even when the computer appears stable.
These aretacts take the form of black and white grids and seem to appear more frequently at certain sections of the screen. These sections change between different attempts at replicating the effect. (I mean it is locally consistent when it happens but not ‘globally’ consistent between happenings if that makes any sense.)
I wonder if the drivers are stackable? As ati ones are at the foot of the stack, getting them right means unstacking then restacking?
There is also an appreciable and annoying snag delay when using the Wacom pen. Onscreen events seem to snag then rapidly catchup but this also seems to apply a bit of distortion. For example a drawn short line gives: delay, snatch then draws a longer than anticipated line onscreen.
I hope this all makes some sense. The computer has 1 GB RAM, 500 GB on 2 SATA drives, running XP Pro (SP2 and recent downloads), has .NET distributable and update installed.
OBTW – USB transfers to either internal or external USB 2.0 cardreaders return abysmal transfer rates. Same objects on the same CF card timed in at 1 minute 23 seconds on the laptop, 15 minutes plus on the computer giving problems.
Does anyone have an asprin or 3?
Oops – I thought the monitor was acting up. It is a Viewsonic 171b and shows, for example, ll’s or il’s or wl’s or combinations of these letters (in PSCS startup for example) as having a reddish tinge and smudge rather than black text on white background.
The effect is obvious whether monitor is in digital or analogue mode.
If I use it as a second monitor from the laptop everything is fine and dandy – no reddish smudge about letters most prone to show it. Just good clean crisp black text on a white background.
This happens whether it is text on display or a captured screenshot.
deebs, that is pretty plain and my sympathies if this is a new computer. I have no really helpful suggestions beyond trying a new graphics card. The fact that you imply that the problem has deteriorated over a week suggests to me that this is a hardware and not a driver problem. I assume this is a name brand computer rather than a local build or you would be taking it back to the shop and swapping out the card. Mind sharing the name of the manufacturer?
Tiny.com Support has been pretty good but I tend to agree I think it is hardware related.
Perhaps it was sparked off by the video card? Although, to be fair, the USB transfer rates were abysmal from day #1 and same with the reddish tinge to text prone to show it.
I guess I’ll give them a second shout. If it repeats, well, it would suggest "operations beyond range of competence"
By the way, thanks for your interest. It helped to summarise my observations – copies of error messages and memory write errors now fill a couple of pages.
As far as I am concerned the system is unfit for purpose but I guess I’ll have to jump through the hoops and follow due process
I’ve never bought a Tiny machine so I’ve no experience with them but hopefully you can get sorted out quickly. Do you have an onsite warranty? I’m not going for a new machine at the moment because this one is still doing the job and pretty fast but I am keeping an eye out on what works and doesn’t work with PSCS2 at the moment just in case.
My present machine, which is about 18 months old now, had serious teething problems. I got a local dealer to custom build it and it was fine except he didn’t put in adequate cooling and the processor got damaged after a few days. It would just crash with a BSOD when doing anything processor-intensive in PS. Initially crashes were infrequent but after a week or so it became unusable. Fortunately the dealer was excellent on the customer service front and he replaced the processor. It did take a while to diagnose though. We changed graphics cards, memory (three times), motherboard, power supply, basically everything but the hard drives before he finally changed the procesor. Major hassle but fine now.
Cheers Mick I’ll bear that in mind.
I know people who have bought from the local shop rather than a main dealer stack ’em high retailer and the aftersales service is very much like you describe
wrote:
The Matrox cards are good and the drivers are solid
Little note beside the use for photoshop.
The matrox card strenght is the ramdac, and the tripple head editions.
But we actually had to removed the G450 and G550 from our compatible HW list for our pro software because of rendering limitations. This might become more common from other manufacturer.
So a quadro (or any high quality built ATI/ Nvidia card) might be a good idea if you ever plan on running software that use HW acceleration.
Stephan
deebs,
The computer has 1 GB RAM, 500 GB on 2 SATA drives.
OK, this might sound silly, but it’s easy to do: Make damn sure your SATA connectors are well-seated, both to the mobo and the drives.
I only mention this because I was recently tearing my hair out because of some similar symptoms (although they weren’t video-related). I know of at least two other people who have had problems with SATA connectors. They’re very easy to knock loose without realizing it, and if they’re loose, you’re screwed.
Hi Nick
Your words of wisdom are well taken but as the machine is still in 30 days "from new" I have no strong inclination to remove any cabinet fittings or look inside.
You know how PS behave when it needs prefs reset? That is just how the whole computer is behaving.
Odd things seem to hang while the rest of the machine whizzes away happily.
Then at the next startup a different set of things seem to hang hey-ho!
I am coming around to look at intel in a different light though. Maybe they don’t having the fastest gubbins and broo-ha but their whole system seems more stable. "The whole being better than the sum of parts" seems a pretty good descriptor
I have no strong inclination to remove any cabinet fittings or look inside.
OK, but how hard are these "cabinet fittings" to remove?
Good luck, anyway.
There can be an issue over time, that some connectors will ‘back out’ of their sockets, due to vibration and the heat/cool cycle of turning the machine on and off. If you don’t feel comfortable opening the case, then don’t do it. Take it to someone qualified.
wrote in message
I have no strong inclination to remove any cabinet fittings or look inside.
OK, but how hard are these "cabinet fittings" to remove?
Good luck, anyway.
Deebs –
On a completely different note, have you cleaned your system of spyware, adware and the like and do you have an antivirus program from a reputable dealer?
Ir so, do you update these security utilities regularly? What you are describing sounds like a machine gunked up with all sorts of crap running in the background that you didn’t want or ask for.
Try Spybot Search and Destroy and Adaware. Both free, both find nasty bloated junk and get rid of it.
Just a random thought.
Deebs is using a brand-new system. Unlikely to be gunked up, unless he went online without protection.
Besides, spyware and the like would not cause BSODs.
It takes a brand new system about 20 seconds to get gummed up without adequate protection. So it’s worth looking into, anyway.
Yup, first install was Kaspersky anti virus (part of software bundle) followed by a scan (on the grounds it’s swifter when the machine arrived with a default install before installing quite a lot of software, adjusting preferences then doing the scans).
BTW Photoshop scratch on 2nd drive with the rest of the set up is very impressive in operation. Tabbing or shift+tabbing between display options refreshes with hardly any lag at all. File browser is a totally different animal when there is a large reservoir to draw on.
Kaspersky AV and Windows Firewall provided protection until ZoneAlarms download and install. The only time computer had AV and Firewall switched off was when I initiated a broadband link – it is a requirement of the install.
Spyware and Ad-aware installed and yesterday gave all clear as did a full AV scan. Kaspersky AV is set to download on 6 hour cycles. But spyware dialogue boxes appear crudded up. Microsoft Antispyware Beta is also installed and I’ll a scan later today.
All 3 report everything is clear.
Installation of software took the following strategy: install one program, reboot, register and activate if required, use for a few hours to check system stable then on to the next install.
Using memory cards as "excedingly large floppies" returned a 30 minute transfer of 3 images at 133 MB. Sometimes the card hangs too, for example, choosing Eject has returned "card still in use, to eject now may damage data" or something along those lines when the files are not being accessed by any (known or visible) program.
A 400MB transfer to CF card on, let’s call it Dodgy, took 14 minutes. Same files took 2 minutes on the laptop.
I think checking SATA cabling seems a good idea but I seek to avoid twiddling anything just in case it has consequences with support and warranty – definitely worth bearing in mind for the future though.
Plans for the weekend included an external hard disk as glorified shuttle to move some 7 GB of stuff from the laptop to Dodgy. But the file transfers are going the other way now 🙁 It will be grand to take some of the load off the laptop eventually.
🙁
Oh! As an afterthought people may wish to try their own system setup.
The replicating features as discovered on Dodgy are:
1 Text
Start your favorite word processor
– type in Arial Unicode MS font sizes 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11 – use the following text "sell William’s stock" – repeat the text at double line spacing at font sizes given above using black text on a white background
– look for hotspots at 100% zoom
2 Artefacts (these are transient little things – nudging against them with a soft brush sometimes causes them to go away further suggesting they are not present in the data and reside purely in video card workings)
– using Coerl Painter, Wacom tablet with pen pressure enable on a size 10 brush – I think it was an acrylic brush but may have been digital water color (it’s on Dodgy and I don’t quite wish to see another BSoD or send error report request just yet)
– on my computer it is quadrant sensitive – or at least seems to be. If that quadrant starts throwing artefacts chances are the incident rate will be higher than in the remaining 3 but at least 2 quadrants show the beasties.
– use an easily repeatable shape such as Greek alpha or even an aleph null
Maybe more systems show these effect than my own?
deebs, SATA cables, especially the data cable, are quite often very cheap and flimsy, especially the ones that come supplied with most hard drives and/or motherboards. They don’t stay attached nearly as well as the old IDE ribbon cables. If your computer was shipped to you, there’s a good possibility that one or more of them got jarred partially loose. In my case (due to my own bumbling), the SATA data cable to my system drive was about half on and half off. Plugging it in securely fixed the problem, and I immediately ordered more substantial cables.
In any case, checking cable connections is an accepted first step in troubleshooting. I can’t imagine that opening your case to look at and push on those connections would void your warranty, but it is, of course, your decision.
In case you’re not sure what to look for, here they are:
<
http://www.nickdeckerphoto.com/stuff/sata_cables.jpg>
Also check the other ends of the cables, where they plug into the motherboard.
Then again, this may have nothing to do with your problem, but at least you’ll know that.
It is very good of you to say so Dana. Thank you!
I needed a dash of positivity \_ tough weekend _/
Webdiary part 1
1 – Restored Dodgy
2 – before installing any hardware or software and running on USB PNP mouse and keyboard tried to adjust video card hardware acceleration
3 – A** control panel failed to initialise properly because no A** driver is installed or A** driver is not working properly. The A** control panel will now exit
4 – apologies to any organisation called A**
