KVR Audio

snezhinskproject · Post by **snezhinskproject** » Thu Jul 01, 2004 3:57 pm

Hi guys,

I've got an old system with P3 800MHz, ABit BE6-II mobo, Matrox G400 32Mb graphics card, 768 Mb RAM, 2x Seagate 80Gb hard drives, CD writer, DVD drive, Windows Me.

I am going to upgrade to P4 2.8GHz, Asus P4S800, 1 Gb RAM, Windows XP. Of my current system I'm looking to keep as much as possible, i.e. case, hard drives, CD/DVD drives etc.

My question is, will I need a new graphics card? I have no interest in games, this system will be purely for music and a separate boot system for usual word processing, internet etc. Will my old Matrox card even work in this system? If it does, will it slow it down? If so, what level of card will I need to buy to have the system running well?

Thanks guys, Tom

hjack · Post by **hjack** » Thu Jul 01, 2004 4:10 pm

i think you´re ok with your matrox ... riva 32 here
... but i´m not an examople to anybody lol

rlabz · Post by **rlabz** » Thu Jul 01, 2004 7:02 pm

snezhinskproject wrote:Hi guys,

I've got an old system with P3 800MHz, ABit BE6-II mobo, Matrox G400 32Mb graphics card, 768 Mb RAM, 2x Seagate 80Gb hard drives, CD writer, DVD drive, Windows Me.

I am going to upgrade to P4 2.8GHz, Asus P4S800, 1 Gb RAM, Windows XP. Of my current system I'm looking to keep as much as possible, i.e. case, hard drives, CD/DVD drives etc.

My question is, will I need a new graphics card? I have no interest in games, this system will be purely for music and a separate boot system for usual word processing, internet etc. Will my old Matrox card even work in this system? If it does, will it slow it down? If so, what level of card will I need to buy to have the system running well?

Thanks guys, Tom

You don't mention whether it is a PCI or AGP card, but either way should be fine. If you're not planning on gaming, that card should be more than enough. 32MB is plenty for plain old 2D graphics, and Matrox is known for their quality 2D. It certainly shouldn't "slow down" your machine, as 2D graphics have been fast enough not to make a difference for quite some time now.

DevonB · Post by **DevonB** » Thu Jul 01, 2004 7:06 pm

I had a G450 in my main DAW on a 1.7ghz and now in the 2.53ghz, and just upped it to a G550 so it wouldn't interfere with my UAD-1 card. Upgrading the card fixed my problems! Woohoo!

Devon

Kingston · Post by **Kingston** » Sat Jul 03, 2004 2:01 pm

DevonB wrote:I had a G450 in my main DAW on a 1.7ghz and now in the 2.53ghz, and just upped it to a G550 so it wouldn't interfere with my UAD-1 card. Upgrading the card fixed my problems! Woohoo!

Devon

Oh cool. I heard of the Matrox troubles with some stuff. I might even recommend this to some from now on. (if cheap enough)

So no troubles with 550 whatsoever?

Alive In Chernobyl · Post by **Alive In Chernobyl** » Sat Jul 03, 2004 2:11 pm

Matrox 550 is the card many software company recommend to use

This get my recomendation too!

Ford Prefect · Post by **Ford Prefect** » Sat Jul 03, 2004 2:18 pm

I got a fanless ATI Radeon 9600 8X, 128Mbs of RAM for 65 bucks and it made a world of difference over my shitty Radeon 9000 128 4X(that had cost me 90 bucks way back when...) with a regular fan on it...could be a newer driver thing too, but the price is small overall for the better behavior and reassurance...

wgreenlee1 · Post by **wgreenlee1** » Sat Jul 03, 2004 2:59 pm

Upgrade to at least a 64MB card perferably to a 128MB video card.

Kingston · Post by **Kingston** » Sat Jul 03, 2004 3:04 pm

wgreenlee1 wrote:Upgrade to at least a 64MB card perferably to a 128MB video card.

For music and a separate boot system for usual word processing and internet?

Why?

Untill longhorn with its major desktop graphics upgrade, due like 2006, there simply no need. Even then you can still run the XP style legacy graphics apparently.

Alive In Chernobyl · Post by **Alive In Chernobyl** » Sat Jul 03, 2004 3:31 pm

Kingston wrote:
wgreenlee1 wrote:Upgrade to at least a 64MB card perferably to a 128MB video card.
Why?

Because software with a lot of bitmap take a lot of video memory. This is most audio software. It will work without but make performance less by using pci/agp more to communicate with system ram. This mean more interupt then this makes less latency for soundcard.

Remember item not displayed on the screen at still kept in memory too and painted also to a backbuffer.

DevonB · Post by **DevonB** » Sat Jul 03, 2004 7:06 pm

Kingston wrote:
DevonB wrote:I had a G450 in my main DAW on a 1.7ghz and now in the 2.53ghz, and just upped it to a G550 so it wouldn't interfere with my UAD-1 card. Upgrading the card fixed my problems! Woohoo!

Devon
Oh cool. I heard of the Matrox troubles with some stuff. I might even recommend this to some from now on. (if cheap enough)

So no troubles with 550 whatsoever?

No trouble so far. Been in there a week or two now, and have rendered with the UAD-1 as well.

Devon

Stupid American Pig · Mon Jul 05, 2004 12:40 pm

all I can say is that I would get a model without a built in fan if this is going to be a serious DAW. BTW 32mb should be MORE than adequate for a card unless you run above 1600x1200 at 32 bits. At the worst, you may see a slight lag at high levels of zoom when you try to scroll. I recently switched to a TNT2 32mb(fanless) from a fanned Geforce 3 64mb and notice no difference in performance except *maybe* in the scenario above..

snezhinskproject · Post by **snezhinskproject** » Tue Jul 06, 2004 12:15 pm

much appreciated guys

PC upgrade - is my graphics card OK?