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Graphics Card Choice

post #1 of 11
8/18/06 at 7:02pm
Thread Starter 
Im looking for help on deciding which graphics card to go with. I will not be doing any gaming on this computer whatsoever. The main intentions are to use as a media machine ripping, downloading, encoding, and burning video files. What else should i consider when picking a GPU if i will not be gaming?
Thanks for the help.
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post #2 of 11
8/18/06 at 8:17pm
intergrated graphics intel or nvidia or ati its all fine. intel 900 950 nvidia 6100 6150 watever. all the media ripping encoding and burning videos are cpu powered so good gpu useless at it. you might want to get a good harddrive also 7200rpm
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post #3 of 11
8/18/06 at 8:38pm
Agreed. Get an Intel GMA 950 or ATi x600 or nVidia 6600, 2GB of RAM, 7200RPM HDD (preferably 2 HDDs that you can RAID), and a 2Ghz or faster dual-core CPU. Perfect for ripping/burning/editing, etc.

EDIT: even without gaming, getting a low end ATi or nVidia with dedicated VRAM will make the computer more "snappy", since the CPU can offload more graphics processing to the GPU. This will only be more true once Vista is out.

Regards,

zakaluka2.
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post #4 of 11
8/20/06 at 10:42pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by zakaluka2
Agreed. Get an Intel GMA 950 or ATi x600 or nVidia 6600, 2GB of RAM, 7200RPM HDD (preferably 2 HDDs that you can RAID), and a 2Ghz or faster dual-core CPU. Perfect for ripping/burning/editing, etc.

EDIT: even without gaming, getting a low end ATi or nVidia with dedicated VRAM will make the computer more "snappy", since the CPU can offload more graphics processing to the GPU. This will only be more true once Vista is out.

Regards,

zakaluka2.


I agree, dont wast money on a high end gpu if your not going to use it much.

But do get a low end Dedicated gpu at least. Or you wont be doing much gaming at all.
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post #5 of 11
8/22/06 at 2:58am
ya thats right eh i reckon zakaluka;s suggestion of that x600 is good... ati is goooooood, and should be fine for your purposes... had a friend buy a ibook with a pretty good ati x1400 i think, but she doesnt use it for anything so that 2500 was not really well spent...
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post #6 of 11
8/22/06 at 5:55am
I would certainly get a 200m ATI integrated card. Its super cheap and still runs stuff totally fine. I bought my notebook for school and was surprised when I tried some of my games on it. I didn't think that they would run at all, but they do.

Although integrated video is fine, stay away from GMA 9xx if you can. That is bottom of the barrel type stuff. Because you're not going to be gaming, disregard the suggestions of getting x1400, x1600 etc. That will unneccesarily add at least 500$ to your notebook. If these GPUs were cheap, I would have purchased a laptop with one of them. Bottom line: stay away from dedicated GPUs if you're not going to be gaming hardcore. It will be a complete waste of your money.
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post #7 of 11
8/22/06 at 11:32am
Quote:
Originally Posted by jasonhoward64
I would certainly get a 200m ATI integrated card. Its super cheap and still runs stuff totally fine. I bought my notebook for school and was surprised when I tried some of my games on it. I didn't think that they would run at all, but they do.

Although integrated video is fine, stay away from GMA 9xx if you can. That is bottom of the barrel type stuff. Because you're not going to be gaming, disregard the suggestions of getting x1400, x1600 etc. That will unneccesarily add at least 500$ to your notebook. If these GPUs were cheap, I would have purchased a laptop with one of them. Bottom line: stay away from dedicated GPUs if you're not going to be gaming hardcore. It will be a complete waste of your money.

I don't know where you get the $500 figure from. The x1400 in my inspiron 6400 added 100 bucks to the price over the base GMA950.
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post #8 of 11
8/22/06 at 4:06pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by danimal1968
I don't know where you get the $500 figure from. The x1400 in my inspiron 6400 added 100 bucks to the price over the base GMA950.

Definitely go with dedicated graphics if the upgrade doesn't cost much more then integrated. It will benefit you greatly in 3D applications and even in watching DVDs and things.
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post #9 of 11
8/22/06 at 4:43pm
burnin wat are you talking about? the built in gpu arent that bad anymore upgrading from that to dedicated makes no difference watch dvd man
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post #10 of 11
8/22/06 at 8:36pm
The 855 in the tecra in my sig palys DVD's without a glitch. Heck even the 8mb S3 in my old P3 can do that.
The only real benefit of a dedicated card is for 3d apps. Some say that having one makes the laptop all around snappier, which could be true, but if you keep the OS clean and have enough ram it will run plenty snappy even with an integrated card.

In OP's situation, I wouldn't look for anything with a dedicated card, but when it came down to deciding between 2 laptops, all else being the same or if I had the option for it I'd go for a low end dedicated card. Don't let the card be a deal maker/breaker for you.

As for what else to look for, just get a big enough hard drive for what you need and have plenty of space to grow into. Also go for either a 5400 or a 7200 rpm. Unless you're a power user, you won't really notice much difference between them, but both are substantially better than a 4200rpm drive.

Make sure to get enough ram. a single chip of 512 as the absolute minimum (that would make it easier to upgrade to a gig or more if youwant to later on), but a gig would be better (either 2 x 512 or 1 x 1GB).
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post #11 of 11
8/22/06 at 9:03pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by aintz
burnin wat are you talking about? the built in gpu arent that bad anymore upgrading from that to dedicated makes no difference watch dvd man

High-Def content with VC-1 and H.264 decoding is farely demanding on the graphics card. Regular DVD content is only 480p while HD is 720p and 1080i. A dedicated graphics card would also be helpful if you plan on switching to Windows Vista because i don't know how well integrated graphics are going to run Aero.
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