What graphics card?

I am looking into changing my computer graphics card. Has anybody any knowledge about a good one for photo editing & also video editing.

I asume that it would need to be fast with a fair amount of memory?

What about an SLI configuration?

A quiet setup would be ideal.

Thanks

Colin

I'm not in a position to advise you on a card, but before others can do so, I think you need to state what sort of cards your computer supports (e.g. PCI, AGP, PCI2, PCI-express etc); also does your monitor require a VGA or digital style connector?

That's a hard one right now, Nvidia or ATI...

Sli/crossfire is not advisable, it can run great but for the same money you can get a single card with the same performance.

What chipset do you have on your motherboard, what money are you prepare to give out and what OS do you run?

Also how many monitors do you want to use, ATI support 6 now

Thanks for the replies,

The OS is XP but maybe Windows7 later.
Monitor running will be 1 with a digital style connector or VGA type
Interface is PCI-express

Chipset on motherboard not sure of (at work)

Thanks

You don't need a super-duper video card for photo editing or video editing. The former doesn't need a lot of resources, and the system CPU power and RAM are much more of a concern for the latter.

That said, if you're going to change your video card anyway, I'd go ATI or NVIDIA.

Consider getting one with TWO video outputs. You can then add a second monitor and use a high quality, high resolution on for the photographic work whilst having file manager and other general apps on the other.

Totally agree about getting one with two outputs. I wish I had that facility which I used to use on my old laptop.

Mike

Colin,

You would probably only want to consider an SLI or Crossfire setup if you were into 3D CAD modelling or more likely gaming. A single card solution will be fine for photo editing. Last time I looked ATI were the biggest bang for the buck, I currently use a PCI-E ATI Radeon 4870 with 1GB of memory, not the fastest card any more but no slouch none the less

Don't forget though you can gain a lot with a good video card with the current software and technology.
Video cards aren't just used for video processing any more but also for calculation.

I'm sure Adobe has it now in many of there current imaging editing software and it will only become more, it's already in the Apple and also in win7 I believe.

If you get windows 7 then it might be a good idea to get the new ATI 5xxx series, they are a bit expensive now for there performance compared to the ATI series before that but they have all the new features and technology in them so that means you're can use all features till the new windows arrive.

Stefan, powerful graphic card development is all about the generation of almost 100% 3D graphics in a gaming situation these days. Digital image processing doesn't use this capacity in anything like the way 3D gaming does. For this reason I would suggest Colin would be wasting his money going for a ATI 5xxx series, much better go for something like a 4xxx which can be had for around £100 mark and do everything he wants and more (still very capable gaming card). All IMHO of course.