which vga card?

nameIess

New Member
hello all, I'm building a new computer, and i'm wondering...
If I have to choose from only Gigabyte, MSI, ASUS and intel mobos, which one should I choose? and why?
will I be able to use my current ram? (kingston ddr2 on p4 mobo).
when buying ram, what kind of features should I look for? like buffer and stuff.

regarding video cards, so is nvidia better than ati? which models?

another thing,
on a pc, the vga cards are used only in gaming (as far as i understand). the rest of the time, the whole graphics processing are dependent on other components of the computer, unlike mac which allow the whole graphics processing to be done by the VGA card, leaving the rest of the processes for the processor.
now i'm not really into video games, and that feature i just mentioned is not mainly for video games. it is perfect for image editors (mainly running photoshop).

so the question is, has pc become like mac in enabling the vga card in dealing with display and graphics? (whats the point of spending a 600 bucks on a vga card similar to the one in MacPro [$3K] If i'm not really going to get any benifits from it when doing my regular work which is working on pictures in photoshop).

thanks for your help and time :)
 
I have a Asus motherboard atm.. and im really happy with it.
Gigabyte, Asus, MSI and Intell are all actually nice manufacturers (never had trouble with any,. altough... i've never had an Intel motherboard)

as for the grafic's card question.. I dont quite know what your question actually is.. the only $600 card would be the 8800GTX.. and thats purely for gaming. the only other cards you could mean are the Quadro cards i think.. and those are CAD-cards (mainly for rendering large pic's, so a load of textures)

feel free to correct me if im wrong.. but i think a x1300 for example is already more than enough for photoshop =o
 
I wouldn't worry about brands to much, because in my experience they havn't played that big of a role in performance and reliability. Get whatever board will work your you for the price you want to pay.

And as far as your video card goes, its being used all the time, maybe not to its fullest potential but a video card in a computer is being used as long as the computer is on and there are things displayed on the monitor.

And NO, nvidia is not better than ati NOR is ati better than nvidia. Don't buy into the brand loyalties and all the fanboy-ism of a particular brand. It depends on what card you want to buy and what games you want to play. Just because the newest nvidia card is better than the newest ati doesn't make them any better.

Back when nvidia had the 6800gt and ati had the x800pro, the x800 smacked the crap out of the 6800. It just depends on the particular card.

Also some games are more optimized for a particular card, for example, counter strike source or half life 2 are more optimized with ati while unreal tournament and doom3 are more optimized with nvidia. The difference is hardly noticeable though. It just had to do with the gaming engiens the cards were focused for.

So for video cards just do some research and find out what card performs well for what you want to do. You can also check out Tom's Hardware Guide's article about the best gaming cards for the money. Its an older article but it still had some good information in it and lists both ati and nvidia cards.
http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/09/26/the_best_gaming_video_cards_for_the_money/
 
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