Importance of video card?

[richardsfault]

I had been using a very outdated 900 MHZ Athlon system with 384mb RAM. That had worked more-or-less fine with CS2, Capture 4, and 6 MB D50 files, but upgrading to a D80 with 10 MB files and Capture NX put an end to all that.

I have upgraded to an Athlon XP 2000+ and 1 GB RAM for very little cost. Still 5 YO technology, but enough except for one remaining issue:

When zooming between "View at 100%" and "Fit screeen" image sizes in Capture NX, the image window will sometimes stay black for a long interval. Sometimes it is so bad that I close the file and start over.

My PC has a old Riva TNT2 AGP video card with only 32MB of RAM.

Would upgrading my video card to 256MB+ help with this, or is it a CPU/memory issue?

[bbailey]

I know that CS2 had/has an issue that causes really slow performance with video cards with less that 128MB of RAM (link). I would check to see if there is a similar issue with the software you are using. I would think the processor and CPU would be ok though as they are similar to what I have on several machines.

One way to check is to check the "performance tab" in the windows task manager. This should give you a very basic indicator of how much processor and memory is being used when you try to perform a task. So open it, then run a task that you think is slow while looking at that tab. It is hardly scientific, but if they CPU and memory are not maxed out for an extended amount of time, something else may be the cause.

[KdLaneJr]

Upgrade your video card (if you can). You don't need a super expensive, super cooled, dual slot gaming card. But any AGP card with 128-256mg of ram onboard will definitely take the load off of your processor and speed up your video.

I said "if you can" at the beginning of this post, because I don't have a clue where you would find a new 4x AGP card right now, let alone a 1x AGP card. I'll admit it's been a while since I've looked for a video card.

Good luck on your search.

I'm running on an XP2600+ with 1gb ram and used to use an ATI AIW 7500 with 64mb DDR. When the Television portion of that card failed, I went backward to a Matrox Millenium G450 Dualhead and I don't have any trouble running CS2 or CS3 on it.

Since I no longer have a need for a video card with a TV tuner onboard, I should probably also look for a better video card for this system.

Ken

[Daniel Bates]

You don't need anything like a Quadro FX or a FireGL to run Photoshop, but a decent consumer card (256 MB or so) helps a lot.

[darktiger]

Originally Posted by Daniel Bates

You don't need anything like a Quadro FX or a FireGL to run Photoshop, but a decent consumer card (256 MB or so) helps a lot.

I agree.

In saying that, I love(and can) tell the difference between my 640mb 8800GTS at home and my 128meg radeon 1300xt at work. (Besides videocard, hardware almost the same.)