Collecting anecdotes of large video card errors

[ilazir]

I currently have a dying laptop, and in a couple of months or so will begin building an i7 rig. Now, I'm a hobbyist, and thus hope to have a decent video card. So of course I pay close attention whenever anyone warns that having too much RAM on your video card is bad for PT in XP.

I went looking for examples of what I might expect if I were to ignore the sound advice of the sages/hobos here. Not that I think their advice wrong, but I might be willing to put up with some problems now so that I can have a good card later when W7 64 is finally qualified for PT. So I'd like to collect whatever anecdotes users here might have of actual problems/errors caused by having too much RAM on their video cards.


First off, I found this thread:

http://duc.digidesign.com/showthread.php?t=274637

So there's one example. Any others?



P.S. Note DigiTechSupt's post in that thread regarding the cause of video card RAM problems.

I'm still wondering how this could cause significant problems for PT. How much application window data does PT have for the GPU to process? Wouldn't this remain a static number no matter the size of RAM on the video card?

[Hotcrazyfruit]

iv got a 5850 1 GB card with no problems what so ever on my OC'ed i7 rig. mind you, i use my rig for everything. from triple screen gaming to pro tools. it would only make sense that a lower end card will suck less power off your CPU. leaving more room for PT.

EDIT: just for when you get your i7 rig, iv had good experiences with disabling HT and using 3 cores on the DAE. i dedicate the last core to running pro tools itself and windows. Good luck

[sunburst79]

My advice here would be to literally buy a 29.99 PCI video card that supports your monitors resolutions. Then wait till Win7 64 is approved. By then the card you originally wanted will be 1/2 price and you pretty much buy any card you want.

Or you can buy it now. The single biggest problem your likely to run into would be running out of RAM for VI's. You could get around that by printing instrument tracks as you go.

[TOM@METRO]

Originally Posted by sunburst79

My advice here would be to literally buy a 29.99 PCI video card that supports your monitors resolutions. Then wait till Win7 64 is approved. By then the card you originally wanted will be 1/2 price and you pretty much buy any card you want.

I'll say... What he said.

[ilazir]

sunburst, the trouble I have with buying a $30 card is two fold:

1. I'm trying to get my rig to be as cool and quiet as possible. I don't often find good reviews of low end cards. Naturally, everyone is reviewing the high end stuff. But even here on the DUC (as I'm calling it until they remove the duck logo), I haven't found much info on video cards in the way of "This card is very cool" or "This card is very quiet". How does yours run?

2. My goals are not the same as that of professionals. I do not need a 100% perfect PT computer. I just want something that will be sufficient for PT as well as gaming. That means I'll need to make sacrifices, of course. But I'm willing to make sacrifices on the PT side as well as on the gaming. As I said, I might be willing to put up with some problems, depending on what they are.


P.S. In case you've never heard of it: Audiosurf

[TOM@METRO]

Keep in mind that the 64bit driver for PT is "just around the corner". Once this is a reality, the 1GB gaming card will be fine as long as you have enough installed RAM for the 64bit OS. It may even come to pass that the beta W7 driver will work well for you. It has for many including myself.

[ilazir]

Yeah, the unknown nearness of the W7 drivers is what makes me unsure. I'm never quite sure what "soon" means to Avid. Another factor for me is I want two copies of Windows: one for PT and one for everything else. I already have an unused copy of XP waiting for my i7 rig, so I only need to buy one copy of W7 for everything else. But then when the W7 drivers come out, I'll see what version of W7 they recommend and fork up the extra dough when I feel it's time.

[TOM@METRO]

The difference between Professional and Ultimate is negligible and both have played well with the beta. I doubt that will change. But playing on the safe side is fine. It kinda' boils down to a guessing game on the video card because the PT driver availability is an unknown. A cheap card is a way to hedge your bet. A fanless card will solve the noise issue.

[ilazir]

So is W7 Home Premium undesirable? The large price difference between that and Professional makes me hope that the former will play fine with PT. But yeah, Pro and Ultimate isn't a big difference.