i7' Graphics Cards ATI/NVIDIA vs Pro Tools

[Bro]

Hello..

I'm just looking for any info on graphics cards and compatibility with Pro Tools. I'm looking at getting either a Nvidia 9800GT or an ATI 4850.. something good! to go with my i7 build on an asus p6t mobo. If anyone has either of the cards or knows about ATI vs Nvidia and chip compatiblity with Pt's etc... or can suggest something else in the price range of those two as a recommended card with similiar performance... thank you guys

[guitardom]

i have ran a 9600gt and a 3650 both in my i7. both were 512mb cards and both ran well. both cards were around 100.00$ i am sticking with the nvidia for now.

[albee1952]

My rig runs fine with a $37 MSI GeForce nVidia 7300LE 256 card. Running a pair of 22" LCD's at 1680x1050.
BTW, if you have any issues with an nVidia card, try getting drivers from the nVidia site instead of the card manufacturer site. The MSI drivers were not working well, but a driver from nVidia runs great.

[DigiTechSupt]

FWIW - we've seen far fewer problems with ATI cards...!

[Vegadark]

Originally Posted by DigiTechSupt

FWIW - we've seen far fewer problems with ATI cards...!

I have heard this before, but why do you suppose that is? What about the graphics card / supporting software causes compatability issues? I mean it's not like PT is a very graphics intensive application. Is it a realtime pipeline to the processor bottleneck type of issue?

[TOM@METRO]

The reasons are not nailed down, but it seems that if there is a video card issue, it is more often than not an nVidia card/driver.
For most users they seem to be fine.

[BradLyons]

Originally Posted by DigiTechSupt

FWIW - we've seen far fewer problems with ATI cards...!

Agreed---I did some beta testing of our own Creation Station computers and ran into some weird problems with a few of the GForce cards that I didn't see with ATI.

[johnbhoy]

Why does having smaller sized graphics card help in pro tools. I have gforce 8800gt at the moment 512mb. I have an old nvidia 8400 kicking about,am iliklely to see less errors or better performance withthis card.I thought more ram on the card would actually of helped.most of my errors happen when there is a lot of graphics action on the screen.ie when using spectral analyser.could that be related??

[Keybeeetsss]

I had problems with ATI drivers so I ended up buying a 2nd Geforce card exactly the same model as my 1st... I knew that would work...

[albee1952]

Originally Posted by johnbhoy

Why does having smaller sized graphics card help in pro tools. I have gforce 8800gt at the moment 512mb. I have an old nvidia 8400 kicking about,am iliklely to see less errors or better performance withthis card.I thought more ram on the card would actually of helped.most of my errors happen when there is a lot of graphics action on the screen.ie when using spectral analyser.could that be related??

It seems to be more in the RAM is allocated. Larger RAM video cards seem to take more system RAM(I know it doesn't make sense, but I am not the only one that noticed).