2D performance and todays cards question.

[LonnusMaximus]

I am building a PC for my Aunt, who only uses 2D apps like Photoshop, Illustrator, and Quark. It is going to be an Athlon 2100 system with 512MB DDR333 and a 8MB cache drive.

Should I even give her a TI4200 for $130 or so, or is dropping down to a $60-90 dollar card going to look exactly the same to her. They don't play games at all.

Also, any suggestions for a card with great looking 2D... she is in Marketing.

Thanks ahead,

Lon

 

[stebesplace]

You have a few options here. First, any card will work well. Second, what price you want to spend, and third, if you want more than 1 monitor for working with financial programs.

If you are looking for dual video, at a good price with good performance, then a NVIDIA NVS 200 would do the trick with dual display built in.

Otherwise, any card will really work. The system will help with performance since it sounds beefy. Otherwise any video card.

-Steve

 

[LonnusMaximus]

 

[LonnusMaximus]

If any would work, then I would not see complaints about poor 2D display coming from high end 3D cards when I search on "2D" on the boards here. Dual monitors aren't needed, but clear, crisp images and color. Also color that is going to match the output... so color adjustment in the driver would be important also.

 

[nardvark]

pick up either a Matrox card or an older ATI card... a radeon 7500 should be a good choice, and should cost around $40-50, you can find lots of these and similar cards at http://www.newegg.com. a Ti4200 wouldn't be a good fit, as you'd be paying extra for 3D capabilities that wouldn't be getting used, and you'd be running the risk of sacrificing 2D quality.
as far as matrox is concerned, they're considered the highest quality 2D, but I don't know the product lines very well, so I'll make a request here for someone who does to give you the info.
a Ti4200 might actually look worse to her, and she definitely won't notice the extra 3D speed.
hope that helps.

 

[Rand]

If you just need good solid 2D visual quality and nothing else then a LeadTek or perhaps Gainward/VisionTek nVidia board would do decently.

Anything from ATi's Radeon series might be preferable though, and will give her extremely good DVD capabilities if she would utilize that.

Matrox is clearly the industry leader for 2D visual quality but the G4XX/5XX will be severely lacking in any respects but 2D and multi-monitor implementation, the average person may not notice the difference between ATi and Matrox however.

If your aunt is extremely concerned with 2D visual quality or running at unusually high resolutions the G4XX/5XX would definitely be the best bet however. It's undoubtedly far superior to nVidia/ATi in 2D graphics design support, and similarly their colour calibration for different environments/platforms/monitors is easily well beyond anything nVidia/ATi have.

Appian also comes to mind for 2D, but if you don't need multi-monitor capabilities then you can safely ignore them.

 

[Josephus]

I think it depends greatly on what type of monitor you are going to use with the system. If she's getting an LCD with DVI input, I would hazard a guess that just about any name brand adapter would be quite adequate and that the color fidelity will depend more on the monitor that the video adapter.

Anand still reccomends Matrox.....

Parhelia Review Matrox has always been held in high-regard for the excellent analog output of their graphics cards. Although many G400 users have since moved on to faster performing graphics cards, most of them miss the crisp display output of their beloved cards. In fact, the only users that don't are those lucky enough to have DVI displays that deal with a digital signal from the GPU where quality is not lost. But for the vast majority of users, analog displays are still an unfortunate reality.

 

[LonnusMaximus]

Great... thanks everyone.

I am going to go with the Matrox G550. She is getting a 19" Viewsonic Graphics series, she wants size, and is not willing to pay for that in a flat screen... which I never would either.