Any advantage to 4650 or 5450 over integrated 4200?

[bfromcolo]

My wife does not game, but she does do a lot of artistic work on her computer. Her system has a GA-MA785GM-US2H motherboard (HD4200) connected to a ASUS VW224T monitor. She has been messing around with color settings on her display, in Photoshop and with her Epson printer trying to get things to match up better. A couple questions:

- She has a low profile case and I happen to have a 4650 and a 5450 that would fit fine. Is there any advantage to upgrading from the 4200 for color management purposes?

- The installed video driver is an ATI driver 8.821.0.0 from 2011, the CCC verion has much fewer controls than I am used to seeing. Is this because the HD4200 doesn't support a lot of options, or would updating the driver give more choices?

Thanks

 

[Insert_Nickname]

First make sure you use the correct color profiles for both your monitor and printer. That alone can make a huge difference.

Second, it would not harm to plug that 5450 in. If nothing else for its compute abilities.

 

[KingFatty]

I've used both the 4290 and the 5450, but it was for internet/gaming and not color work.

One issue is that the driver development was split off, and I think now the 4200 series is using older drivers, whereas the 5XXX series cards (I think) still enjoy the current driver development. So if you stick with the 4200, you'll be using older drivers, whereas the 5450 opens up more recent options? Maybe from that perspective alone, make the switch. But please double-check my memory about where the cutoff is for driver development, to make sure the 5450 isn't also cut off? Also the 4650 might be below the cutoff too, so the best option would be the 5450 to get the recent driver support?

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Don't bother with a discrete video card. Just use proper ICM software and a hardware calibration tool.

This article has a good intro, and recommends a couple of calibration tools for the monitor.

http://photographylife.com/how-to-calibrate-your-monitor

Dunno what you'll want to do about calibrating the printer, though.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

I've used both the 4290 and the 5450, but it was for internet/gaming and not color work.

One issue is that the driver development was split off, and I think now the 4200 series is using older drivers, whereas the 5XXX series cards (I think) still enjoy the current driver development. So if you stick with the 4200, you'll be using older drivers, whereas the 5450 opens up more recent options? Maybe from that perspective alone, make the switch. But please double-check my memory about where the cutoff is for driver development, to make sure the 5450 isn't also cut off? Also the 4650 might be below the cutoff too, so the best option would be the 5450 to get the recent driver support?

Everything below the 5xxx-series is on legacy support. Latest driver for HD4xxx is the 13.1 release. And I read somewhere that windows 8 will only get the included driver for HD4xxx...

 

[Jimzz]

The 5450 as said will use newwer drivers but for me upgrading off the onboard was not using the system memory so the system felt faster in many task.

If you have the 5450 I would at least try it out and update the drivers.

 

[bfromcolo]

Thanks for your thoughts. I will go ahead and install the 5450 and update the drivers when I get a chance, the worst that can happen is it will free up 500M of system memory (although I don't think she is fully utilizing the 6G installed).