Business cards vs. gaming cards....differences?

[DBissett]

I've been running business graphics cards for a long time, first Matrox and more recently a low end Quadro on a trading computer. Occasionally the screen doesn't print charts fast enough..either my CPU or the video card is choking... and I'm thinking about upgrading the video card to an ATI 4600 or 4800 series. The specs look far better than what I'm using, but I don't see what's basically different about the "gaming" cards vs. the business video cards except for 3D vs. 2D images. Is there more to it? Thanks.

 

[VirtualLarry]

You might want to switch back to XP. Win7 does not offer 2D GDI acceleration anymore, which can cause lag in certain instances. There was a thread here on how Win7's GUI was like 7x slower than XPs, with a video.

 

[DBissett]

So would it help to use a 3D card or is there something inherent in the software I'm using that runs into the lack of 2D acceleration you're talking about?

 

[Ualdayan]

Open up task manager (CTRL+SHIFT+ESC) and look at CPU usage while doing what feels slow for you. If the CPU usage is fluctuating in the 90-100% range then you know it's your CPU slowing you down.

Make sure you have the latest videocard drivers from the manufacturer too, don't rely on the ones built into Windows. Here is the Quadro driver: http://www.nvidia.com/object/Quadro_win7_winvista_32bit_191.87_whql.html They just updated it 3 days ago and one of the things mentioned is 'Performance improvements'.

BTW: A Quadro should be fine for you, really it should be way overkill if you aren't doing any 3D work, so I wouldn't recommend going from a Quadro to a gaming card because they're actually pretty similar hardware wise.

 

[edplayer]

saw a nice article on 2D performance over at Tom's:


http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/2d-windows-gdi,2539.html

 

[zagood]

saw a nice article on 2D performance over at Tom's:


http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/2d-windows-gdi,2539.html

That's a hell of an article. Thanks for linking that. Part II will be the first time I've eagerly awaited something from TH.

 

[shangshang]

2D graphics is an area that Windows still lack far far behing Mac. I wish 2D graphics in Windows would be Mac like because most of my day is spent doing 2D stuff