Matrox G550 or ATI 9550 for 2-D only work?

[jshuck3]

If you were going to get a video card for only 2-D work (GIS) and cared the most about dual monitor performance, what would you get? A Matrox G550 variant or an ATI 9550 card?

Again, I'm only concerned about 2D performance, gaming/3d is not going to be used at all.

Thanks!

 

[IeraseU]

The Matrox, they are famous for thier 2d quality.

 

[imported_Kensai]

Matrox for the best of the best 2D quality.

 

[Insomniak]

Matrox in a heartbeat if it's 2D only.

 

[Creig]

Although the G550 used to be on top of the 2D video quality list, it's been 4 years this month since the G550 was released and a lot of improvements have been made since then.

I'd say that somebody would need to do a visual comparison between them to say for sure, but I'd be surprised if the G550 came out on top by any large margin. Personally, I'd say go for the 9550 simply to be able to receive driver updates.

 

[Crescent13]

Matrox if it's 2d only

 

[Creig]

Actually, you might be better off with an actual 2d/3D workstation card as even 2D programs can use 3D functions when processing the image.

What program are you planning on using?

 

[jshuck3]

The only program we'll be using beyond normal office apps is ESRI's ArcGIS suite. That push you one way or another?

 

[Creig]

From the ESRI website:


ESRI System Requirements Page

Question
Is there a limit to the number of nodes in a TIN that a video card can process?


Answer
There are many factors that influence the ability of a video card to process a TIN in ArcScene. The video card, the video card driver, the amount of RAM on the video card, the total amount of data being rendered in the scene, and many others. However, as an approximation, the numbers of nodes in a TIN that a video card can process are as follows:

128 MB on a video card = approximately 300,000 nodes

64 MB on a video card = approximately 200,000 nodes

32 MB on a video card = approximately 100,000 nodes

[ARCVIEW-L] SUM: ArcGIS Desktop and Opteron-based Computer -- Mar 10 2005
ORIGINAL QUESTION
Hi Listers,

I would like to know if anyone of you is running ArcView or ArcEditor on a
computer having an AMD Opteron (64-bit) processor, that is supposed to be
compatible to 32-bit applications like ArcGIS. If you are, could you please
tell your experience (as in whether ArcGIS runs faster, or whether there are
problems)?

Thanks in advance.

Willy Rada
Div of Lands & Surveys
Min of Int Affairs
Rep of the Marshall Islands

SUMMARY
Thanks to Donald Sluter, Kerry Livengood, and Eugene Dashiell.
Their responses are reproduced below.

All of them mention using AMD Athlon 64 and not exactly Opteron, and one of
them (Kerry)is already using Windows XP 64-bit Edition (beta version). Also
mentioned were:

(a)the required modification to the boot.ini file prior to installing
ArcGIS,
(b)when Windows XP SP2 is installed, disabling DEP prior to installing
ArcGIS,
(c)the 64-bit processor may conflict with other hardware resulting to
computer crashes. (The solution is to update the driver).
(d)that ArcGIS Desktop will run on 64-bit Windows but any other GIS-related
software may have problems.
(e)that aside from contribution in speedier ArcGIS from a 64-bit processor,
more or faster supporting computer resources (especially RAM) contribute
too.



---------------------------------
I'm running the ArcInfo version of ArcGIS9 on a AMD Athlon64 with no
problems at all. It is not an Opteron, but there is not too much
difference. One thing to be aware of: in order to install ArcGIS, you
must alter your boot.ini file, and change the noexecute option from
optin to alwaysoff.

Hth,

Don

Donald Sluter
263 Morrill Geosciences Center
University of Massachusetts Amherst
Amherst, MA 01003
413-545-1913 dsluter@geo.umass.edu


-------------------------------
You asked about the 64 bit AMD. I have been running ArcView 8.3 on the AMD
64 +3200 with Windows XP 64 bit professional and 2 Gb of RAM. It loads much
quicker, screen writes are faster and it does jobs such as cleaning
shapefiles at least twice as fast as my 32 bit AMD. I would really like to
see ESRI compile ArcGIS for the 64 bit operating system. I wrote to you
directly because I don't know how to post a reply to the list digest at User
Forums. If you know how, could you tell me? I would like to see as many
threads as possible about the 64 bit system.

Kerry Livengood
Compass Point Systems
318-449-4646
-------------------------------

Hi Willy,

I am running an AMD Athlon 3400+....which is a 64-bit chip very similar to
the Opteron I believe.

The system has:

2GB of RAM.

Dual 160GB Hard Drive SATA RAID 0.

Radeon 9800 Pro 256MB Memory.

Windows XP Pro SP2.

This system is fast, but I cannot tell you if the 64-bit chip is faster than
an equivalent-speed 32-bit chip.

I have had no problems with ArcView 9 on this system, no crashes or anything
bad.

I have never tried the Windows 64-bit beta....but when Microsoft comes out
with the Windows for 64-bit processors I will try that.....after backing up!

I have heard that:

1. ArcView won't run any faster on a 64-bit machine than on a 32-bit
machine......but I don't know anything about the technicalities of that
discussion. I invested in 64-bits just on the chance that ESRI would
eventually tune ArcView for 64-bits....but I don't know what their plans
are.

2. To speed up ArcView the best answers are:

A) As much RAM as you can afford.
B) Fast HD drives and access.
C) Fast micro-processor w/math co-processor.
D) Recent graphics card with Open GL and as much memory as you can put on
it.

I'm happy with my system, but it took me 6 months and a lot of frustration
to get it stable because of one recurring problem ...... I never started
with the the most updated video driver for my Radeon card......I used only
the driver that came with the new card I purchased and did not immediatedly
download the driver from the ATI website, thus I caused myself problems when
I installed SP2.

I think you can use any video card, not necessarily ATI, as long as it
supports Open GL and has lots of memory.

I originally ran the machine without SP2 and it worked find. Then I
installed SP2 and it begin crashing. Even though I then went to the ATI
website and downloaded the latest video driver I still had problems, but
I've resolved those now with the most recent Radeon driver.

Also, there is a glitch with SP2 and Arcview during installation, you need
to disable DEP, then you can enable it after the Arcview Installation,
otherwise Arcview installations will fail. There is an e-mail instruction
about this issue on the ESRI website.

Also, there is a problem with Athlon 64 (and probably Opteron 64) with a few
DVD writer-drivers. This problem was discovered within a day of the public
release of SP2. If you have one of these DVD-writers with a problem driver
you will have crashes....you can find out about this in various discussion
links related to Athlon 64-bits and SP2. But this problem is not related to
ArcView.

Otherwise that is my experience....good luck.


Gene

Eugene P. Dashiell, AICP
Environmental Planning Services
1314 South King St, Suite 952
Honolulu, Hawaii 96814
808-593-8330 (Phone/Fax)
dashiell@lava.net
www.lava.net/environmental-planning

Additional Requirements for ArcGlobe (as part of 3D Analyst):
- CPU Speed: 1.5 GHz recommended or higher
- Disk Space: ArcGlobe will create cache files when used, additional disk space may be required for this and any other data used in ArcGlobe.
- Video Card: An OpenGL 1.1 or above compliant video card is required, with at least 32 MB of video memory, however 64 MB of video memory is recommended.

So it appears that for best ArcGIS performance, video memory size and GPU speed can be factors as well as OpenGL compatibility. Just going by the few items I've found, I would suggest a 128-256mb card. Nvidia might possibly be a better choice as they've traditionally offered better OpenGL support than ATI, although that may have changed with the newer ATI Catalyst driver releases.

I'm basing my opinion on a limited amount of data. Anybody else have suggestions?

 

[mrzed]

We're using Matrox Parhelia P650 128Mb at work here with no problems, but I suspect that any modern card with at least 128Mb from one of the big 2 would work fine. Matrox is a recommended card according to ESRI, but I am guessing that is in part due to history.

We also needed dual DVI, and the P650 was one of the only cards that came equipped when they were purchased.

Arcscene can use some fairly serious 3D power, but in my experience, running high resolution ortho over a large TIN bogs down the entire system terribly and I doubt a more powerful card would help. This is based on the lack of difference between 2 machines running the same data - one with a much less powerful card.

If you are not doing any 3D work, then it doesn't matter much either way. Having a faster card will not help your maps redraw notably faster, most of the time, waits are for the data.