Video card suggestion for non-gamer

[rykyc]

So i bought this dual-core AMD 3800+ Acer desktop, and now i feel obliged to buy stuff to have it 'be all it can be'. Currently puzzling over the video card. I don't game, but do a good amount of home-video editing and photoediting using Adobe photoshop and Premiere. I have an LCD with DVI input, and a PCI-E slot, so was looking for suggestions for the cheapest card that would satisfy my needs.

i suppose i'm torn up about this 'cos i don't want to buy stuff with capabilities that i won't use, even if its under $100. There's a bunch of card in the $40-$50 range in newegg, with 4 and 8 'piplelines', and 128MB memory. would even those give me a 'wow'-inspiring improvement over my on-board graphics, or should i just stick with the latter? also, I saw this at Dell Home and it looked like a good buy, but is it too much for my needs?

I've never owned a video card before. No preference between ATI and nVidia.

 

[Bobthelost]

You don't need one if you've got onboard graphics.

If you want more video outputs or you don't have DVI outputs then the cheapest PCIe card you can find will be sufficent. (x300 or 6200 i think).

There are differences between ATI and Nvidia, but not many at the budget end.

 

[ScrapSilicon]

Originally posted by: Bobthelost
You don't need one if you've got onboard graphics.

If you want more video outputs or you don't have DVI outputs then the cheapest PCIe card you can find will be sufficent. (x300 or 6200 i think).

There are differences between ATI and Nvidia, but not many at the budget end.

I agree..only thing you might consider upgrading is more memory...like 2x1gb sticks..

 

[rykyc]

thanks for your advice folks, i think i'm going to be a happy camper with a $36 card, and yes, i will defnitely spend some money to get good memory.

 

[gxsaurav]

if ur gonna use Adobe premiere 2.0 then better get a Geforce 6 or geforce 7 graphics card, as with these cards, Premiere Pro can do some hardware preview encoding while working

 

[Rockhound1]

Originally posted by: ScrapSilicon

Originally posted by: Bobthelost
You don't need one if you've got onboard graphics.

If you want more video outputs or you don't have DVI outputs then the cheapest PCIe card you can find will be sufficent. (x300 or 6200 i think).

There are differences between ATI and Nvidia, but not many at the budget end.

I agree..only thing you might consider upgrading is more memory...like 2x1gb sticks..

:thumbsup:

 

[JServ]

I was in your position a few weeks ago and I decided to get a Gigabyte x1600pro which is a fanless card (it uses gigabytes new heatpipe technology...zalman's technically). I underclock it when i don't need it, and it works very well...supports new shaders and what not.

 

[LW07]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814121538
Get this X300SE since you're not going to play games. It doesn't have the Hypermemory if I read it correctly, so it won't use up your system Ram.