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Need a video card suggestion for rendering

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feyd83

Member
Joined
Sep 19, 2003
Location
Atlanta
I'm currently building a system for my girlfriend. It won't be for gaming, so I don't need a gaming video card. I need a video card that can play dvds and videos without a problem and possibly do some multimedia rendering for college classes. I was thinking of a 9600XT, but cheaper would be nice. Thanks for any suggestions.
 
I was always fine with an older Radeon 7200 32mb PCI card, but what exactly is she going to be rendering? Do you mean hi-res CG art from programs such as Bryce and Terragen or are we just talking about smaller images such as icons and advertising?

EDIT: Or, you could give her your Ti4400 and buy yourself a new gaming card!
 
I'd give her your ti4400 for sure, and grab a 5900xt for yourself...

The ti4400 will do fine in most aspeccts of 3D rendering, its not a flash, but just fine.

True render cards will cost so much more, that you wont get into the field with your budget. (you'd want to go Quadro)

Cheers, Flix
 
Unfortunately she won't take my old card, I'll have to get something from new from newegg or a card off of the classifieds. I'll talk to her some more about what exactly she needs to do on it.

What about a 5200? Would that do dvd fine and rendering as long as it isn't complicated CGI?
 
I notice newegg has some nice refurbs. Would a ti4600 or a 5600 be better than a 9600XT?
 
feyd83 said:
Unfortunately she won't take my old card, I'll have to get something from new from newegg or a card off of the classifieds. I'll talk to her some more about what exactly she needs to do on it.

What about a 5200? Would that do dvd fine and rendering as long as it isn't complicated CGI?
Umm, why wont she take your old card????
 
Agent_Mull said:
Umm, why wont she take your old card????

*shrug* I said I could give her my old card, but she said she wants a new one. She's weird like that.
 
Maybe you should jokingly suggest that you want a new girlfriend (j/k!) Haha, anyway...

Seriously, what price range are you looking at? Newegg has a 9600 All in Wonder for $140, or you could go really budget and get a 9200 for $40.
 
Just say its a new card...she wont know the differance and buy yourself something nice with the money she gives you for it. ;)
 
xbiker321 said:
Just say its a new card...she wont know the differance and buy yourself something nice with the money she gives you for it. ;)

She actually knows a lot about computers, she'd find out. Then horrible, horrible things would happen.

I just want the cheapest that will work.
 
Before I started building computers I used a old ATI 7000 PCI card and rendered stuff on 3ds max I see no real difference between my 9800pro and 7000. A ATI 9200 will do fine but the new 9550 look like nice cards they are new low end cards that are replacing the 9200.
 
I'd get a radeon 9800 pro or xt and softmod it to a firegl x2...

For less than $250 you get an awesome gaming card that becomes an awesome rendering card (you can expect over a 100% increase in performance during rendering, but most of the time it comes at the price of 2% in gaming or the equivalent of going from a 7000 to a 6900 in 3dmark03)!
 
your vid card has next to NO effect on rendering - rending is done on the CPU - unles your doing hard core 3d rending with OpenGl - your vid card will make no differnce!
 
All newer mobos comes with onboard video with like 32mb shared memory with ram that would work great with playing dvd, and like mr. guvernment said the video card has next to no effect on rendering.
 
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