New to me (but so are cars, the printing press, etc) Most of us use/lust after the Matrox dual head cards (G450/550) for the added "real estate" of dual monitors. If the colorgraphic predator pro 4 is a "gamer" type card, it would most likely be too intrusive for good audio performance. Try posting a link to it, you'll get more feedback that way... Steve

Sounds to me like an intensive graphic card that will not suffice for audio work..remember that the more intensive graphic card you have the more it's going to take away from your audio performance due to video drawback issues...As Steve has mentioned the best card to get for audio applications is the Matrox G550 for the Dual head purpose..once you go to dual monitors you never want to go back to single monitor land..is that like the phrase once you go black....... :p
Opus

we use them at work (non-gaming) and have no problem/conflict with them ... i'm not sure how to properly evaluate these cards...

[[url=http://[/URL]="http://www.colorgra…"]this is the webpage for the card[/]="http://www.colorgra…"]this is the webpage for the card[/]

any advice is apprec. ..

First of all..It's PCI...that's a no no for audio..you dont want to put video on your PCI bus for two reasons...
One...it takes performance away from your PCI bus with that load on it
Two..IRQ issues..it takes up one that you could use for other applications that are needed in higher priority such as audio or mass storage controller cards...
The card itself looks good and probably handles really well..its just that I'm a dual monitor person and only go with AGP cards
Opus

thanks opus,
i have a huge favor to ask - if you have a spare moment, i have a copl questions ...
1. what is the difference between agp and pci .. and ..
2. what exactly are irq's? i hear lots of talk about acpi and irq's (think they go together) but i'm really not sure what they are.

i'm more a music person and trying to learn more abt how to get the computer working optimally. i am in middle of building a new pc (i'm in no real rush, so waiting for the next generation 850 boards to come out) -and yes, i have a matrox g450 ready to plug in (how are they different from the g550?)- but i also do alot out on my laptop - which i use mostly for composing and mixing - it can do 10 plug FX easy - anyhow, i have a docking station for it at home and want to make that into it's own separate station .. it has 2 pci slots.. i tried to fit my matrox card but found it didn't fit (again this agp/pci dilemma) - so got my hands on one of these colorgraphic cards - because it fit and that's what i could get my hands on - looks like there is 32MB of memory for each monitor (i'd be using 2 of 4 possible) - does more onboard card memory tax the computer more or less?

last question - i'm really only recording 2 tracks at a time .. so would having the video on the same pci bandwidth as 2 tracks of audio be a problem?

sorry for the shopping list of questions... oh yeah, one more, when you install a new card, do you install the driver first and then install the card or vice versa ?

thanks -

What do y'all think about the ATI Radeon 7500 agp card? They're fairly cheap ($85), have excellent performance for the money, crisp bright colors and sharp video. They have the ability to support dual monitors too: one standard vga connector and one "DVI" connector for a flat panel monitor. A little $6 adapter plug will let you connect a normal monitor to the DVI connector.

Ok...
AGP..Accelerated Graphics Port..This slot has it's own bus that it runs off of to communicate with the processor and chipsets to make things faster and more efficient and to get the video bandwidth off of the PCI bus. Video tends to hog a lot of the bus time since it's the most used peripheral of a computer(besides the processor of course!) So getting the video off of the PCI bus opens up your PCI bandwidth..

PCI..Personal Computer Interface..16 bit or now 32bit slots to handle any cards..audio, mass storage..gaming cards..whatever!

IRQ..Interrupt Requests Que..basically every card has a chance to talk to the processor and tell it what it needs from it. Think of it this way..
You have a 15 lane highway and you have 15 toll booths at the end..all lanes go to it's own toll booth..if you have two cars on one lane both trying to get to the same booth at the same time..CRASH!! lol! You get the picture..every card should talk to the processor on it's own accord..this way you dont have any "crashes" or as they call them..Conflicts!

ACPI...Advanced Power Configuration Interface...this is somewhat of a new standard and basically it allows all devices to share the same IRQ without any problems...in audio recording...this is not good! It also determines how the computer shuts down and so forth..it's one of those things you do not want running..supposedly they say WinXP "should" run in ACPI mode but I'm not so sold on that one just yet!

Mitch...recording two tracks at a time is not an issue..it'sthe playing back that's the real issue..as you add more tracks and plug-ins you start to use that bandwidth neccessary to handle all the data..the video card will be drawing the waveforms and the meters while the audio is playing and thus it can cause a bottlekneck of performance in the long run..it can be done but there may be limitations of the system after while..

When you install a new card you install the card then the drivers!

Nick..ATI cards are fine. The main concern is that you do not get a card with too much video memory as that will eat up more resources due to video drawback..that is why you set the bit depth to 16bit only in the display properties..the less it hogs your system bandwidth the better..

Is ok? Any more Q's?
Opus :D

that was absolutely perfect,opus. thanks very much. in light of your expanation, i'm not sure why any company would produce non-agp video cards.

thanks.

Hey Opus,
Mitch's questions, and your answers, would be perfect material for a newbie FAQ. IMHO.
lou

Glad to oblige folks!
Sky Blue...you are absolutely correct...I think it's time I start an FAQ and assemble all these posts and answers and so forth and put them on my site with a permanent link to them so that people can research with it!!
I have a feeling that will take some time so if anyone is willing to help out on that it would be greatly appreciated!!
Peace
Opus

i've been reading these posts for a bit now - there's alot of knowledge on these pages.. a faq would be great ...

one more question - which i think has an obvious answer, but i'll ask anyhow... when buying a video card, do you select the one with more or less memory. i would assume you want more to get better screen draws etc .. but for the very same reason, i didn't know if that would take processing power from the cpu ....