A PC hardware video card question.

For photoshop work, is there any reason to avoid the on-board video that comes with a modern motherboard?

No 3D, no games on this PC.
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a d y k e s @ p a n i x . c o m
Don't blame me. I voted for Gore. A Proud signature since 2001

In article <f68c3o$r1p$ (Al Dykes)
wrote:

For photoshop work, is there any reason to avoid the on-board video that comes with a modern motherboard?

No. Photoshop, with the exception of the limited 3D stuff introduced in CS3, is a strictly 2D image manipulation program. It does not use and does not benefit from the accelerated 3D functions in a high-end video card.

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"Al Dykes" wrote in message

For photoshop work, is there any reason to avoid the on-board video that comes with a modern motherboard?

Probably not, but it's possible you would see a slight performance improvement with a separate card. If the video controller maps main memory, as opposed to having its own storage, then you may see significant benefit in terms of memory available for Photoshop, and increased memory bandwidth. --
Mike Russell - www.curvemeister.com

"Al Dykes" wrote in message

For photoshop work, is there any reason to avoid the on-board video that comes with a modern motherboard?

No 3D, no games on this PC.
--
a d y k e s @ p a n i x . c o m
Don't blame me. I voted for Gore. A Proud signature since 2001

Hi.

Not quite as straightforward a question as it may seem.

The answer is as usual, "It all depends".

In this case it depends on the amount of RAM on the system.

The Video Card might be "Sharing" this RAM, and if there is not all that much, then the card usage could be slowing the system down.

The simplest answer is probably to install more RAM. With Photoshop you can never have too much, but there are top limits depending on the Operating System.

I have 3 Gigs of DDR 2 on my Win XP machine, and PS still brings the Scratch Disc into use while editing large files.

Roy G

Al Dykes wrote:

For photoshop work, is there any reason to avoid the on-board video that comes with a modern motherboard?

No 3D, no games on this PC.

Try it and see.

On one PC, after upgrading from PS CS to PS CS2 on a PC with a 32MB TNT2 video card (OK, laugh if you want :-), the menus in CS2 were crippled speed-wise. Upgrading to a 128MB FX5200-based card made it work properly, with the added bonus of being able to use two monitors.

Andrew

Absolute top line video cards are not needed for photoshop as they are optimised to 3D games etc.

For photoshop a mid range seperate card (ie with non shared RAM) is very desirable - I would recommend 256MB of its own dedicated video ram.

Malcolm