Engineering workstation - Video card suggestions?

[NialStewart]

I am about to build a PC for electronic hardware development, this will be used for 2-d cad work and will have 2* DVI LCD screens, probably 1280x1024.

I've previously used Matrox cards for these types of work station but they don't seem to have a PCIe card available, all the motherboards with an AM2 socket (I'll probably use an ASUS board) don't have AGP slots so I need a PCIe card.

I have no experience with ATi/Radeon so don't know where to start.

In summary the requirements are....

PCIe
Can drive dual 1280x1024 monitors (with some extra capability for future proofing)
Fairly quiet
Reasonably cost effective

Any suggestions?

Thanks for any pointers,

Nial.

 

[lay-z-boy]

will you be using apps that have gpu hardware acceleration?

 

[BillytheImpaler]

In addition to Lay-z-boy's question, how much are you willing to spend on a graphics card? Will you be doing 3D modeling or will it be more along the lines of photo or video editing. The applications in use drive the buying decision.

 

[NialStewart]

will you be using apps that have gpu hardware acceleration?

In addition to Lay-z-boy's question, how much are you willing to spend on a graphics card? Will you be doing 3D modeling or will it be more along the lines of photo or video editing. The applications in use drive the buying decision.

It'll be used for PCB design so it's all flat 2D work, I really doubt that there'll
be any hardware acceleration involved.

I think this will do the job OK....

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-128-AS

..but it seems overkill for what I need.


Thanks for the replies guys.


Nial.

 

[BillytheImpaler]

Any of the lower-end nVidia 8k series would do nicely. If there's little to no hardware acceleration extra memory won't help. If there is then I'd want a 512 MiB card.

 

[NialStewart]

Any of the lower-end nVidia 8k series would do nicely. If there's little to no hardware acceleration extra memory won't help. If there is then I'd want a 512 MiB card.

Looking at this .....

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-059-OK&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=912


Does "Dual dual-link DVI supports two 2560 x 1600 resolution displays " mean that you get two DVI outputs from it?

It looks like there's only one DVI and one VGA output in the picture!


Nial

 

[BillytheImpaler]

It does indeed look like there is but one DVI output. It'd definitely worth a call or webnote to OcUK if you want to buy that card to see if the photo or the description is more accurate.

 

[NialStewart]

Please read the FAQ... http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/faq.php?faq=vb_read_and_post#faq_vb_poll_explain