Litewriter Posted June 12, 2008 Report Share Posted June 12, 2008 I'm getting ready to rebuild my desktop machine. I know the ATI graphics cards have a bug that causes problems with color adjustments - does this include even the the AMD FireGL cards? As to the nVidia line, any comments on the 8600 and 8800 models? Actually, is there a 'best' hardware list for PicturesToExe somewhere?Thanks!Litewriter Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lin Evans Posted June 12, 2008 Report Share Posted June 12, 2008 Hi,The NVIDIA 8600 GT and the NVIDIA 8800 GT are both great cards. Either has plenty of power, especially if you get the 512 Meg Ram version to run any PTE show smoothly and efficiently. These are both really fine cards. If you are into games, the 8800 GT would be the preferred of the two but also much more expensive and requires at least a 400W power supply in the system. The 8600 GT takes all its power from the bus but the 8800 GT requires power from the power supply as well. It takes two 4 pin molex connectors (the card comes with an adapter in case you don't have a really new power supply with the six pin output). I use each of these cards in different systems and they work flawlessly for me. The 8800 GT is really a bargain with about 90% of the power of the very most expensive cards at less than half their price. The 8600 GT or an 8600 GT OC (overclocked) version will sail through the most trying PTE multi-object high RAM requirement shows with power to spare.Best regards,LinI'm getting ready to rebuild my desktop machine. I know the ATI graphics cards have a bug that causes problems with color adjustments - does this include even the the AMD FireGL cards? As to the nVidia line, any comments on the 8600 and 8800 models? Actually, is there a 'best' hardware list for PicturesToExe somewhere?Thanks!Litewriter Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
potwnc Posted June 12, 2008 Report Share Posted June 12, 2008 To confirm Lin's reply, I have an 8800 GTS and have found that it plays back every PTE slideshow I've ever made or downloaded without a single pause or stutter. Playback of .exe and video files is super smooth, including very large, full HD (1920x1080 pixels) projects with extremely large original images and full HD videos with a very high (15MB/s and more) bit rate, and reasonably complex P/Z/R effects.Not that this is due only to the graphics card - I happen to have a very powerful PC in terms of the other components as well. If you think you will need PTE projects at this scale consider the MOBO, CPU, RAM and hard drive components otherwise your new PC will likely experience a speed bottleneck somewhere.Ray Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LumenLux Posted June 12, 2008 Report Share Posted June 12, 2008 And Ray, seeing as you mention hard drives - How important is RAID capability now - for serious video editing only - or? If it is really desirable, what are the options to implement? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Litewriter Posted June 13, 2008 Author Report Share Posted June 13, 2008 Thanks for the ideas. On another forum, it was suggested that I might be interested in the Quadro workstation cards, the FX570 being under $200. Any experience with those? I am definitely going with a Core 2 Quad CPU, either the Q9450 or the Q6600 (Intel). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
potwnc Posted June 13, 2008 Report Share Posted June 13, 2008 And Ray, seeing as you mention hard drives - How important is RAID capability now - for serious video editing only - or? If it is really desirable, what are the options to implement?Good question... remember that RAID is a technology that addresses data integrity, so it's not directly relevant to the slideshow production issues. I chose not to include RAID on my latest PC configuration but only because (i) I back up all my critical data regularly and (ii) all my photos are on slide film anyway so I can't back them up or rescue a loss with RAID.I would think for most people here RAID 0 is adequate. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Litewriter Posted June 13, 2008 Author Report Share Posted June 13, 2008 Good question... remember that RAID is a technology that addresses data integrity, so it's not directly relevant to the slideshow production issues. I chose not to include RAID on my latest PC configuration but only because (i) I back up all my critical data regularly and (ii) all my photos are on slide film anyway so I can't back them up or rescue a loss with RAID.I would think for most people here RAID 0 is adequate.I'd have to disagree -- if you want to use RAID for backup, you should implement RAID 1 (mirrored.) It's slightly slower access, but it does give you backup for images, shows, etc. I put all my new images on the RAID volume, then move want I want to work with to a different volume, and then put the updates back on the RAID in a different folder.I find this easier than remembering to do backups, although I also use a backup utility for documents and other data and target the RAID volume (at 500GB, it holds a lot of data.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
giljones Posted June 14, 2008 Report Share Posted June 14, 2008 If you would care to let me have your email address I will be delighted to send you the specification I used to have a laptop built to show PTE5.5 on, this after much research amongst members and just a little bit of past experience. Gilbert.jones@blueyonder.co.uk Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ken Cox Posted June 14, 2008 Report Share Posted June 14, 2008 GILBERT please post the specs so we all can shareken Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BillM Posted June 17, 2008 Report Share Posted June 17, 2008 Hi LinWill the NVIDIA 8600GT work well with XP as I recollect someone saying it mucks up the computer and stops it booting up and its more suited to Vista,hoping you can advise I am just in the process of having my machine upgraded more ram and a new card 8660GT if my motherboard will take one.Regards Bill Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cjdnzl Posted June 17, 2008 Report Share Posted June 17, 2008 Hi LinWill the NVIDIA 8600GT work well with XP as I recollect someone saying it mucks up the computer and stops it booting up and its more suited to Vista,hoping you can advise I am just in the process of having my machine upgraded more ram and a new card 8660GT if my motherboard will take one.Regards BillI've not heard that about 8600 cards, and my laptop runs an 8600M-GT under XP SP2 with no problems at all.Colin Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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