Computer Graphics Card Question

[lewis]

Greetings EEVBees...

I know this is an electronics forum and this is a computer related question, but I suspect some of you know lots about the latter and might be able to help me out.

Can anyone recommend a decent graphics card for a triple monitor setup? I have two Dell 2560x1440 monitors and one 1680x1050 generic monitor hooked up. I currently use an Nvidia Quadro NVS310 with dual display-port for the Dell monitors, and the on-board Intel graphics for the other monitor, but the NVS310 is rubbish and graphics performance isn't great (crap H264 decoding, general slowing of the computer more-so than when I had one monitor on the built-in graphics).

This computer is just for business use: CAD work, programming, video encoding, general office use and watching EEVblog, and it's certainly not for gaming.

Where's a good place to start?

[peter.mitchell]

the thread about having nvidia cards to their professional counterparts. Also, they do take dual link dvi-d as well as displayport. that makes things easier

[NiHaoMike]

Nvidia GTX 650/750 series. You might need to go higher if you do a lot of 3D CAD or CUDA, but those cards are cheap enough that it's really not worth going lower.

[nctnico]

I'm particulary fond of Matrox cards for CAD.

[Tinkerer]

If possible(depending on the motherboard and your price point), I think this would be a good a thing to use with SLI with two cards.
I do recommend this site if you really want comparisons between cards: http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/
While I am not an expert, I dont think any cards are specialized for multiple monitors, though I could be wrong. Typically you only need to ask if a card is powerful enough for what you want to do, unless you really need to know all the details and have a very special purpose in mind. Seeing as how you do video editing and things of that nature, the more powerful the better.

[lewis]

Thanks chaps, I think I'll go for a standard high end Nvidia, GTX770/780 for future proofing. It seems they all support multiple monitors at high resolution, and nvidia always seems to rank highly in the benchmarks. (That http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/ site is excellent, many thanks for the heads up  )

I don't think I have enough room in the case for SLI, but I will check. I think that might be overkill to start with - but I'll see how I get on.

Is there a particular manufacturer/brand that's good or to be avoided? There's Asus, PNY, Gigabyte, MSI, EVGA, etc.

[Fsck]

Thanks chaps, I think I'll go for a standard high end Nvidia, GTX770/780 for future proofing. It seems they all support multiple monitors at high resolution, and nvidia always seems to rank highly in the benchmarks. (That http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/ site is excellent, many thanks for the heads up  )

I don't think I have enough room in the case for SLI, but I will check. I think that might be overkill to start with - but I'll see how I get on.

Is there a particular manufacturer/brand that's good or to be avoided? There's Asus, PNY, Gigabyte, MSI, EVGA, etc.

if you intend to do 3 different tasks then you may not want to use 2GB models. I have a 3GB 7970/280x using 2* 19x12 monitors and 1* 16x10 monitor and I easily run past  2GBs of vram usage. if you intend to do intensive gpgpu computing/programming, you'll probably have a fit with 2GB

[lewis]

Should I try this one? http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Components/Graphics+Cards/NVIDIA+GeForce/GeForce+GTX+780Ti/EVGA+GeForce+GTX+780+Ti+Classified+ACX+3072MB+GDDR5+PIC-Express+Graphics+Card+%2B+Daylight+Free+Game%21+?productId=60417

[miguelvp]

Not sure of the current state of video decoders, but ATI used to have the best video cards for capturing and displaying video. NVidia were the best at gaming.

ATI had crappy drivers and not updated often but I think since they had the catalyst drivers it was better.
Nvidia are better at making good drivers.

But this is a while back and have not tried ATI for a while, but I will check the Radeon if you prefer 2d video than 3d graphics. Maybe a review from Tom's hardware or something like that will shed some light.

[Fsck]

Not sure of the current state of video decoders, but ATI used to have the best video cards for capturing and displaying video. NVidia were the best at gaming.

ATI had crappy drivers and not updated often but I think since they had the catalyst drivers it was better.
Nvidia are better at making good drivers.

But this is a while back and have not tried ATI for a while, but I will check the Radeon if you prefer 2d video than 3d graphics. Maybe a review from Tom's hardware or something like that will shed some light.

AMD cards also draw significantly more power proportional to the number of monitors at idle vs. nvidia.

[NiHaoMike]

Not sure of the current state of video decoders, but ATI used to have the best video cards for capturing and displaying video. NVidia were the best at gaming.

ATI had crappy drivers and not updated often but I think since they had the catalyst drivers it was better.
Nvidia are better at making good drivers.

Nvidia supports VDPAU, which in my experience is far superior to VAAPI.

ATI (AMD) was in fact better a very long time ago (about 10 years back, in fact!), but with the transition to 64-bit, Nvidia got the chance to fix their buggy drivers (and make them 64-bit compatible) while ATI badly fell behind. They have improved significantly since then but they're still lagging behind.

[lewis]

The ATI vs Nvidia debate is exactly like PIC vs AVR (just with more cores!)

I've been tempted by ATI given the crapness of the Nvidia card I have in the system at the moment, but it's been a long time since I put an ATI card in a system. I always used to use them back in the day when AGP was the cutting edge.