[Veltliner]

I wonder what makes a video card good.

When I searched the threads regarding this question, I always came across benchmarks from games, using fields per second as the quality standard.

The Radeon 2600 Pro, for example, is, at the same VRAM as the 7300GT, faster for gaming.

But I don't game, so I couldn't care less.

But what regarding performance in Photoshop, Final Cut Pro/Final Cut Studio?

And is speed everything?

Aren't there other parameters so look at, too, like color rendition?

[mduell]

Which nVidia card are you trying to compare to? Title and body say different things.

VRAM matters for storing textures; it's not really going to have much impact on framerates.

Photoshop doesn't use the video card (aside from basic framebuffering), so zero impact there. I don't think Final Cut Pro uses the video card much for real time effects, but some of the other Studio apps (Motion, and maybe Color) do.

Speed pretty much is everything; there's no difference in color (which can be adjusted in the drivers anyway).

In general, the Radeon 2000 series is a performance disaster compared to cards of similar vintage/price. The drivers also have lots of issues, among other things contributing to the current iMac freezing issue.

[Veltliner]

I actually meant the NVidia 7300GT vs. the Radeon 2600 Pro.

So, for Photoshop and Final Cut Pro 128mb Vram is enough?

I heard about Photoshop being more processor intensive, but I am not sure how Final Cut Pro deals with thing like rendering. (As Photoshop does rendering via processor, Final Cut Pro should to the same, but this is only a deduction).

I read about the Radeon freezing and driver trouble and am glad I have a reliable card in my new machine.

So, a fast card, a card with a lot of Vram is more a gamer card (or maybe for some excessive 3D programming)...

[mduell]

Originally Posted by Veltliner 

I actually meant the NVidia 7300GT vs. the Radeon 2600 Pro.

So, for Photoshop and Final Cut Pro 128mb Vram is enough?

I heard about Photoshop being more processor intensive, but I am not sure how Final Cut Pro deals with thing like rendering. (As Photoshop does rendering via processor, Final Cut Pro should to the same, but this is only a deduction).

I read about the Radeon freezing and driver trouble and am glad I have a reliable card in my new machine.

So, a fast card, a card with a lot of Vram is more a gamer card (or maybe for some excessive 3D programming)...

Yea, 128MB is fine for PS/FCP.
Both PS and FCP use the CPU for rendering.

A lot of games don't even have the textures to fill a 256MB card, while others need 512MB cards (Doom 3 on Ultra textures setting). Motion/Aperture users can probably use the extra VRAM, as well as people doing 3D graphics work.