[mgpalma]

I am looking into upgrading out graphic artists graphics card and am wondering what others consider to be a good one. Primarily used are Photoshop, Illustrator, PageMaker, InDesign. Also used, is VirtualPC to bring in some 3D renderings from CadKey/SolidWorks since VectorWorks has not advanced far enough with their rendering functions from imported DXF’s. I have read different reviews but am not clear since they all seem to focus on games, and that is not a consideration.

Does the type of graphics card make a difference with VirtualPC? Is there anything else that would improve this experience since we are stuck with this for now?

Platform
DP 500, 768MB Ram, Stock Graphics Card, Mac OS 9.2.2 (moving to X in a couple of months.)

Thank you,
Michael

<small>[ 06-06-2002, 11:30 AM: Message edited by: mgpalma ]</small>

[godzookie2k]

I have the same machine (more ram but whatever). To be honest the stock card does more than a good enough job for design. 2D stuff doesn't really require all the hard core 3D stuff that alot of these cards these days have. Under X, my Ati does fine, not too many issues, especially with 10.1.5's rage accelleration. You *might* want to consider a radeon if you want to take advantage of the upcoming Quartz Extreme stuff. (to be honest I don't really have that great a clue as to how this would benefit designers that much but...)

A new video card will not improve performance for VPC the only thing that might squeeze out more performance is ram ram and more ram. VPC chews it up like so much ravioli at an 5th grade lunch time. I don't really have any experience with Solidworks but personally I'd think that you'd get much better performance out of it if you just bought an el-cheapo PC for a few hundred bucks.

[buchrob]

Save your bucks for the next G4 system upgrade. A graphics card will not make any major improvement in your work life.

Eventually, all will be OS X and you will be better off with a jaguar-compatible box.