I just purchased a Pinnacle suit 700 USB professional movie editing software. In order to work, I need at least a Directx9 32MB compatible graphic card. Any recommendations? What's the best graphic card out there that will do the job? thanks

Originally posted by atingetom:


First off, you're going to need more than just a decent vidcard, you also need a decent system, as in CPU/RAM.

What is in your current system, and what vidcard do you have right now?

Video editing eats up a lot of resources, a lot of CPU cycles, and lots of RAM. As for a 32mb vidcard for video-editing, man, that's the bare minimum, and that would be slower than molasses in January.

Also, is your mobo AGP, or PCI Express?

A few more details, and we'll see how we can help.

For a desk top, I own a VPR matrix pentium(R) 4CPU 1.8GHZ with
512MB of RAM and has 45GB of memory. Will this be enough to hold the graphic card ? What do you recommend for DirectX9 compatible graphic card?

If this can't hold it, would it be better to use a server?

I believe that what Relic was trying to point out is that video editing really taxes a machine. So, even if you were to put in a top of the line AGP card from Nvidia or ATI or even a Quadra card, your system would be driven to its knees.

He was suggesting that you would need a more powerful machine. If you were to go the Intel line, you would want a 3.0+GHz Hyperthreading processor, a motherboard bus that would run at 800 or higher. A Gig of Ram (two if the motherboard could handle it) and some very large hard drives since video files can get monstrous.

But, if you don't mind the slowness of your machine, right now, for an AGP, you might consider the Nvidia 6800 GT

is Nvidia 6800 GT top line video card?

Originally posted by atingetom:


No, the 7800gtx 512mb: http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=668757&CatId=320 is top of the line for nVidia. If you mean for video editing, that would be something like this: http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=668757&CatId=320

Sampson is right, top of the line means outrageous bucks, and your 1.8ghz would be hard pressed, well, it couldn't keep up to either of those cards.

The 6800GT is a very good card, but nVidia now has the 6800GS, which though cheaper, will run at 6800GT speeds.

I don't do any video editing, but from what I've read, unless the system behind the videocard is very fast itself, the card is not going to perform like it should.

Well as far as AGP goes, the 6800 GT is both available and pretty fast. I have seen reviews of the 6800 GS, but I haven't yet seen any of them on the shelves. The 7800 GT is a PCIe card. Given the very slow speed of your processor, I made the assumption that yours has only an AGP slot and no PCIe slot. The bottom line, however, is just as Relic stated, to do video work you need a much more powerful computer.