I have an ASUS CM1740 PC http://www.asus.com/Desktops/CM1740/#specifications Windows 7 Home premium 64bit 8gb Ram AMD A6-3620 APU and on board ATI graphics i want to use a 3 screen setup, not for gaming but for work, so it doesnt need to be amazingly powerful. i have 1 21" widescreen and 2 4:3 17" screens. work is a bit of photoshop, a bit of sketchup, CAD, word etc, and it would be useful for 3 screens. but i am totally confused on to which one to get. i like ATI stuff, is this one any good? http://www.ebuyer.com/432490-powerc...splayport-pci-e-graphics-card-ax6450-1gbk3-sd i don't mind spending more money, but only if it is worth it, so help please
A 6450 seems like it should do the job; just be careful to make sure that the card that you buy has the right display outputs.
Being as you're going to be using sketchup and Photoshop and they can both be accelerated with gpu it'd be good to know the rest of the system spec, a better card may help with the processing. Not a clue if CAD programs use gpu acceleration.
If it still works at all like it used to, they will do but it'll be less well-optimised compared to running it on a dedicated CAD card. If you genuinely didn't plan to game at all and were fairly serious about CAD and such, a specialized card for the task like the FirePro series would do much better. Very similar components go into them as into the equivalent gaming cards, but much better suited to design work...I don't know the details, but they're highly optimised for CAD and do it much more efficiently than gaming cards, for driver and architecture reasons. But last time I saw it looked into, they were really dreadful at running games, for the same driver and architecture reasons, so it's only appropriate if you'll literally never try to run a game on it. I don't know what's suitable for what kind of work with CAD cards. There are a number of CAD guys on bit-tech, so I'd describe the level of work you want to do and wait for some of them to suggest what price-point card you might need. (Edit - the nvidia equivalent CAD line is the Quadro, but none of them do 3-monitor, obviously.)
AMDs firepro range of cards is really what your looking at if CAD work and speed is crucial to your business. AMDs gamer cards will do 3 screens cheaper but they are not optimised for CAD.
Cheers for the reply's. CAD is my Business 16 years business. i've had dedicated CAD card bought for me at work, and not really noticed any real improvement. i don't do large renders requiring masses of processing power. Nor have i found my self waiting for the computer to do something, speed has never been an issue. 99.9% of my business drawing is line diagrams. my biggest issue has always been ram, when using large drawing files, but since getting my new pc, i havnt had any issue with my largest files.
