I ended up getting an ATI Radeon RX580 recently - it's probably overkill for music production, but I do some video editing so this card will speed that up too.


Originally Posted By: sslechta
FYI, newer, high end gaming cards are extremely difficult to find right now. The two reasons, 1) Bitcoin miners buy these cards as soon as they can find one. 2) COVID has caused supply chain issues for the makers of the cards. I've been trying to upgrade my card since February and no luck. If you want to spend double or more on a card you can find them on Ebay. I'm just too cheap to spend extra..... smile

If you want to find a card that's less expensive and lower specs, it may be a little easier.

That's exactly the problem I ran into this month. Scalpers have driven video card prices through the roof, such that all my local stores are sold out of anything below $1000, and all the "used" sales are between double and triple the original price for a 3 year old GPU.


Originally Posted By: eddie1261
Originally Posted By: musiclover
Been using a passive video card for years (doesn't have a fan to cool it) the Nvidia 710, runs great, photo and games run good with it.


Is it the GForce 710? I have that card because it has 4 HDMI outs on it and I run 3 monitors.

What it will "mess with" is typically not driver driven. Your current drivers don't get removed or changed. What happens is a video card with HDMI will want to become your primary audio device because HDMI by nature sends audio. You just need to go to the card's interface using their provided software and disable the audio on the card. Your existing drivers will then become default and you will be back where you started. I can say that from experience because I too said "What the heck is THIS now" when I suddenly found my Focusrite was no longer my enabled audio source after changing to that video card.

This is the one I use, but my primary requirement was the 4 HDMIs rather than 4gb or RAM This one only has 2gb.

GeForce GT 710

Note that your options may be directed by the kind of slot you have open. Mine uses a PCI Express x1. If I went to more RAM I think I would need to go to a motherboard with a PCI 2.0 slot for the bus to support that VRAM. That one Steve or Harv may be able to shed more light on. They are more into the hardware than I am.


Passive cards are great for music-only machines, as they'll reduce noise. And you're right on the mark for the HDMI audio - then again, I've never had a problem with it as I always use an external audio interface with it's own ASIO driver, so my DAWs never try to select the HDMI as it's not an ASIO device.


Originally Posted By: musiclover
To be honest unless a user is a dedicated gamer then I think no need for an expensive card, I have a lot of older games Half life 2, Desperadoes, for all that, more than happy with it. As far as I can see will run Video software fine as well.

Half-Life 2 is still one of the best games ever created. No real need to play many newer games than that!

That said, I don't practice what I preach there - I'm in the process of building a new gaming machine - i5 11400, GTX 1060 6gb, 32gb ram, 2tb NVMe SSD, and I'll be picking up a Playstation 5 as soon as I can find one the scalpers haven't got to...

I work here