My off-line music computer is also the photography computer. The latest upgrade to my photographic program, On 1 Photo Raw, made my video card obsolete, in other words it is not powerful enough to use all of the program's functions. Thus I would like to purchase new video card.

IIRC in the past some video card drivers would mess up audio drivers. Since music is the number one thing for this computer I don't want that to happen. So my question is is that still true? If so what video cards should I avoid?

FYI what I am looking for is a video card with OpenGL 4.2 compatible video card with 2+ GB dedicated VRAM, 1920x1080 resolution (at 100% scale factor). I would probably go with one with 4 gigs of VRAM. Any suggestions? (Yes my monitor can handle that resolution)

Thanx in advance for your wisdom, knowledge, and time.

This is a very interesting question. I can’t help but I’m interested in the topic.

What slot(s) are available on the motherboard?

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.....

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

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.

Video card


On amazon

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.

I think that's the one Eddie, have it for at least five years I think, and got it a lot cheaper than your link.

It does take up a little more room because of the passive cooling (you might have to move an existing pc card to give it that bit of extra room) but runs good, and no extra fans to get noise from.

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.

What kind of horsepower does the computer have Mario? I am sitting here on an i5 with 16GB of RAM but I am soon going to upgrade to 32 GB. My CPU is the biggest I can put on this mobo and I don't know if increasing the RAM will even matter, but it's not expensive and it might help.

For me, I like to exceed recommended. That's why the Pro Tools PC has and i7with 64 GB of RAM in it. Man, I paid a fortune for that PC. LOL!!

I have an i7 with 16 gigs of ram and a new 750 watt power supply.

Here is a list of my slots:

You're golden! You can get anything you want.

Your comment about Photography editing tools caught my attention. Photography is a large hobby for me too.
Like Eddie says your motherboard has plenty of PCI slots to work with. 750 watts should run any card you choose. I am NO Expert. I do recall that DirectX v12 support was also critical in the spec but that may have been specific to something I am using.

I notice the same trend in video card demands, more more more! with each release. I am an Adobe LR & PS user. This demand for CPU, RAM and GPU are what moved me to a larger system as well. I notice the speed delivered by the GPU. I think that a Solid State system drive has become a good investment. (Cost++Performance When you are ready)

This trend is very likely to persist into the future with larger image files, Stacking, AI and at the same time CPU power increments tapering(contradicting Moore Law).
{stating obvious} for Graphic processor bigger is better and will carry you further into the future.

I have been very pleased with ASUS NVidia GeForce cards. Like Steve suggests older versions could hit your sweet spot of Cost++Performance.

cheers Roy

With my to be twelve year old computer next February, I feel very ancient around you guys, but hey it does what I need at the moment, runs windows 10 just fine, though the SSD does help a lot.

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.



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.



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.



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...

So, people deeper into hardware may be able to answer this.

The computer I am using right now in a i5-4590 with 4 cores, and the box has 16gb of RAM. I use it to watch Spectrum TV while I am in here. The video card is a GeForce GT 710 which I believe only has 1 GB of RAM on it.

I also like to play backgammon on my computer. I play a web based game from 247games.com.

When I play backgammon with that TV streaming, the game is jerky. Do I need more SYSTEM RAM or a video card with more RAM in IT to stop the jerkiness?

Depends on the exact software, but the GT 710 is a fairly slow card. Great for normal desktop tasks, but if there's any graphics acceleration necessary it'll be slow. Probably nothing to do with video ram, but more with the GPU itself.

The i5 is probably fast enough for what you're doing, and 16gb is probably ok unless the Task Manager is telling you the RAM is all in use.

Stuttering is generally an indication that you have maxed out your VRAM. Once that happens, most games will start to stream out of system RAM and run slower. If it starts to run WAY SLOWER with lots of stuttering, that means the game has maxed out your system RAM and started streaming off of the hard drive. So, more system RAM can help. You can also try backing off on your anti ailiasing. With gaming, it all starts with a good GPU, which the GT 710 is not, that is matched with a CPU that is able to take advantage of the good GPU's power.

Between those 2 replies, off to Amazon I go to buy a better video card. Hopefully I can find one with 4gb of RAM and the 4 HDMI ports I need for these monitors.

Keith, you going to get up this way anytime soon? I may even be willing to venture outside the walls of my fortress of technical solitude to meet up with you somewhere.

PS Jane won't be with me.

Well, did testing today. Some things I have to mention.

I usually have Chrome open on one screen and Brave on another. Brave I use to watch TV and monitor a seldom used email account. Since that is all I do, I have no need for a bunch of plugins that were migrated from Chrome when I installed Brave. I deleted all of those plugins from Brave (but not from Chrome) and my CPU usage fell to next to nothing. I then loaded up my backgammon game and my solitaire game, both online browser based games, and they ran smoothly. So the issue was indeed CPU usage. I have been running those 2 browsers at the same time for so long now it never occurred to me that they were both running.

Between those replies giving me a roadmap of things to check, everything is good now.

Though I will probably still use this as an excuse to buy a new video card. I always liked AMDs. What this does is gives me some lead time to look at my mobo slots, find what I want that will fit, and wait for prices to come down.

4 HDMI ports might be the tough part, but 4 ports is not. Thankfully DVI-HDMI and Displayport-HDMI adapters and cables are cheap as chips.

Glad you got it sorted Eddie, to be honest since its a web game I was surprised that its the video card

Just went to this page to get an idea of how to look up how much Ram in mine and seems its 2gb and it does run fine for me.

https://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch001307.htm

You actually got it backwards. All the unneeded plugins on the second browser I run to watch TV on were sapping the CPU resources. When I looked at the performance the CPU was at 42%. When I killed off those plugins it dropped to around 10%.

That being said, I am still going to upgrade the video card, if only because I can. Probably to an AMD with 4gb on it. Again the big thing will be the need for 4 HDMI ports. But anything is out there if you are willing to pay for it. I have to weigh the options because this PC won't run Windows 11 unless and until they ease off on the restraints some. This CPU won't support it per their assessment tool. But, since I don't care about them continuing to upgrade the OS, I can run 10 until I die and not care.

Yeah, browser plugins can be a killer. On my old machine before I did some cleanup, Brave/Chrome could end up using 30gb of ram! This is for a million tabs of course, but each plugin is duplicated for each tab so it all adds up.

I recently bought an AMD RX580 4gb card for relatively cheap, which is VERY fast. Probably overkill for you. Look for something like an RX 550 or 560 4gb card or something in that range - they're probably more than powerful enough, and consumes much less power (and subsequently creates less heat and noise) than most other 4gb cards - my RX580 is ~180 watts while a 560 is ~75 watts.

First I want to thank everyone whom helped me.

I purchased a Maxsum nvidia GeForce GT 1030:

https://www.amazon.com/GEFORCE-GT-1030-Graphics-Cooling/dp/B08ZCHF59L/ref=sr_1_30?dchild=1&keywords=video%2Bcard&qid=1633446983&s=pc&sr=1-30&th=1

It is overkill for my needs but it was the best deal I could find. I figured that I should get this before the prices went any higher; they are super high now! Plus it is Win 11 ready so if I have to upgrade my computer in a couple of years I should be able to use this video card.

PS my photographic programs works extremely well with it.

Overkill is always better than underkill. Once your amp is at 10, unless you're Nigel Tufnel, that's as loud as it can go. But it will play great at 6 when 6 is all you need. Just remember to use the utility and disable the sound on the HDMI or Windows will want to make your monitor your sound device because of the HDMI.

I hear ya Eddie.

I use DVI so there is no sound going to my monitor.

I get that but when you install the video card drivers the system MIGHT reset your Windows sound settings to HDMI. It did it to me when I installed my GeForce. I had to use the GeForce utility to turn that off (in my case for all 3 monitors) and then reset Windows. You'll know in a few days.

That did not happen here..............yet. I'll find out when there is another Win update.

Hopefully you won't!

Good choice on the 1030 card, they're pretty solid!

Even though I am using DVI I still disabled the nvidia audio.

I do notice a huge difference in my photographic programs.