Upgrade my graphics cards on two pcs?

musicformedia

Hi lads,

Have two PCs - one for music production and an older one for gaming. I bought a really crap graphics card for my music production PC (in the hopes that I wouldn't start playing games on it), but I'm having a lot of bother trying to get dual screens setup on it.

My older gaming PC has a good graphics card that would work fine in my new music production PC - I want to upgrade my graphics card in my gaming PC so I can plug it into my TV and play decent games on it still (HDMI connection).

My questions are:

- Can I use my graphics card from my gaming PC in my music production PC (will it work?)
- What graphics card would you suggest I buy for my gaming PC

Music production PC is as follows:
24GB RAM: 12GB-x6-Kit Corsair PC1600 CL9 Dominator
ASUS P6X58-E WS, Sockel 1366, ATX, DDR3
Club 3D Radeon HD 6450 Noiseless Edition, 1024MB GDDR3, PCI-Express
Intel Core i7-960 Box 8192Kb, LGA1366
MS Windows 7 Pro 64bit


Gaming PC is as follows:
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]4GB RAM: [/FONT]OCZ Gold XTC DDR2 PC6400 4096MB KIT,
OCZ StealthXStream Powersupply ATX/EPS
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4GHz Socket LGA775, 8MB
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]ASUS P5Q SE2 iP45 Socket 775 8 Channel Audio ATX Motherboard[/FONT]
Windows XP
XFX GeForce 8800GTS 500M 640MB GDDR3, PCI-Express, 2xDVI/HDTV/HDCP, 320-bit

I have no budget and don't mind where I buy it.

Thanks for your time and help

witnessmenow

Firstly yes, you can move 8800GTS into your music production pc. (assuming your PSU is able for it)

The 8800GTS would be much louder/hotter(under use anyways)/power hungry than the card in you music PC.

Is the only reason you want to change is the dual screen setup isnt working? If you arent doing anything graphically intensive on your music production pc the GFX you have in it should be fine. Can we help in trying to set it up? Whats the problem you are running into? What are the cables you are trying to hook up?

Secondly,
What games do you play/plan to play?
What resolution is your TV (720p, 1080p)?

If 720p:
Not really a whole lot of point upgrading, I think your card would be good with games @ 720p. One advantage you will get is a card that supports DX11, but im not sure if it would be worth it.

If 1080p:
My Pc is similar spec to yours and im after getting a nvidia gtx 460 which seems to be a pretty good fit for the price, I was playing Battlefield 3 which is about the hardest your GFX card will work at the moment at 1080p on all high settings(didn't try any tweaking). Maybe stretch to the gtx 480 if others think its worth the extra investment.



One bit of advice i would have is dump xp on your gaming pc, it must be a 32-bit version as 64-bit xp is beyond useless! The reason this is important is that 32bit windows can only address about 3.7gb of ram iirc. What this means is that on your current setup you are losing roughly 1gb of your ram Total: (4 + 0.64) - Max: (3.7) = Wasted: (0.96GB)
If you upgrade your card it will only get worse!

BTW if you do end up displacing your music productions card and are interested in selling it give me a shout, im thinking of building a HTPC and that would be a good fit.

musicformedia

Hey there, thanks for the response

The only issue I'm having on my music PC is that I'm using dual screens and the following happens.

The main screen on the left works fine (connected via DVI), the secondary screen on the right has a weird resolution size (connected via VGA).

The resolution of my main screen is 1680x1050, but my secondary screen will only go to 1600x900 or 1600x1200.

Can't seem to figure it out at all. I would like to upgrade my gaming PC card as I thought I'd be getting a better signal if I connected it via HDMI? Will it still have a good signal via DVI - is HDMI not going to show up better?

Thanks for your help

witnessmenow

I have a laptop with an ATI gfx that suffers from the exact same problem on my gfs 24inch dell monitor over VGA. My work around is to use a hdmi->dvi cable and it works the finest. You could pick one up on ebay/dealextreme for less than a fiver (what i have) , or about €25 in a pc world/maplin/peats.

Im pretty sure there is a way to force resolution in CCC (ATI catalyst control centre iirc) but i never got around to finding it.

Re: HDMI vs DVI, its the exact same technology with a different connector type. Only advantage would be you would get sound over native HDMI.

cgarrad

Is it showing "standard vga" monitor or the model of the monitor you have?

In with the resolution settings?

musicformedia

cgarrad wrote: »

Is it showing "standard vga" monitor or the model of the monitor you have?

In with the resolution settings?

You mean in "Appearance and Personalisation" - "Display" - "Screen Resolution"?

My main one shows up as "SyncMasters", but my secondary shows up as "Generic Non PnP Monitor"

musicformedia

witnessmenow wrote: »

I have a laptop with an ATI gfx that suffers from the exact same problem on my gfs 24inch dell monitor over VGA. My work around is to use a hdmi->dvi cable and it works the finest. You could pick one up on ebay/dealextreme for less than a fiver (what i have) , or about €25 in a pc world/maplin/peats.

Im pretty sure there is a way to force resolution in CCC (ATI catalyst control centre iirc) but i never got around to finding it.

Re: HDMI vs DVI, its the exact same technology with a different connector type. Only advantage would be you would get sound over native HDMI.

Ah perfect - didn't realise that!

Also - have a hdmi-dvi converter, but it won't fit into the back of the PC as theres too little room beside the other DVI cable.

I'll buy one of the HDMI - DVI cables and see if it works thanks - would something like this work?

http://www.dealextreme.com/p/hdmi-to-dvi-24-1-cable-3-meter-1501

witnessmenow

Yeah should do the job ok.

I'll have a look at forcing the resolution on my laptop this evening, if i get anywhere I'll let you know what i did.

musicformedia

witnessmenow wrote: »

Yeah should do the job ok.

I'll have a look at forcing the resolution on my laptop this evening, if i get anywhere I'll let you know what i did.

Great thank you very much!

cgarrad

The fact that the pc is not seeing the model of you screen means it does not know the supported resolutions.

Try to find a screen driver or download the card driver and force the resolution it the driver control panel rather than the windows panel.

musicformedia

cgarrad wrote: »

The fact that the pc is not seeing the model of you screen means it does not know the supported resolutions.

Try to find a screen driver or download the card driver and force the resolution it the driver control panel rather than the windows panel.

Yea its weird - I contacted Samsung and told them I wanted drivers for it. They said they have no drivers for it...weird?

cgarrad

musicformedia wrote: »

Yea its weird - I contacted Samsung and told them I wanted drivers for it. They said they have no drivers for it...weird?

Often the case, just force it with the cards driver control panel.

musicformedia

cgarrad wrote: »

Often the case, just force it with the cards driver control panel.

Graphics card control panel says the same thing - only those resolutions are available.

Going to try the HDMI instead and see how it works once I get the HDMI to DVI cable

cgarrad

Steer clear of HDMI as it has overscanning built in, means you dont get the correct pixel mapping, poor image and loss of border.

VGA is better!

musicformedia

cgarrad wrote: »

Steer clear of HDMI as it has overscanning built in, means you dont get the correct pixel mapping, poor image and loss of border.

VGA is better!

I'm using VGA at the moment, and it will only offer me that crappy resolution so I don't have an option unfortunately

cgarrad

VGA supports up to 2048×1536px, 50% more than Full HD...

musicformedia

cgarrad wrote: »

VGA supports up to 2048×1536px, 50% more than Full HD...

Might support it, but my PC won't let me do it

witnessmenow

cgarrad wrote: »

Steer clear of HDMI as it has overscanning built in, means you dont get the correct pixel mapping, poor image and loss of border.

VGA is better!

Are you sure that's not just for TVs? Like where in the above scenraio is the oversan happening?

As I was saying before I use a monitor with my laptop using a HDMI(laptop) to DVI(Monitor) and there is no over scan, picture is right size and perfect quality.

SickBoy

witnessmenow wrote: »

Are you sure that's not just for TVs? Like where in the above scenraio is the oversan happening?

As I was saying before I use a monitor with my laptop using a HDMI(laptop) to DVI(Monitor) and there is no over scan, picture is right size and perfect quality.

This is correct. HDMI to a monitor is grand, HDMI to a TV can sometimes be overscanned.