Hi, I’m new to this forum and hope someone can help!

I’ve been creating computer animations for quite a while now and found it all very enjoyable. However, my poor old computer has finally packed up for good and I’ve even lost all my animations on the dead HD!! I’m having a new PC constructed by a professional engineer, but need some advise about the graphics card he’s suggested.

He’s advised me to have a Saphire x1950 256mb 256 bit card, but not sure if this is suitable for creating animations on 3D programmes, or video fx editing etc.

As far as I can tell, it’s very popular but I don’t want to end up with something that’s not suitable. Who know? It may be excellent for all 3D animation needs, I don’t really know and I wonder if someone here can help.

Please, can anyone advise me!!

Hi, welcome to itsallPC.

Your requirements really depend on what you mean by animations. An "animation", in general terms is a pre-rendered 2D image that any modern graphics controller, from the cheapest of the cheap up is capable of. What you really need is good processor performance and memory bandwidth. The same applied to video editing.

The question is, how are you creating these animations?

If you're talking about 3D rendered animations, then the software will often benefit from graphics cards with good 3D performance, in terms of how the program responds and how quickly it takes to render the animation.

If you're talking about 2D animations and video editing (inherently 2D), then the graphics card will provide negligible to no assistance at all. Some graphics cards can provide hardware encoding assistance under the right circumstances, but that money is better invested in a faster CPU.

The ATI Radeon X1950-series of graphics cards (there are several models from the affordable X1950 GT to the prohibitive X1950 XTX) is essentially a gamers graphics card. While it is capable of accelerating 3D animation software, the board design is intended to be cost effective over a relatively short life span and the drivers are optimised for the DirectX API. "Professional" 3D cards, optimised for OpenGL, are all from the ATI FireGL or NVIDIA Quadro series, but they are pretty pricey due to significantly higher component quality for reliability and longevity.

If it comes down to 2D work (and no interest in games), a moderately priced Radeon X1600-series or GeForce 7600-series graphics card will do the trick.

Thank you syphus!

The type of animations I refer to are created from human and props 3D models in Poser 7, Bryce etc. Not actually very heavy graphics compared with high end productions. However, I've always had problems with rendering, as this took so much time per frame. Sometimes the computer would crash without warning and simply refused to continue, I suspected overheating.

I now fully agree that the graphics card I mentioned (X1950) is not as suitable as I first thought after reading how hot and unstable they can get.

I will certainly look into the NVIDIA Quadro series as openGL is essential.

On the processor side however, I'm at a total loss about how to select a good processor performance and memory bandwidth etc, for video editing.

The chap who is building my new machine recommends an Athlon 64x2 4200MHZ Dual Core (At least I understand the "Dual Core" part of it). Well, as he recommended the Radeon X1950 for the job, would anyone trust him, or should I ever trust him?

The Athlon sounds pretty good, but I'm wondering if it's a suitable choice.

Anyway, thanks a lot for the advice, and I'll look into the graphics card issue.

I'm not sure where you read that the ATI Radeon X1950-series is hot and unstable - that sounds rather like NVIDIA bias.

I personally would not recommend an Athlon 64 X2 4200 processor (this is actually a 2.2 GHz processor - the 4200 part is the model number) unless you are on a pretty tight budget.

His suggestions are those I would make to someone with practically no money - also, he appears to not precisely understand your requirements. I'd say start with an Intel Core 2 Duo E4300 and an NVIDIA GeForce 7900-series graphics card.

I suggest a Core 2 Duo because, even the low end E4300 is a considerably superior processor than AMD eqivilents (see these benchmarks at X-bit labs for some comparisons). I also suggest starting with a NVIDIA GeForce graphics card because even NVIDIA's game cards are much better OpenGL performers. At the sort of prices you're talking, a Quadro simply isn't worth it. I've been informed by professionals that a game card will do about 99% of what a professional graphics card will to at half the price. What you really get with a professional graphics card is flawlessness; you can't afford visual anomalies when rendering an animation, but in a game, it's not so important and may even go unnoticed.