Graphics Card Advice
 

I know Vegas relies more on CPU horsepower than graphics card spec. That said, I am specing up a new PC based around a Core 2 Duo 6600. Motherboard can take a PCI Express x 16 card.

My quesion is.....what would you buy? Are there any benifits to getting a certain card i.e. HD playback/any Vegas applications/plug-ins gain any advantage by a better card....or......do I spend the money elsewhere and just get the cheapest PCI 16X card I can see?

I've built loads of systems. That said, graphics cards have always seemed such a numbers game to me. I have NO interest in games so I'm talking purely from a Vegas standpoint.

My only stipulation is dual DVI as I run dual screen.

Vegas does not use the graphics card for anything at all. If you are using MB version 2 then it can help, or if you are using something like AE it helps but for Vegas you get nothing.

If you are running Vista get something robust. If XP, spend your money elseware.

The previous post is correct. If using some plug ins such as Magic Bullet editors 2, then You need a video card with a quality GPU and at least 512 memory on the video card. I just bought a Nvidia Geforce 7900GTX from XFX. It works great, I had a 200% improvement on rendering with magic bullet, and I can do editing in real time. That is what I suggest, but if you do not use plugins that require the GPU such as the 7900GTX has to offer, then you do not need to worry about it, just get a decent card that can offer dual view in case you add a secondary monitor. Good luck. J

Also, re DVI, pay attention to single link vs dual link DVI. The bigger high res monitors (Apple Cinema 30" for example) require dual link DVI. Some graphics cards can support 2 dual link DVI outputs from the same card so you could run 2 high res monitors from each card. Other cards with DVI don't have dual link so you can't use the super high res large monitors at all. By the way, the term dual link only refers to the pin layouts on a single DVI connector (and the bit rate it will support) and has nothing to do with whether the card supports one or two monitors.