On 4/13/06, John wrote:

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5. Where I would appreciate some advice is on the graphics side, graphic cards to date have only been an early Nvidea PCI with 64kb, and a later upgrade to an AGP ATI Radeon 9200 with 128Kb. What would be a reasonable choice for a graphics card to give her a real benefit in handling photos? I can't see the need for two SLI x16 cards, however given only a small difference in m/b pricing If there is scope for two Nvidea cards it wouldn't matter.

For photo processing, you don't need a fast card. The work is usually done by the CPU. It would be possible to use graphics hardware to speed up some 2D operations, but AFAIK Gimp doesn't do this. Unless you plan to run 3D software such as games, Blender, or perhaps an XGL desktop, you should be fine with just about any PCI-X card.

I would only suggest that you prefer nvidia, not ATI. Personally I'm pissed off of ATI's support and their driver is more buggy. I already replaced 2 ATI's with nvidia, just because ATI's driver will lockup the machine if you start 2 X servers (i.e. by switching users). And at nvidia they have support forums, and really better KB. Disclamer: I'm not related to nvidia in any way. -- Svetoslav Milenov (Sunny)