Asus M2A-VM: Would a dedicated video card be an improvement?

I'm putting together a budget PC based on the Asus M2A-VM motherboard.
I'm going to load it up with 2 GB DDR2, an AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200+, and
the OS will be Windows XP (SP2).

This machine will *not* be used to play video games, but it will be
used for video editing and DVD authoring.

It's my understanding that the integrated video on the Asus M2A-VM is
fairly decent as long as you're not playing games.

I'm wondering if when I place an order for these parts I should also
order an inexpensive dedicated graphics card, like the EVGA or the
ASUS GeForce 7200 GS PCI-E cards (see links below). In theory, a
dedicated card would take some of the load off the CPU and system
memory, which should make for a smoother running system, but in
actuality, I'm wondering if with a CPU that powerful and 2 GB RAM I
would really notice much if any improvement.

Any thoughts?

http://www.ncix.com/products/index.p...f acture=eVGA

http://www.ncix.com/products/index.p... facture=ASUS

http://www.asus.com/products.aspx?l1...&m odelmenu=1

"Igor" wrote in message
...
I'm putting together a budget PC based on the Asus M2A-VM motherboard.
I'm going to load it up with 2 GB DDR2, an AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200+, and
the OS will be Windows XP (SP2).

This machine will *not* be used to play video games, but it will be
used for video editing and DVD authoring.

It's my understanding that the integrated video on the Asus M2A-VM is
fairly decent as long as you're not playing games.

I'm wondering if when I place an order for these parts I should also
order an inexpensive dedicated graphics card, like the EVGA or the
ASUS GeForce 7200 GS PCI-E cards (see links below). In theory, a
dedicated card would take some of the load off the CPU and system
memory, which should make for a smoother running system, but in
actuality, I'm wondering if with a CPU that powerful and 2 GB RAM I
would really notice much if any improvement.

Any thoughts?

Yeah, get the evga in your first link. Video editing will hit your CPU
hard. Even a low-end add-on video card like the evga will make a
significant difference in performance. -Dave

On Wed, 25 Jun 2008 16:11:50 -0400, "Dave" wrote:

Yeah, get the evga in your first link.

Have you had good experiences with EVGA cards? I had been leaning
towards the Asus card because it's $12 cheaper and it looks pretty
much identical.

"Igor" wrote in message
...
I'm putting together a budget PC based on the Asus M2A-VM motherboard.
I'm going to load it up with 2 GB DDR2, an AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200+, and
the OS will be Windows XP (SP2).

This machine will *not* be used to play video games, but it will be
used for video editing and DVD authoring.

It's my understanding that the integrated video on the Asus M2A-VM is
fairly decent as long as you're not playing games.

I'm wondering if when I place an order for these parts I should also
order an inexpensive dedicated graphics card, like the EVGA or the
ASUS GeForce 7200 GS PCI-E cards (see links below). In theory, a
dedicated card would take some of the load off the CPU and system
memory, which should make for a smoother running system, but in
actuality, I'm wondering if with a CPU that powerful and 2 GB RAM I
would really notice much if any improvement.

Load it up with 4Gig DDR2 (3.25 usable on that board with XP32) not 2Gig and
HD video editing can benefit from a decent card dpeneding on the software
used. Adobe Premiere being an example of one that can. But generally you
want lots of fast HDD space. I have the same board, same processor running a
3.2 Ghz with 4 Gigs of RAM and a 9600GT card for my kid's gaming build.
Excellent value and very fast. I threw in a 750Gb 32Mb cache SATA drive for
storage,

"Igor" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 25 Jun 2008 16:11:50 -0400, "Dave" wrote:

Yeah, get the evga in your first link.

Have you had good experiences with EVGA cards? I had been leaning
towards the Asus card because it's $12 cheaper and it looks pretty
much identical.

EVGA is top-notch. Tier one. Many would say asus is tier one also, but I
(personally) do not agree. -Dave

Dave wrote:
"Igor" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 25 Jun 2008 16:11:50 -0400, "Dave" wrote:

Yeah, get the evga in your first link.
Have you had good experiences with EVGA cards? I had been leaning
towards the Asus card because it's $12 cheaper and it looks pretty
much identical.

EVGA is top-notch. Tier one. Many would say asus is tier one also, but I
(personally) do not agree. -Dave



"Tier One" is a market designation for companies with the highest volume
of units produced over a period of time.

You can't disagree with production reports unless you are also asserting
fraud.

Are you hinting at initiating class action against ASUS? Do you have
evidence of fraudulent acts by ASUS?

In many jurisdictions, fraudulently claiming fraud holds you liable for
loss of proceeds, you are probably going to be counter sued.

I will likely be called as a witness against you Dave, so I need to stop
this and retain a lawyer and a publicist for my book deal.

Do you want to settle this now, before it gets ugly?

On Wed, 25 Jun 2008 21:27:07 GMT, "Augustus"
wrote:

Load it up with 4Gig DDR2 snip

I'd been considering going with that much memory but I read somewhere
(don't remember where, but it was a reputable source; maybe a
motherboard manual?) that Windows XP can't actually do anything with
more than 2 GB.

"Igor" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 25 Jun 2008 21:27:07 GMT, "Augustus"
wrote:

Load it up with 4Gig DDR2 snip

I'd been considering going with that much memory but I read somewhere
(don't remember where, but it was a reputable source; maybe a
motherboard manual?) that Windows XP can't actually do anything with
more than 2 GB.

It can access and use considerably more than 2 Gig of system memory for
running itself and apllications. Most users don't benefit from over 2Gig
system RAM with XP32 but there are exceptions, and what you want to do is
one of those exceptions. In terms of pure physical OS limitations, XP32 and
Vista32 reserve memory address space above 3.25Gig for physical mapping of
devices and the like (a 512Mb video card for example) and any RAM above the
3.2 Gig level is mapped by the OS and essentially unavailable for the OS to
load itself into and for programs to execute....however you still gain over
1Gig of usable RAM by going to 4Gig and when handling very large files in
video editing it really makes a noticeable difference. When the files you
are editing are in the multigigabyte size, having a full 3.2Gig of RAM
usable by the OS and the editing app is desirable. An x64 OS of course, can
use the full 4gig (and more).

On Thu, 26 Jun 2008 03:17:45 GMT, "Augustus"
wrote:

It can access and use considerably more than 2 Gig of system memory for
running itself and apllications. Most users don't benefit from over 2Gig
system RAM with XP32 but there are exceptions, and what you want to do is
one of those exceptions. In terms of pure physical OS limitations, XP32 and
Vista32 reserve memory address space above 3.25Gig for physical mapping of
devices and the like (a 512Mb video card for example) and any RAM above the
3.2 Gig level is mapped by the OS and essentially unavailable for the OS to
load itself into and for programs to execute....however you still gain over
1Gig of usable RAM by going to 4Gig and when handling very large files in
video editing it really makes a noticeable difference. When the files you
are editing are in the multigigabyte size, having a full 3.2Gig of RAM
usable by the OS and the editing app is desirable.

Wouldn't 3 GB RAM be almost as good? If I understood your explanation
correctly, you're saying that anything over 3.2 GB will be wasted on
an XP32 system. It seems like a waste of money to install a 4th gig of
RAM just to get an extra 200 MB of useable memory.

On Wed, 25 Jun 2008 19:13:29 -0400, "Dave" wrote:

EVGA is top-notch. Tier one. Many would say asus is tier one also, but I
(personally) do not agree.

You've had problems with Asus products?