SPOT

Thanks for the fast reply. I found a 60gb for $76 at Newegg.com. Also, are you familiar with SATA hard drives and if so, should I go that direction instead?

Also, would you recommend the 450 or 550?

It appears that the only difference between the 450 and the 550 is the 450 has 16 mb ram, the 550 has 32 mb ram. Strictly speaking for Vegas use, is there a difference? Is the 550 better/faster at all?

thanks,
David

I dont think at this point you gain much with the SATA drive----just make sure your ATA drive has an 8mb buffer and does 7200rpm

David, you have raised a good question, will the 550 be better/faster? I would like to know as well. Also, will 32mb ram on the 550 be enough?

Rextilleon, thanks for the advice. I will check the bufer and rpm specs on the hdd I decide on.

Jazztyg,

32MB is fine for Vegas "today" but more importantly what other appications will you use besides Vegas?

SATA v PATA today makes little difference in performance adds a bit in functionality i.e. RAID - big cache PATA drives do make a difference

PAW

On this machine, just Vegas, possibly Studio, and PaintShop Pro. But all for video editing stuff, no games or anything like that.

PAW

I will be using Vegas 4 and Photoshop Elements at present...I have to decide on a program to burn to dvd, any suggestions (budget $150)?

I have a G550 and it's great. Got it for ~$110 a few months ago.

Also, there are many low priced HDD"s out there, but it's interesting to note that most manufacturer's won't warranty an HDD beyond one year. I only buy Western Digital Caviar drives for that reason (3-year warranty). I say stick with WD.

Simojo

Excellent...looks like I will get the G550. I also found a couple WD hdd (80gb and 120 gb) both with 8mb cache and 7200 rpm for total of $179. I will search to see what kinda price I can land for the 550....thanks

You have a $200 budget for 2 HDDs?

How about 2 WD-120G with 8 mb cache for $220? Or, 2 WD-80G for $166?

Hope this helps:

http://www.nanosys1.com/storage-ide-hard-drives.html

Video cards have no influence on VV performance although having one that supports dual head I find a great boon. I run mine with two CRTs and have the preview on the RH monitor and the rest of VV on the left.

BTW 8MB cache will do nothing for editing video, 8MBs will get filled in less than a few seconds. Although it adds zip to the cost and someone did say the 8MB ones come with 3 years warrnaty but the 2MB ones don't.

Another thing about WD: Read the WD specs carefully. Not all WD's are 3-year warrantees. They make some 1-year's as well.

If you shop newegg, you can get OEM parts, which have no pretty box, no drivers, nada, just a drive, which can save you a few bucks.

Also, I've found that online prices are fairly static and low for HDD's, but there are some pretty wild price swings if you shop locally. Good places are CompUSA, Best Buy, Circuit City, Staples, Office Max, etc. Usually their stuff is horribly overpriced, but every week there is a special on something. A few months ago I scored a 160GB WD Caviar Special 8MB 3-year for $99 after rebates. You can't find anything near that online. Often someone will post in this forum when there is a great sale at one of the national chains. If you can wait a few weeks, there's bound to be a killer sale somewhere.

And to add to what farss said: If you're running a single monitor, don't worry about your card. A simple cheap 16MB AGP will do. The G550 is what you want when running two monitors.

I got a 550 too. Had it for some time, but don't care much for dual monitors. Matrox for years has made some of the best graphic cards. If you're not into gaming a very good choice.

G400, G450 and G550 are virtually the same board.
Most of the differences are the level of integration, so most of the features are ones that save Matrox money and not you.

There are low memory versions of G400, G450 and G550. RT2000 was G400 based with a little extra magic onboard. I have a G400 at work in the form of an RT2000 (32MB) and a G450 (32MB) at home.

try this for size:

http://www.matrox.com/mga/products/comp_chart/g450_vs_g550.cfm

With either card, don't expect the s-video video out port to give you preview in Vegas4 (it will in Premiere6 though). Also don't expect to record from mediaplayer any video out from the s-video port, its color resolution is crushed to 16bit per pixel.

This is where the Parhelia (and I suppose the likes of the P750) step in. Despite this fact, I'm sticking with my G450 as my DVD player and DV camera can get me to VHS quite adequately.

Good resolution on dual-head mode. You have to suffer one of your monitors being a secondary on Win2k - which isn't as good as Parhelia or nVidia/ATI dual heads. Not bad resolution if you have DVI-I LCD panels.

My next graphics card will be PCI Express or PCI64@133. I'm holding out. You should get a really good deal on a G450, if you think it is for you.

I'm not sure I understand this part of your post -

============
Good resolution on dual-head mode. You have to suffer one of your monitors being a secondary on Win2k - which isn't as good as Parhelia or nVidia/ATI dual heads. Not bad resolution if you have DVI-I LCD panels.
============

If you could elaborate a little, please - I'm running XP and 2 19" standard crts...will one have lower res than the other with the matrox cards?

thanks,
David

I was a bit spent and rushed when I wrote that David, sorry.

The resolution of both Matrox G series displays (with 32MB RAM) can be identical, same for color depth.

Microsoft follow the rules about "PCI display overlay" (it applies to AGP cards too) by only having one surface available across the whole system. So if you move a window playing on the primary display to the secondary, it will invariably hic-cup as it goes into a more processor intensive drawing mode.

The problem of having primary and one or more secondaries is removed when the drivers for the card support a single primary (logical, not physical)display that spans two (physical) monitors. Matrox Parhelia/P-series, nvidia-GeForce and ATI-Radeon cards are some of those that support this mode. It doesn't have much bearing on the current Vegas environment as this doesn't use this display surface for the regular preview anyway. The G series Matrox cards are not so lucky as their drivers don't make up for this condition and probably won't ever be uplifted to do so. P650 being priced at about the same level as the 32MB G550 retail.

G-series cards, when in DVI mode, as with many other manufacturers, don't give you the max res of the cards analogue mode. This is usually not a problem unless you upgrade your screens and show the age of your DVI capable display adapter.

So David, no, both of your screens can be at the maximum res the card supports.