New graphics card

by **William Tranter** » Mon Jan 28, 2008 7:37 am

I wrote recently within these Forum pages about difficulties I was experiencing with my Matrox Parhelia 128 graphics card not giving me v.3 shading (whatever that is!). Although Premiere Elements would work without any problems, if I wanted to 'play' trains on the new RailSimulator program (only recently released in the USA), the program wouldn't run. Couldn't understand why not, because the Parhelia card was quite a recent update into my computer. Anyway, it has now been changed to an nVidia GeForce 7800GS OC (overclocked!, and it feels like it - the heat output is huge!), and everything is now working perfectly.

The card is considerably deeper than the Parhelia graphics card, and because my motherboard only supports AGP graphics cards, my computer guru had a difficult time finding a card which would support output to (at least) two screens (I need the real estate for video editing!), version 3 shading for my RailSim program and would still work in an AGP socket. Eventually he found my board and fitted it last Friday. I've tried most of my programs which use lots of graphics and found no problems whatsoever, though setting it up took longer than I thought it might.

I've put up this topic because there may be other computer users in this Forum who come across this problem, and are looking for a similar solution.

Anyway, I'm pleased, and it wasn't too great a hit on the credit card! Now I'm back to video editing and preparing the skeleton of my next holiday video. I usually set up a blank video project with a Black clip right at the beginning (to ensure a break when dubbed to videotape), put in my 'intro', then design a title, choose title music, load up any still photographs I might use in the project, etc. and save, save, save (you can never save enough! - the times PrEl has seized up on me are countless, not to mention the computer itself, so before beginning editing of a new clip, I always save, and I save after any particularly difficult bits, like clips which have lots of filters applied. Some clips require over 6 or 7 filters to give me the desired result, especially clips taken with a very wide angle lens fitted to my camcorder. I then use the 'lens distortion' filter to remove the distortion, usually use Perspective filter to lessen the 'leaning in' of buildings when shooting upwards, Sharpen filter, quite often Colour correction filter, not to mention sound filters, and my poor old computer struggles a bit with everything applied, hence the save situation!
Anyway, I'm off back to my favourite program, Premiere Elements.
All the best,
Bill