Litewriter

Thanks Igor -- this is the info I needed. It may be time to go back to ATI now that I know that problem no longer exists. Hmm, I wonder if it's fixed on the laptop! I haven't tried since installing Win7 32-bit on that old beast, but I know I put in new drivers from ATI.

It's an EVGA 8800 GTX card. Have done the uninstall/install with each update, but the problem (occasional freezes, comes back from hibernation with 'video driver error, has been restarted' message) persists. Good advice, but I'm getting ready to rebuild an older PC specifically to run XP SP3, so that my old scanners and a PCI IDE card will work. Also to give my husband a text processor <g>. Since I have most of the parts, it's actually cheaper to do this than to buy newer scanners (I have an Nikon LS1000 and Epson Perfection 1240U flatbed). This is a good opportunity to replace the graphics card in my Win 7 box.

A couple of years ago (release 4 or 5 maybe), there was a problem that ATI was not fixing, that caused the video driver to return to default color management when a P2E slideshow was played. I resolved it at the time for my use by simply buying a graphics card based on nVidia. However, it meant I couldn't show anything on my laptop, at least not if I wanted accurate color and brightness. Now I'm in the market for a new video card, to run under Win7 64-bit. There are plenty of nVidia cards, but I'm having an annoying problem with the video driver, even though I've downloaded and applied every update from nVidia. I'd like to switch to ATI, but the old problem I had makes me hesitant. Does anybody have any recommendations? My primary use of my computer is as a photographer, and being able to show accurate color and brightness is a must. Thanks, Randi Litewriter

I'd have to disagree -- if you want to use RAID for backup, you should implement RAID 1 (mirrored.) It's slightly slower access, but it does give you backup for images, shows, etc. I put all my new images on the RAID volume, then move want I want to work with to a different volume, and then put the updates back on the RAID in a different folder. I find this easier than remembering to do backups, although I also use a backup utility for documents and other data and target the RAID volume (at 500GB, it holds a lot of data.)

Thanks for the ideas. On another forum, it was suggested that I might be interested in the Quadro workstation cards, the FX570 being under $200. Any experience with those? I am definitely going with a Core 2 Quad CPU, either the Q9450 or the Q6600 (Intel).

I'm getting ready to rebuild my desktop machine. I know the ATI graphics cards have a bug that causes problems with color adjustments - does this include even the the AMD FireGL cards? As to the nVidia line, any comments on the 8600 and 8800 models? Actually, is there a 'best' hardware list for PicturesToExe somewhere? Thanks! Litewriter