Jakub O Posted April 17, 2019 Share Posted April 17, 2019 (edited) In the System Requirements for Cakewalk, there is no mention of graphics card. Would the latest Cakewalk run smoothly on system with 32MB graphics card (Matrox G200)? It is new, high end machine with plenty of CPU power, just the graphics is not that good. Any help would be greatly appreciated ? Edited April 17, 2019 by Alexander Lundgren Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
msmcleod Posted April 17, 2019 Share Posted April 17, 2019 Cakewalk is pretty light on graphics use. I've always used the on-board Intel graphics card with Cakewalk without any issues. As long as Windows still supports the Matrox G200, it should be fine. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bitman Posted April 17, 2019 Share Posted April 17, 2019 Matrox cards are pretty pedestrian in terms of the load presented to the system so that's good for a daw. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jakub O Posted April 17, 2019 Author Share Posted April 17, 2019 msmcleod: I'm just running Cakewalk on super low-end laptop with onboard Intel graphics and it runs great! :-) but I think Intel HD graphic cards have 128MB of memory and much faster clock speed? bitman: That was what I was thinking too. I can buy new graphics card, but I'm not sure if it would be actually better for DAW computer. On the other hand, I'm affraid that this card might be so slow that it will cause latency / lags / stutter when running Cakewalk. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mettelus Posted April 17, 2019 Share Posted April 17, 2019 Before jumping to a conclusion, I would recommend testing your system first. DAWs are primarily 2D, so are not intense on graphics. High end graphics cards are geared to provide 3D rendering to unload the CPU, which is not necessary for a DAW. As your CPU is high end, you may see core loading a little higher since the CPU will be needed to render graphics, but I doubt you would really notice it. Even on a "high end" graphics card, the delta in 2D benchmark over something generic isn't much at all... you only see massive jumps in performance for 3D. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jakub O Posted April 17, 2019 Author Share Posted April 17, 2019 I definitely don't want the CPU to render too much graphics, even if the actual performance hit would be very little. That's very important information, thank you, mettelus! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kev Posted April 17, 2019 Share Posted April 17, 2019 You will probably see an improvement in the image quality with a Matrox card. On the other hand 32MB might be a bit too low. At one stage when I was running Sonar X3 I had a 4-screen setup with 128MB each on two screens and 64MB each on the other two. There was a noticeable different in performance. The latter two were more sluggish. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jakub O Posted April 18, 2019 Author Share Posted April 18, 2019 (edited) 14 hours ago, Kev said: You will probably see an improvement in the image quality with a Matrox card. On the other hand 32MB might be a bit too low. At one stage when I was running Sonar X3 I had a 4-screen setup with 128MB each on two screens and 64MB each on the other two. There was a noticeable different in performance. The latter two were more sluggish. This is exactly what I needed to know. Will buy nice GPU for my system. Thank you, Kev! Edited April 18, 2019 by Alexander Lundgren Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chuckebaby Posted April 18, 2019 Share Posted April 18, 2019 Unlike gaming, Sonar has no real moving parts (besides drawing Wave forms, some plug ins and meters being the only real GPU draw). A GPU will only lighten the load on the RAM. Which in my opinion isn't much. I use dual DVI/VGA onboard graphics as well. I see no issues. However that graphics card your referring to is a relic. I would be more conrened about drivers. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jim Roseberry Posted April 18, 2019 Share Posted April 18, 2019 If you're running an Intel socket 1151 CPU, use the onboard video instead of the Matrox G200. We used a LOT of Matrox cards... but that was ~20 years ago. The onboard Intel GPU will be significantly faster. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grem Posted April 18, 2019 Share Posted April 18, 2019 With all due respect to original poster, when I saw 32mb, I first thought that he said 32GB!! I was like that's overkill!! Then I went back and re-read it and when it sunk in I LOL! Had not seen specs like that in.....20yrs!! 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
InstrEd Posted April 18, 2019 Share Posted April 18, 2019 in twenty years, Intel integrated graphics win a contest? 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abacab Posted April 18, 2019 Share Posted April 18, 2019 (edited) Is 32MB even enough to run a modern Windows GUI on? And do they make one with a PCIe interface? Edited April 18, 2019 by abacab Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
James Argo Posted April 18, 2019 Share Posted April 18, 2019 The main concern could be the slot... AFAIK, 32MB old Matrox cards used AGP slot which is obsolete in high end CPU. Even original PCI slot is rare in current era motherboards. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
razor7music Posted April 18, 2019 Share Posted April 18, 2019 I would check if the card can support multiple monitors. I like that option for Cakewalk, personally. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abacab Posted April 18, 2019 Share Posted April 18, 2019 (edited) I am currently using two monitors with the integrated Intel HD graphics, one using HDMI, and the other with DVI. No problem with shared system memory, and no lag ever in display response for 2D purposes. In the Passmark Performance Test "2D Graphics Mark", my Intel HD scores in the 46% percentile. Not too bad for a 7 year old, 3rd gen Intel Core i3 system. It totally sucks at 3D, but that's not what I use it for. The raw score was 521 vs. the world average of 588. 2D Graphics Mark includes: simple vectors, complex vectors, fonts and text, Windows interface, image filters, image rendering, and Direct 2D. https://www.passmark.com/products/pt.htm Edited April 18, 2019 by abacab Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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