Anyone here upgraded from Matrox G550 to P650? Was it worth it?

[James Loudon]

So I have had this G550 for a while now. Since having it I have changed both monitors - now have a Mitsubishi DP930 and NEC FE770 - both CRTs. The old Soyo mobo has been changed to dual xeon Asus. So its quite a lot more responsive than it was and I'm thinking maybe its time for a new vga card. Theoretically the 650 is capable of greater colour depth and has more memory. But what does this mean in real terms? Will I see faster screen redraws etc? If you have made that move did you see any noticable difference? I know its a better and more sophisticated card but thats no use to man nor beast unless I can see it. I dont expect miracles but would def consider upgrading if text was clearer which its supposed to be as my eyes are not what they used to be.
My work is all 2D - Photoshop, Premiere, Dreamweaver etc.
Cheers
J.

[UtwigMU]

I went G400->Parhelia (similar) and I can see slightly faster redraws and it's a bit better in 2D. Main difference is that I can now play more modern games.

Personally for above mentioned applications I would not upgrade videocard. I recommend waiting a year for Longhorn to come out - Nocona Xeons are 64-bit, so you will be able to take advantage of 64 version (if you have Prestonias, you'll just upgrade CPUs) - videocard will need to be WGF1.0 compliant though, which both G550 and P650 are not.

So unless you plan to change to 1600x1200 digital LCDs soon, wait with videocard upgrade till you see WGF1.0 compliant cards coming out.

[James Loudon]

Okay, thanks for your thoughts. I'll stay where I am, but you know how that upgrade bug sometimes gets to you!
Cheers