2d Quality

[Guest]

I am about to buy myself a 3d accellerator card. I spend a lot of time in front of my computer, and I have just bought myself a new monitor. Currently I am using Matrox G200, wich I am very satisfied with, the colors a vibrant and the text is crisp.

When I read reviews of new 3d accelerators I seldom see a rating of the 2d quality. I heard somewhere that the Radeon had good image quality, but when it comes to geforce I havent heard anything. Is this because the RAMDAC is integrated, and therefore equally good/bad, or are the differences between, say Cardexpert and Creative ?

 

[lrmv]

I have both a ATI Rage Fury and a GeForce 256 card (Elsa Erasor X). The 2D picture quality of the ATI card is A LOT better than of the Elsa card!!!

 

[Kodiak]

can you give us some details? I really don't know HOW the 2d can be of better/worse quality, so I'd appreciate some pointers. I
s it sharper, bigger, smaller, more colorfull, less fuzzy, brighter, darker, less glare, what? 🙂

 

[lrmv]

The picture is definitely a lot sharper!

 

[Guest]

Hmmm, usually the monitor is the biggest factor in how clear and crisp the picture is. The video card unless it's vga port is flaky somehow or the ramdac is off in it's output, should have identical image quality at same resolution/color/refresh rate. Now, if one is driving more to the monitor that can degrade the image with poorer monitors (I've got one that looks great at 1024x768 but goes to crap at 1280x1024). Probably to do fair testing, need to make sure it's outputing at 60Hz on both cards, at same resolution/color depth.

"The answer is not in your hair."
"I'd rather jump in the lava than be fragged by you."

 

[Guest]

When I say 2d quality i mean the crispness of the colors or sharpness or contrast. Normally you will experience this like a "faded" or "foggy" image. This can have 3 causes; badly configured monitor, bad monitor/cable or bad quality on the RAMDAC on the video card. I have just bought a very expensive SONY monitor, so I don't want to waste my money by buying a video vard bad 2d quality, and I really want a good 3d accelerator. What is the best choice ?

 

[lrmv]

What I mean is:
I use both ATI and GeForce cards on 1024x768x32 at 85Hz refresh rate. Colors don't look any different to me but black characters on white background look much clearer with the ATI card than with the GeForce card. The GeForce card characters look more fuzzy. This means that the overall video bandwidth of the GeForce based card is lower than the BW of the ATI card.
Maybe the RAMDACs of both cards have the same bandwidth, but there's more on a videocard than just a RAMDAC before the signal gets to the VGA connector...

 

[Guest]

The fuzzy characters on the geforce, is this also a problem with Geforce 2 (PRO/Ultra), and/or is it a problem with specific card makers ?
I have no experience dismantelling video cards, but I was under the impression that the quality of the RAMDAC was the most crucial element when it comes to image quality. What other components play a role here ?

The trouble with a rat race is that even if you win you're still a rat.

 

[RavenPrime]

I have an ATI Rage Fury at work and a Geforce2 GTS at home. The 2d quality, text and pictures is the same. I have 19in monitors and run at 1152x864 85Hz on both.

Few people review 2d image quality on graphics cards because there is little to no difference between them in this area. The difference come into play in areas of DVD decoding and playback and 3D games. ATI has the best DVD decoding and playback and TV-output. nVidia has the best 3d game performance. Which of the above is important to you is what will allow you to decide which card to buy. You can see my priorities between work and home.

😎 James