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#1
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What specs to look for in a video card to run 22" monitor at high resolutions
Hi,
I'll be buying a 22" Mitsubishi Diamond Pro http://www.necmitsubishi.com/product....cfm?product_i d=232&division=MITSUBISHI and am now looking a various cards to drive this monstrosity. Mitsubishi specs say it can go to 2048 x 1536 @ 86 and my job now is to match it to a card provide the signal. Although I will probably have the screen set to 2048 x 1536 I figure if the card can do this it will be able to provide viewing at lower resolutions flicker free. My needs are to provide clean displays of various large data sets in 2D, sometimes rotate them in 3D and a little low-tech gaming like Age of Empires, Sim City. I'm a little confused because cards advertised with 64 MB, 128 MB, or now 256 MB of memory all claim to be able to display at resolutions near to my 2048 x 1536 benchmark so there must be more than aggregate memory that determines ability to run large monitors at high resolutions. The Matrox P750 seems to a reliable choice for the job but lacks some of the fun stuff of say the ATI AIW 9000 Pro or GeForce4 Ti 4600. Will $150-$200 get me a reliable, flicker free card that can display at high resolutions (that way I can see more of the data set) or am I asking too much of a card in this price range? One last question. What is the end result of setting the screen to a resolution and refresh rate that the card doesn't list? For example, the monitor mentioned above lists a capability to display 1800 x 1440 @ 92 Hz but the closest a Radeon 9800 Pro comes in terms of its spec sheet is 1920x1080 @ 120. How would this display on the screen? Thanks for the help with these questions. |
#2
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On Sat, 23 Aug 2003 20:51:48 -0700
Steve Rossiter wrote: Hi, I'll be buying a 22" Mitsubishi Diamond Pro http://www.necmitsubishi.com/product....cfm?product_i d=232&division=MITSUBISHI and am now looking a various cards to drive this monstrosity. Mitsubishi specs say it can go to 2048 x 1536 @ 86 and my job now is to match it to a card provide the signal. Although I will probably have the screen set to 2048 x 1536 I figure if the card can do this it will be able to provide viewing at lower resolutions flicker free. My needs are to provide clean displays of various large data sets in 2D, sometimes rotate them in 3D and a little low-tech gaming like Age of Empires, Sim City. How is the 3-d rotation handled? If it's to be done by the video processor then you'll be wanting a board with good 3-d performance, while if it's handled by the CPU then the 3-d performance of the video board doesn't make much difference. If you're unsure on this point contact your software vendor and see if they can give you more information. Age of Empires and Sim City don't need much in the way of video performance by contemporary standards--any current production board should be adequate for them. I'm a little confused because cards advertised with 64 MB, 128 MB, or now 256 MB of memory all claim to be able to display at resolutions near to my 2048 x 1536 benchmark so there must be more than aggregate memory that determines ability to run large monitors at high resolutions. You need 16 meg of memory to display that resolution at 32-bit color depth. The large amounts of memory on contemporary boards are there to support 3-d operations, not the frame buffer. The figure of merit you want to look for is bandwidth. Horizontal x vertical x refresh rate gives you a good approximation of the required bandwidth. You should buy a board and monitor that are running at 80% or less of their rated bandwidth (my rule of thumb) at whatever refresh rate and resolution you plan to use, as the bandwidth rating is based on acceptable signal distortion, and the signal will always be cleaner if you are not near the rated limit. You say you want 2048x1536x86. That has a bandwidth requirement of about 270 MHz. If that is the mode in which you are normally going to run then you'll want a video board and monitor that are capable of about 340 MHz. Any current production Matrox board uses 400 MHz RAMDACs, so bandwidth should not be a problem, and the P750 will support the resolution you want, so it should work fine. However don't expect too much--you're working near the design limit for your monitor so it's not likely to be as sharp as it will be when not running quite so close to its limits. The Matrox P750 seems to a reliable choice for the job but lacks some of the fun stuff of say the ATI AIW 9000 Pro or GeForce4 Ti 4600. Will $150-$200 get me a reliable, flicker free card that can display at high resolutions (that way I can see more of the data set) or am I asking too much of a card in this price range? Reliability I can't answer to--I've had a large number of G200 failures and quit using Matrox for that reason, but I understand that that was a problem unique to the G200 and presume that it has been fixed on later boards. Flicker is a function of refresh rate--if you're not seeing flicker at 85 Hz with whatever you're using now then you won't see it with the Matrox board at that resolution. If you are seeing it at 85 Hz with whatever you're using now then you'll see it with any board at that refresh rate. The 3d performance of Matrox boards is well behind that of ATI and nvidia--if it turns out that you need good 3d performance then one of the other brands would be a better choice. One last question. What is the end result of setting the screen to a resolution and refresh rate that the card doesn't list? For example, the monitor mentioned above lists a capability to display 1800 x 1440 @ 92 Hz but the closest a Radeon 9800 Pro comes in terms of its spec sheet is 1920x1080 @ 120. How would this display on the screen? Thanks for the help with these questions. If it's within the board's limits then it generally works fine, however the board may run some modes in a pan and scan mode. You may need to use a third party utility to set some resolutions. Incidentally, I don't know what kind of budget you have, but if you need high resolution and can afford it, you might want to take a look at the IBM T221 or the Viewsonic VP2290b, both of which go up to 3840x2400. IBM will for a price provide the video board with the display, Viewsonic has a list of recommended boards, one of which is pretty cheap if you can find it. -- -- --John Reply to jclarke at ae tee tee global dot net (was jclarke at eye bee em dot net) |
#4
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That's a lot of monitor. Well, the Matrox Cards are very highly regarded
but are generally seen as being for business or technical applications. That having been said the other top brand 3D cards with nVidia and Ati chips are all pretty good as well. I would say that if you are seeking a specific screen resolution, go with the card that will provide that. If you're looking for a card that does it all then the high end Matrox or nVidia Quatro series are probably where you want to be. Don't forget, it's not worthwhile to spend a lot on a monitor if you're planning on driving it with a piece of junk Video card. "Steve Rossiter" wrote in message ... Hi, I'll be buying a 22" Mitsubishi Diamond Pro http://www.necmitsubishi.com/product....cfm?product_i d=232&division=MITSUBISHI and am now looking a various cards to drive this monstrosity. Mitsubishi specs say it can go to 2048 x 1536 @ 86 and my job now is to match it to a card provide the signal. Although I will probably have the screen set to 2048 x 1536 I figure if the card can do this it will be able to provide viewing at lower resolutions flicker free. My needs are to provide clean displays of various large data sets in 2D, sometimes rotate them in 3D and a little low-tech gaming like Age of Empires, Sim City. I'm a little confused because cards advertised with 64 MB, 128 MB, or now 256 MB of memory all claim to be able to display at resolutions near to my 2048 x 1536 benchmark so there must be more than aggregate memory that determines ability to run large monitors at high resolutions. The Matrox P750 seems to a reliable choice for the job but lacks some of the fun stuff of say the ATI AIW 9000 Pro or GeForce4 Ti 4600. Will $150-$200 get me a reliable, flicker free card that can display at high resolutions (that way I can see more of the data set) or am I asking too much of a card in this price range? One last question. What is the end result of setting the screen to a resolution and refresh rate that the card doesn't list? For example, the monitor mentioned above lists a capability to display 1800 x 1440 @ 92 Hz but the closest a Radeon 9800 Pro comes in terms of its spec sheet is 1920x1080 @ 120. How would this display on the screen? Thanks for the help with these questions. |
#5
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In article , Steve Rossiter
wrote: Hi, I'll be buying a 22" Mitsubishi Diamond Pro http://www.necmitsubishi.com/product....cfm?product_i d=232&division=MITSUBISHI and am now looking a various cards to drive this monstrosity. Mitsubishi specs say it can go to 2048 x 1536 @ 86 and my job now is to match it to a card provide the signal. Although I will probably have the screen set to 2048 x 1536 I figure if the card can do this it will be able to provide viewing at lower resolutions flicker free. My needs are to provide clean displays of various large data sets in 2D, sometimes rotate them in 3D and a little low-tech gaming like Age of Empires, Sim City. I'm a little confused because cards advertised with 64 MB, 128 MB, or now 256 MB of memory all claim to be able to display at resolutions near to my 2048 x 1536 benchmark so there must be more than aggregate memory that determines ability to run large monitors at high resolutions. The Matrox P750 seems to a reliable choice for the job but lacks some of the fun stuff of say the ATI AIW 9000 Pro or GeForce4 Ti 4600. Will $150-$200 get me a reliable, flicker free card that can display at high resolutions (that way I can see more of the data set) or am I asking too much of a card in this price range? One last question. What is the end result of setting the screen to a resolution and refresh rate that the card doesn't list? For example, the monitor mentioned above lists a capability to display 1800 x 1440 @ 92 Hz but the closest a Radeon 9800 Pro comes in terms of its spec sheet is 1920x1080 @ 120. How would this display on the screen? Thanks for the help with these questions. To run at super-high resolution places demands on the video DAC (digital to analog conversion) on the card. At one time, the DAC was a separate chip, allowing the best technologies to be selected for the 2D/3D acceleration and for the DAC. Now, the DAC is integrated into the main chip, so must make do with CMOS for drive. What you are trying to do, makes demands on the frame buffer (to source data to the DAC). But, frame buffers now have huge bandwidths, so that is not particularly a problem. (The tremendous amount of memory on video cards now is for 3D texturing.) You will notice, that the products you are looking at, don't display 32bit color, all the way to 2048x1536. This is because the DAC cannot settle to an accurate voltage value at the frequency required. That is not a killer issue (unless you are a Photoshop freak). When the signal comes out of the logic chip, it is filtered by some PI filters to meet EMI requirements. Depending on the design, some cards have too much filtering, so the display will lack sharpness at super-high resolutions. There used to be some web pages, showing how to remove some of the components on the board, to improve the sharpness of the display (at the cost of adding more emissions to the local environment). High resolution also places demands on the dot clock and sync signals. Any jitter either interpreted by the monitor, or added by the display card, degrades pixel resolution. Separate H and V sync signals make this easier to do (H,V,R,G,B cables). You should also pay attention to the output connector style and the cable used with the monitor. To display at 2048x1536, the video bandwidth is quite high, so the cables and connectors used should form a perfect transmission line (RF quality connectors). Unfortunately, many cards and monitors use a VGA connector, and the connector isn't a perfect match to the line. The best cabling consists of 5 BNC connectors and coaxial cables, with RF quality (shielded) connector pins on the connector that mates to the computer. In this respect, Sun computers have had the right solution for passing video signals, but other platforms still suffer with approximations to that. The connector that plugs into the Sun computer uses coaxial connector pins for the video signals. The claims that the monitor makers make should also be viewed with suspicion. Some monitors are not really happy at their highest resolution setting - the corners of the image will be rounded a bit, or the display may be wavy near the top or bottom. Running at 2048x1536 places huge demands on the display drive circuitry - the monitor will run hot, and the HV section of the monitor will be running full blast. So, where does this leave you? You really need to do a viewing test, ideally with the video card you plan on buying. Most of the time this isn't possible, so even seeing the monitor with some other video card is still worth while. In particular, when testing the monitor out, look to see whether the screen can produce a consistent white color all across the screen - I've noticed large Trinitron tubes, for example, will be discolored in one corner of the screen, or the image intensity will not be a constant across the full screen. With respect to some of your resolution questions, think about the "square pixel" problem. The display you've selected has a 4:3 aspect ratio, and neither 1800x1440 nor 1920x1080 will result in a displayed circle looking circular (unless you set the monitor width/height to not use the full screen). The same is true of buying a 16:9 display - you need to find a display card that has output modes suitable for that aspect ratio. You can always adjust the width or height of the screen at the monitor, but circles won't be circular without losing some screen real estate. The Matrox cards still have the reputation of having the best image quality, so in that sense you are probably looking at the right company for this application. But, their software drivers always leave a bit to be desired, in terms of getting accurate colors to the screen and the like. If you do go ahead with this plan, I think you'll find you spend most of your time at 1600x1200, as the monitor will run cooler, will have less image distortion, and text will still be readable at that resolution. You can switch up to 2048x1536 to look at color images, but don't expect normal desktop text to be too good at that same resolution. Since your monitor has two input connectors, there are games you can play with two video sources. At work, we used to connect two computers to one monitor, which allows changing platforms at the click of a button (and a lot of fumbling with two keyboards and two mice). You might even use two PCs - one with a good (but slow) high resolution card for working, and a second PC set up for gaming. For the ultimate display resolution, IBM had an LCD product. Go to ibm.com and search for "T220 Display". It has a resolution of 3840x2400 and comes with a modified Matrox G200MMS video card. When IBM first announced a device like this, I think it was using multiple video cards, but the combined output of the four display drivers is enough from the Matrox quad-head card. The T220 display lists for $21000. Note - You cannot play games with a setup like this, as the video card is PCI based and slow as molasses. http://www-1.ibm.com/support/docview...sg1MIGR-4XWF7Y http://www.matrox.com/mga/products/g200_mms/home.cfm Have fun, Paul |
#6
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Thank you very much everyone for the detailed answers.
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