Which make of ATI card has the sharpest VGA output?

Which ATI brands are the best for sharp VGA output (hercules,shappire etc)?
I had an old matrox card a long time ago which had the sharpest picture I've
ever seen - do any of the brands come close to that? I'm not looking for
'professional' brands either - they're way too expensive. Is there an online
comparision between brands with a section on sharpness?

TIA

"hg" wrote in message
...
Which ATI brands are the best for sharp VGA output (hercules,shappire
etc)?
I had an old matrox card a long time ago which had the sharpest picture
I've
ever seen - do any of the brands come close to that? I'm not looking for
'professional' brands either - they're way too expensive. Is there an
online
comparision between brands with a section on sharpness?

According to a Radeon 9800 Pro round-up I read a couple of months ago
Sapphire has the best 2D output. I don't remember the Url, but try Google.
---
Anders

All manufacturers use the same GPU and RAMDAC for a particular model, so the
video quality is equal, and excellent.

AFAIK, the only difference between the brands, other than price, is the
memory and PCB used, neither of which has any noticeable impact on image
quality. (Sapphire actually makes some of the ATI-branded cards, and are
among the best of the "powered-by" alternatives.)

Matrox was the standard for sharp displays, now ATI is. There are any number
of reviews online, but the majority pay more attention to 3D game
performance than 2D image quality.

"hg" wrote in message
...
Which ATI brands are the best for sharp VGA output (hercules,shappire
etc)?
I had an old matrox card a long time ago which had the sharpest picture
I've
ever seen - do any of the brands come close to that? I'm not looking for
'professional' brands either - they're way too expensive. Is there an
online
comparision between brands with a section on sharpness?

TIA

"Skid" wrote in message
. net...
All manufacturers use the same GPU and RAMDAC for a particular model, so
the
video quality is equal, and excellent.

AFAIK, the only difference between the brands, other than price, is the
memory and PCB used, neither of which has any noticeable impact on image
quality. (Sapphire actually makes some of the ATI-branded cards, and are
among the best of the "powered-by" alternatives.)

Matrox was the standard for sharp displays, now ATI is. There are any
number
of reviews online, but the majority pay more attention to 3D game
performance than 2D image quality.


The Ramdac doesn't have too much to do with actual video quality, at least
it doesn't with NVidia cards. Assuming that NVidia and ATI cards are build
somewhat similarily in principle, it would be the low pass filter that
affects that actual quality of the signal. This might be more of a part
that the individual manufacturers can choose for themselves, just like with
NVidia cards. However, I too have read that Sapphire produces cards with
very good video quality.

Harry




-----= Posted via Newsfeeds.Com, Uncensored Usenet News =-----
http://www.newsfeeds.com - The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World!
-----== Over 100,000 Newsgroups - 19 Different Servers! =-----

"Harry Muscle" wrote in message
...
"Skid" wrote in message
. net...
All manufacturers use the same GPU and RAMDAC for a particular model, so
the
video quality is equal, and excellent.

AFAIK, the only difference between the brands, other than price, is the
memory and PCB used, neither of which has any noticeable impact on image
quality. (Sapphire actually makes some of the ATI-branded cards, and are
among the best of the "powered-by" alternatives.)

Matrox was the standard for sharp displays, now ATI is. There are any
number
of reviews online, but the majority pay more attention to 3D game
performance than 2D image quality.


The Ramdac doesn't have too much to do with actual video quality, at least
it doesn't with NVidia cards. Assuming that NVidia and ATI cards are
build
somewhat similarily in principle, it would be the low pass filter that
affects that actual quality of the signal. This might be more of a part
that the individual manufacturers can choose for themselves, just like
with
NVidia cards. However, I too have read that Sapphire produces cards with
very good video quality.


You're referring to a fairly well-known problem with older Nvidia TNT and
GeForce cards. There were do-it-yourself mods posted on any number of Nvidia
fansites because the low-pass filters were so bad. The blurriness and
high-res ghosting were legendary.

That doesn't seem to be the case with any of the current cards from either
Nvidia or ATI, though most reviewers conclude ATI's image quality is
slightly better.

As you suggest, RAMDACs are also good enough as to be not much of a
hindrance to image quality on current cards. But that was not always the
case. When the Radeon 9700 came out, it was noticeably superior to the
GeForce4 Ti cards it was competing against, as well as to the previous
generation Radeon 7500 and 8500.

My point was basically that there is no hardware difference I'm aware of
between ATI-branded and powered-by ATI cards that significantly affects
image quality. They're all good.

Tom's Hardware did a head-to-head of Radeon 9700 Pro cards from various
makers last fall, and the image quality comparisons were so close that they
concluded that the variation between performance of the same card on
different monitors was more significant than the variation between different
cards on the same monitor:

"Since each manufacturer and monitor transforms the analog VGA signals
differently, it's hard to derive conclusions from measurements of the cards'
output signals. You can measure certain indicators and the edge steepness,
but that won't reveal much about the display quality with your particular
monitor. In fact, some monitors even have problems with edge steepness
levels that are too high. The only way to be absolutely sure of your
purchase is to check the display quality with your own monitor. Of course,
you'll first have to find a store that installs the card in a test computer
and allows people to bring their own monitors. And that's an almost
impossible task, considering the influence of the Internet on shopping
habits and the tendency to focus on low prices and gloss over sales advice.
.."

My Tyan 9800 Pro 2D quality easily matches the video quality of the Gigabyte
9700 Pro and Sapphire 9000 Pro I had before it. In fact, I really couldn't
tell a difference between any of the cards.

Nvidia cards are a whole different matter. I had a Chaintech (good name
brand Nvidia card, also had a Visiontek and Powercolor) but anytime I drove
it above 1152x864 the text would appear fuzzy and lose focus. I returned it
for another card but with the same result. I literally began to get
headaches using the Nvidia cards so that prompted me to switch to an 8500.

All the cards were "tested" on my 19" Sony G420 monitor, which I'm quite
happy with as long as I'm using an ATi card. Until Nvidia makes a change in
that dept, i don't care how fast their cards are (which at the moment are
behind the game).

ATi has Nvidia beat hands down in 2D&3D quality, except *maybe* in MS
FS2004.

While everyone else was running GeForce2's & GeForce3's back in the day, I
was happy to sacrifice a few frame rates for much better 2D and 3D image
quality with my 8500, even if ATi's drivers weren't all that stable at the
time. I spend a lot of time in front of my PC not only playing games but
writing documents, reading emails, video/photo editing, creating/editing web
pages, and more. If a vidcard produces fuzzy text it's worthless to me.




"Harry Muscle" wrote in message
...
"Skid" wrote in message
. net...
All manufacturers use the same GPU and RAMDAC for a particular model, so
the
video quality is equal, and excellent.

AFAIK, the only difference between the brands, other than price, is the
memory and PCB used, neither of which has any noticeable impact on image
quality. (Sapphire actually makes some of the ATI-branded cards, and are
among the best of the "powered-by" alternatives.)

Matrox was the standard for sharp displays, now ATI is. There are any
number
of reviews online, but the majority pay more attention to 3D game
performance than 2D image quality.


The Ramdac doesn't have too much to do with actual video quality, at least
it doesn't with NVidia cards. Assuming that NVidia and ATI cards are
build
somewhat similarily in principle, it would be the low pass filter that
affects that actual quality of the signal. This might be more of a part
that the individual manufacturers can choose for themselves, just like
with
NVidia cards. However, I too have read that Sapphire produces cards with
very good video quality.

Harry




-----= Posted via Newsfeeds.Com, Uncensored Usenet News =-----
http://www.newsfeeds.com - The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World!
-----== Over 100,000 Newsgroups - 19 Different Servers! =-----

If your monitor has BNC connections, use them,
they help picture quality at higher resolution.

"hg" wrote in message
...
Which ATI brands are the best for sharp VGA output (hercules,shappire
etc)?
I had an old matrox card a long time ago which had the sharpest picture
I've
ever seen - do any of the brands come close to that? I'm not looking for
'professional' brands either - they're way too expensive. Is there an
online
comparision between brands with a section on sharpness?

TIA

if you want good sharp vga nothing beats a 3dlabs wildcat
you can get a 64 meg vp for $200usd

64MB 256-bit DDR On-board memory.
$200
100M Vertices/Sec; 18G AA Samples/Sec.
Independent Dual-Head
100% Programmable Visual Processing.
Leading OpenGL and Direct3D performance.
Over 200Gflop and 1.2 TeraOp VPU
Professional-grade reliability and quality
Family of price/performance options.
Multi-threading capability for multiple virtual VPUs.
Industry's most capable texture processor
Full 2D & 3D acceleration on 2 displays.
Two DVI-I connectors for Digital or Analog displays (1 DVI-VGA
adapter included)
3-pin mini-DIN Stereo sync output.
Windows XP/2000/98/Me support.
OpenGL support with shader extensions.
DirectX 8.1 support with vertex shader 1.1 and pixel shader 1.2
Prototype OpenGL 2.0 drivers on request.

http://americas.shop.3dlabs.com/shop...p?category=267

for a mear $899 you to can have a 512meg 256bit card