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So.. I'm back to being a Matrox User for the moment. Here's why.
I used to have a crappy 17" monitor that I hated with passion, which was originally driven by a good old G400 I quite liked.
That is, until I was forced by every then current game to use a very low resolution and turn the detail down.
Then according to your fellow MURCer advice on which GeForces being less terrible, I replaced the video card with an ASUS V7700 (GeForce2 GTS, 32 MB).
Picture clarity was certainly a little bit worse, colors less vivid - but both of them only slightly. What was really noticeable is just how much better the GeForce2 was at scaling overlays.
On the G400 as soon as you rescale an overlay's window from 1:1 zoom the quality degrades rapidly. (I thought this could be a driver problem in Win2k, but now I see it's still the same even with the latest drivers even in WinXP.) Text (in the TV/video) becomes unreadable already at 70% zoom, while still remaining perfectly legible on the GF2 even at 30%.
Thus I ended up quite happy that after all it was a real upgrade.
Not so when I finally got my new monitor. I plan it to be the last CRT I ever bought, so in the end I opted for the SONY GDM-F520.
Oh my! You cannot even imagine the pain of how awful the picture is on this monitor with the GeForce2 in 1600x1200x32 bit @ 85Hz, unless of course you've experienced it yourself.
(Higher refresh rates looked even worse.)
Apps using video overlays still worked though.
Didn't take longer than 15 minutes to annoy me enough to put my trusty G400 Max (32 MB too) back in, which, as expected, immediately solved my 2D image concerns.
It is, unfortunately, far from an ideal solution. Games are obviously once again dog slow. That I can live with for the moment, but even overlays just don't work at all even in 1600x1200/32 @85Hz. Overlays are simply a must for me, as I'm far too used to watching TV in a little window while working.
Lowering the color depth to 24 bit while leaving the rest untouched thankfully made the overlays work, albeit with the G400's awfully ugly scaling as expected.
To sum up, as noted in the subject, once again I'm interested in your advice on what video card to get.
Here are my minimum requirements it should fulfill:
Dual heads, video in or video out I have no use for.
The machine to play Wolf on is going to be a P4 1.8ghz with 1 GB RDRAM, I'm still waiting on the motherboard currently.
I also picked up a Matrox G550 because it looked so cute (what a tiny video card!). Is it any better at video overlays, or should I not even bother checking it out? (It won't go to waste either way.)
I used to have a crappy 17" monitor that I hated with passion, which was originally driven by a good old G400 I quite liked.
That is, until I was forced by every then current game to use a very low resolution and turn the detail down.
Then according to your fellow MURCer advice on which GeForces being less terrible, I replaced the video card with an ASUS V7700 (GeForce2 GTS, 32 MB).
Picture clarity was certainly a little bit worse, colors less vivid - but both of them only slightly. What was really noticeable is just how much better the GeForce2 was at scaling overlays.
On the G400 as soon as you rescale an overlay's window from 1:1 zoom the quality degrades rapidly. (I thought this could be a driver problem in Win2k, but now I see it's still the same even with the latest drivers even in WinXP.) Text (in the TV/video) becomes unreadable already at 70% zoom, while still remaining perfectly legible on the GF2 even at 30%.
Thus I ended up quite happy that after all it was a real upgrade.
Not so when I finally got my new monitor. I plan it to be the last CRT I ever bought, so in the end I opted for the SONY GDM-F520.
Oh my! You cannot even imagine the pain of how awful the picture is on this monitor with the GeForce2 in 1600x1200x32 bit @ 85Hz, unless of course you've experienced it yourself.
(Higher refresh rates looked even worse.)
Apps using video overlays still worked though.
Didn't take longer than 15 minutes to annoy me enough to put my trusty G400 Max (32 MB too) back in, which, as expected, immediately solved my 2D image concerns.
It is, unfortunately, far from an ideal solution. Games are obviously once again dog slow. That I can live with for the moment, but even overlays just don't work at all even in 1600x1200/32 @85Hz. Overlays are simply a must for me, as I'm far too used to watching TV in a little window while working.
Lowering the color depth to 24 bit while leaving the rest untouched thankfully made the overlays work, albeit with the G400's awfully ugly scaling as expected.
To sum up, as noted in the subject, once again I'm interested in your advice on what video card to get.
Here are my minimum requirements it should fulfill:
- pleasing 2D quality and vivid colors at the very least of 1600x1200x32, 85 Hz
- working overlays with good scaling capabilities, again 1600x1200x32 @85Hz at minimum
- the ability to play the upcoming RTC Wolfenstein real smooth at full detail in at least 1024x768x32 (anti-aliasing not necessary)
Dual heads, video in or video out I have no use for.
The machine to play Wolf on is going to be a P4 1.8ghz with 1 GB RDRAM, I'm still waiting on the motherboard currently.
I also picked up a Matrox G550 because it looked so cute (what a tiny video card!).
Is it any better at video overlays, or should I not even bother checking it out? (It won't go to waste either way.)
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