2d performance - Matrox 550 vs todays cards

[Todd33]

My friend has a Matrox 550 for 2d, but he may want to play a 3d game soon. Does anyone know how a 9600XT or something in that price range compares for the critical eye?

 

[Pete]

2D games are mainly CPU-dependent, AFAIK, as they tend not to use hardware acceleration. What game?

 

[Todd33]

Not games, Windows text and stuff. For developers who stare at high res screens all day.

 

[Pete]

Newer cards might be faster because of higher-clocked cores and memory, but I'm not sure the difference will be that noticable. Your friend should try the G550 first and only look into "upgrading" if he finds the speed lacking. Even so, I'd look into something like a passively-cooled 9600 or even GF4MX440 than an actively-cooled 9600XT.

 

[ForceCalibur]

Quadro/FireGL have good 2D.

Expensssiiive

Don't know about Matrox, except they ahve good overall everything except 3d performance.

 

[Peter]

2D performance hasn't improved for quite a while. 2D image quality in consumer cards varies wildly.

 

[Todd33]

Opps, I said 2d games, I meant 3d. He just bought BFV, but wants a 3d card with good 2d for daily work. I was thinking ATI would be good.

 

[aafuss]

NVIDA FX5200 (great with BF1942 on my fast 2.4GHz P4) or 5500-5900, perhaps the 9600XT-low to mid-end,more than 32mb -so would run BF1942 or BFV ok and still usuable 2D performance

 

[SickBeast]

No no no no no no NO don't get the FX5200!!! What a joke of a videocard.

If anything, a 9600NP sounds fine as someone else suggested. It is passively cooled, has excellent 2D output, and should be fine for the casual gamer. It's pretty cheap too.

Oh, by the way, there are no better cards than the Matrox G550 for 2D work at the moment, aside from maybe the Parhelia. ATi is close, but nVidia is seriously lacking in the 2D department so stay clear of them.

 

[BFG10K]

Matrox hasn't held the 2D performance crown for a long time. I remember benchmarks of a GF2 MX tooling a G400 Max in 2D benchmarks.

At high 2D resolutions the G550's SDR memory will hold it back quite a lot and lead to poorer performance.

 

[SickBeast]

I used a Matrox G400 in AutoCAD 2002 and it was blazingly fast at 1600x1200x32bit. That basically tells me that 2D speed was quite good even 5-6 years ago.

I was referring mainly to 2D image quality tho. Matrox is unrivaled in that area to this day.

 

[BFG10K]

I was referring mainly to 2D image quality tho

We aren't talking about IQ, we're talking about performance.

 

[Concillian]

Originally posted by: aafuss
NVIDA FX5200 (great with BF1942 on my fast 2.4GHz P4) or 5500-5900, perhaps the 9600XT-low to mid-end,more than 32mb -so would run BF1942 or BFV ok and still usuable 2D performance

And performance of BFV is nothing like BF1942.

I could run BF1942 at 1600x1200 and never drop below 50 FPS with my 5900XT
Now with BFV at highest quality settings I drop to SINGLE DIGIT FPS when zooming on a sniper rifle in some places at 1024x768.

BFV is very 3D graphics card intensive, nothing like BF1942, which would even run okay at 1024x768 on the Geforce2 in my backup machine.

I have no input on the 2D quality, but I don't want him to be mislead on what will be adequate performance for BFV.

 

[Concillian]

Originally posted by: BFG10K
We aren't talking about IQ, we're talking about performance.

Maybe you are, but the original poster was asking about 2D image quality.

 

[BFG10K]

Can you read? Thread title:

2d performance - Matrox 550 vs todays cards

 

[THX]

I'll add this.. My old Matrox Marvel 400 gave the best 2D output I've ever seen. Very stable cards with great build quality, they should kidnap some of the 3d engineers at nvidia or ati.

 

[SickBeast]

Originally posted by: Todd33
something in that price range compares for the critical eye?

BFG, you BOTH can read, so relax already. :roll:

 

[Shamrock]

why no one has mentioned the Matrox Parhelia? it offers "about" GeForce 4 style performance, I dunno about IQ

 

[Todd33]

Let me clear things up, I was talking about 2d quality, I said performance,sorry. My friend is worried about 2d quality for windows, he stares at text in Matlab all day. Thanks for the feedback.

 

[BFG10K]

It might be a good idea to edit the thread title to avoid future confusion.

As for your current question, Radeon cards will have practically identical 2D IQ to that of Matrox.

 

[magomago]

Why do people say Nvidia currently has absolutely horrible 2d IQ? Is it really that true....my 2d quality on my mx420 is much better than my friends 9000pro and he himself mentions that it looks nicer...

now i wanna ask a question:

what actually determines 2d quality? Is it the chip itself, or is it the components that videocard makers choose (ie: cheaper cards use lower quality XXX which results in crappy display)

because at the same time my friends g4mx460 has HORRIBLE 2d quality (well..imo) its just too fuzzy for me....so i get the impression that it isn't something in the chip, as much as it is a cost cutting measure

 

[Todd33]

Normally the RAMDAC makes a big difference.

 

[blazer78]

Originally posted by: magomago
Why do people say Nvidia currently has absolutely horrible 2d IQ? Is it really that true....my 2d quality on my mx420 is much better than my friends 9000pro and he himself mentions that it looks nicer...

because nvidia cards are just blurry, with the exception of those leadtek gf3 cards, those were alright... but in comparison to matrox other companies just don't match.

Parhelia is great, though i can't run anything properly with surround gaming lol, except for quake 3 and ut2k3

 

[konakona]

i have done some research on this too... ATi and Matrox have almost the oppsite color tones, ATi being on warmer side (red) and Matrox being cooler (blue). I ended up goin for a radeon 9000 cuz extra clearity of matrox doesnt really shine at resolutions lower than 1600x1200 and ATi cards have the BEST DVD hardware support (motion compensation and iDTC), really nice avi quality with YV12 setting. matrox's strong point is known to be TV-out which i did not have any need for...

 

[The Green Bean]

9200SE or Mx440