Are these fancy new boards any good with high-end 2D?

CaptainNemo

Junior Member
Jun 30, 2000
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Hi,
I was wondering if there is anybody who has some experience with any of newly released 3D boards when it comes to performances in 2D applications (for instance Photoshop or Illustrator). Good behavior when running Adobe?s progs is most important to me, but I like playing games too ;) . I would like to know as well, if any of you stumbled on a board with dual display solution with possibility of adjusting different refresh rate and resolution for each monitor (otherwise, when you have like 21? and 17? monitor, the only way is two cards). I would appreciate any tip

Cheers,

 

Sunner

Elite Member
Oct 9, 1999
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For fast photoshopping, a fast CPu and lotsa mem is your primary concern.
What should concern you regarding the 2D is quality, and all the cards are pretty much equal now(V5, GTS, G400).
 

Pariah

Elite Member
Apr 16, 2000
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G400/G400 Max is your only option Captain. That's not a bad thing, since the G400 is the best 2D card out there.
 

koeizen

Member
May 30, 2000
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Heard the GeForce2 MX and new Matrox G450 will be the best 2d cards on the market both have dual moniter support also and are relatively cheap.
 

Pariah

Elite Member
Apr 16, 2000
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NVidia and top notch 2D quality are 2 things you will never hear in the same sentence.
 

(Chanse)

Senior member
Oct 11, 1999
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If you've never seen an Elsa Geforce, that may be the case, the Origina lTNT cards were sloppy, and even the ultra was nothign to brag about, but Geforce cards look nice and crisp.
 

helloworld

Banned
Mar 22, 2000
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<< Geforce cards look nice and crisp >>



...Right. Except when you're running 1920x1440 on a 21&quot; monitor, nothing comes close to a g400.
 

Pariah

Elite Member
Apr 16, 2000
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I own an SDR Geforce and a CLAP2 and neither of them comes even close to my old G200. I've never used an Elsa Quadro, but since it is aimed at professionals and it costs $600, it better have real nice image quality, though I think the G400Max would still look quite a bit better.
 

jeremy806

Senior member
May 10, 2000
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I wish Matrox would just get some solid 3D gaming support.

Oh yeah, my GTS looks great (at 1024x768).

There is just no easy answer...

jeremy
 

CaptainNemo

Junior Member
Jun 30, 2000
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First, thank you very much for your suggestions; second, just as I thought, outstanding 3D performance doesn?t come with analogous 2D quality. It looks like getting both 2D and 3D performance (on truly high level) is not possible. Well, I wish I could have enough cash to build two systems?

 

IceStorm

Senior member
Feb 7, 2000
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A few possibilities...

First, if you're doing 2D work, what you could do is get a G200 PCI and use that on a secondary display. Pretty much all cards do well up to 1024x768. After that is where the Matrox line surpasses the others. However, not all G200's will do 32bit above 1280x1024. I've heard that dissimilar monitors under Win98 force it to default to the lowest common denominator in terms of refreshrate/colordepth. I don't know for sure, as I use twin 19&quot; Mitsubishi Diamond Pro 900u monitors. I do run my G400 with different refresh rates on both outputs to the monitors. One is at 85hz, the other at 75hz (even though it is stated in the specs that the second head can't go over 60hz at 1280x1024, it does 75 just fine).

Second, Matrox is rumored to be getting ready to release their next card, the G800 (working title). New rumors indicate 3D performance on-par with the GeForce, if not the GeForce 2. Just be patient.

Third, go with digital LCD panels instead of CRTs and get a GeForce MX w/ both outputs setup for digital output. It performs as well as a GeForce SDR, but would give you dual displays.

Just my $0.02
 

Sunner

Elite Member
Oct 9, 1999
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Pretty much all reviews have put the GF's and GTS' almost on par with the G400's in terms of 2D quality.