ASAP: Which GF4 brands have BEST 2D image??

[daveybrat]

I've got a PNY GF4 TI4400 that i will be selling and replacing soon, but i wasn't very happy with the 2D quality of my desktop.
I previously had a Radeon 8500 that had much better image quality, text was crisper and more vibrant.
I have heard that the Gainward cards have good quality. Lemme know!

 

[Mem]

Yes Gainward,Leadtek and Visiontek probably are the top 3 in the GF4 range on image quality.

 

[AnAndAustin]

From what I hear Gainward and Leadtek are top dogs, PNY and MSI are nearer the worse end, but I had believed the diffs between all of them were now quite small, unlike the GF3 days where diffs were pretty significant. From what I have been able to gather GF4TI cards are up there with Rad8500 for '2D' image quality, although these things are partly to personal taste and usage. I also believe you will need at least a decent 17" if not a 19" to see much of a difference, along with resolutions above 1280x1024 if not 1600x1200. I wish I had the cash or resources to do an independent study on this as it is very difficult to gain an unbiased and accurate insight on this matter. Here's the best info I have found to date;

Matrox.com Parhelia vs GF4TI vs Rad8500 for '2D' IQ

AnAndTech Thread - Page2 scroll to TheBug's 'Personal Test Result'

Originally posted (edited GF3MX to correct GF4MX) by: TheBug

Personal Test Result
I put four office machines together side by side with identical parts, except the video card. One has the Parhelia that just came in the mail today, the other three have ATi Radeon 8500 64MB, GeForce4 MX, and GeForce 4 Ti4200, respectively. On identical monitors (Sony G400), I asked 7 different co-workers to evaluate the IQ of each without telling them which one is which.

Parhelia got 5 of the 7 votes. The Ti4200 got one, and Rad8500 got the last 1.

Then I figured, since we were all on company time anyway, might as well get more people on the test. So I proceeded to send out a broadcast e-mail to the company and asked whoever was interested to come be a judge.

Parhelia got 29 of the 45 votes. Ti4200 got 12, GF4MX got 2, and Rad8500 got 2.

I'm sure this test is flawed in one way or another, but at least the statistics show that general users (i.e. the non-tech people who pay me to do their tech support) do perceive the differences when the displays are lined-up side-by-side. However, the judging took around 3 minutes on average, suggesting that the differences are not significant.

I also did a separate test on our company's LCD monitors (ViewSonic VE800), and the result was similar.

Personally, I'm going to keep the Parhelia because I'm usually one year out of date in terms of FPS games anyway. I yet have to get my hands on a copy of JKII. Parhelia is enough for me at the moment. Whether people think this test means anything I don't really care. Just figured I'd contribute something to this thread.

It tests what 'real' unbiased people think. Interesting that the following occured:

Technical people voted: Parhelia 71.4%, GF4 14.3%, Rad8500 14.3%, GF4MX 0% (sample size 7)
Non-technical people voted: Parhelia 64.4%, GF4 26.7%, Rad8500 4.3%, GF4MX 4.3% (sample size 45)

It would appear the more technical people were more able to tell the difference (or perhaps were guessing which PC had the Parhelia?), however the non-technical results are perhaps the most accurate as 45 is actually a very good sample size considering all circumstances. 3 minutes on average to judge the difference would lead to the assumption that differences are now small. In any case the test gets my support.

Additonal Info from TheBug:

The CRT monitors used in the test were Sony Multiscan CPD-G400 set to the recommended 1280x1024x32 @ 85Hz that were bought in the same batch of order, so I'm assuming their manufacture date/time were close. In addition, I did a hardware reset on the monitors before presenting them to the testers. (Brand-wise) It turned out that the video cards were Dell generic ones without any noticeable marking (at least none that I could find). I didn't have the time to check all the tiny text though.

 

[BFG10K]

Gainward and Leadtek are the top guys for nVidia image quality.