Biostar M7VIG Pro - 2D Quality of Savage Chipset?

[gtd2000]

Well I just put together a new system for a friend of mine last night using this motherboard and everything has gone smoothly

The only real disappointment is the woeful quality of 2D from the on-board graphics card - this is especially noticeable above resolutions of 800x600 when reading text.

I know some people used to complain about Nvida - which I've never had a complaint with - but this is somewhat disappointing to say the least.

Is the onboard video for the M7VIG Pro known to be of poor quality for 2D applications?

Playback of DVD's seems to be pretty good overall - but fuzzy text is not my idea of good 2D

Any comments?

 

[Remedy]

The onboard 2D isn't any worst than Nvidias GF2 and 4MX line. The 2D to me on that board is where it's supposed to be at. It's onboard graphics are pretty dated to say the least. Not only that, but the Savage2000 had some of the best 2D when it was released. Which the onboard is supposed to be built from on the M7. It's a nice board and I haven't complained about it.

How much system memory are you sharing with it onboard? I used 32MB out of 256MB main and didn't have any IQ problems @ 1600x1200 on Mitsubishi Diamondtron 2040U.

 

[gtd2000]

The onboard 2D isn't any worst than Nvidias GF2 and 4MX line.

Not in this situation - I've only seen 2D as bad as this on an all-in-one solution for Cyrix CPU's around 3 years ago.

I've used Nvidia all the way since the Riva 128 days in 1998 - the only one I've not used is the GF3 series.

All have been excellent 2D quality.

This system is using an NEC 97F 19" which is acceptable (though not great) at 800x600.

Looking at text makes me want to rub my eyes as if there was something misting the text

 

[gtd2000]

Originally posted by: ReMeDy{WcS}
How much system memory are you sharing with it onboard? I used 32MB out of 256MB main and didn't have any IQ problems @ 1600x1200 on Mitsubishi Diamondtron 2040U.

It was set at 32MB - I guess I should check in the BIOS though to confirm.

Perhaps this is a bad example that I have here?

 

[gtd2000]

Actually here is an extract from a review of the Savage 2000

The card has a 350 MHz RAMDAC, which should be more than plenty to run the highest resolutions/refresh rates if the chipset can handle it. Usually we don't comment on 2D quality, since most cards are up to a level where the 2D picture is nearly perfect on every platform, but it seems Diamond has stepped back a generation with this card. The Viper II can handle resolutions up to 1600x1200, but only at refresh rates at 60 Hz. 60 Hz is unbearable if you're working at your system all day, most people need at least 75 Hz to survive not throwing their systems out the window. Many of you, like myself, run at 1600x1200 for daily work. To all of you, I wouldn't recommend the Savage 2000, besides being hard on your eyes, the image quality started to degrade at high resolutions.

Speaking of image quality, there were a few problems we encountered. Not only was 2D not up to par with it's competitors (GeForce, G400MAX, or even Voodoo3), but 3D applications showed a few weaknesses. Most of these look like they stem from driver issues, not surprisingly, since S3's drivers have never been known to be completely bug free. Many of our Direct3D programs would show missing textures, or slight visual glitches in complex 3D scenes, and it failed a few of Winbench 2000's 3D quality tests. 3DMark 2000 showed the most problems, showing two of the bump-mapping scenes incorrectly, missing dynamic lighting in several scenes, and visual artifacts throughout many of the tests.

 

[Peter]

The analog output quality is not so much depending on the chipset used, but MUCH more so on the care that has been taken in routing and filtering the analog outputs. Will say, if your onboard graphics has poor 2D quality, then the mainboard designers did a poor job, not the chip makers.

 

[Remedy]

Peter is right. If you're having problems then you may have a bad board. Since you wanted to quote reviews I'll quote a few to back up my statement.

2D performance was very crisp and sharp in all resolutions. However, the 2D seemed a little laggy in certain applications, mainly FrontPage, Dreamweaver, and Excel. The 2D in Age of Empires II and Starcraft ran flawlessly. 3D quality is simply amazing in Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament.

link

This is exactly what I experienced as the editor did. Minus the 3D.

 

[gtd2000]

Originally posted by: ReMeDy{WcS}
Peter is right. If you're having problems then you may have a bad board. Since you wanted to quote reviews I'll quote a few to back up my statement.

Uhmm... time to eat humble pie here

The problem with the poor 2D graphics was actually due to incorrect adjustment of the contrast and brightness controls

So much for my opinion and conclusion