Geforce4 & 2D / DVD quality

[shyguy74]

How are the Geforces in terms of 2D quality and DVD playback compared to Matrox and ATI cards (which are the only two manufacturers I had bought from previously)? I usually run @ 1152x864, but I might be getting a new Sony 21" in the near future, so 1280 or 1600 is not out of the question.

 

[FACTION95Si]

I have the Sony E540 and a GeForce 2 GTS 64MB. I run my windows desktop at 1600x1200@85hz. I also use a Toshiba 16x DVD drive with WinDVD or PowerDVD. I have never used Matrox or ATI cards so I wouldn't be able to compare the picture quality. I think the GeForce cards are made for gaming so your not going to have the nice 2d image of a Matrox. Overall I think it looks great.

 

[osmononame]

i have a leadtek gforce 4 mx and the 2d is as good as my old voodoo 5 at 1600x1200 but i havent found a dvd player that supports the geforces built in hardware compensation unit yet.

 

[Rand]

2D visual quality is extremely dependent upon the individual manufacturer, and some nVidia board manufacturers have a tendency of using rather poor filters which has resulted in nVidia getting somewhat poor reputation in the industry as references 2D visual quality.
VisionTek and Gainward usually have pretty good 2D though, slightly below ATi's standards IMHO but not by a great degree. LeadTek is slightly further behind still but quite good.
Beyond those manufacturers 2D can range from average to to very poor.
As long as your running 1152x864 I wouldnt worry too much about 2D visual quality, as most cards providea decent image at such resolutions, but if your hitting 1280x1024, or 1600x1200 or possibly even higher then I'd definitely start paying close attention to which manufacturer produces your board.
Unsurprisingly, neither ATi nor nVidia tend to match up to Matrox in terms of 2D visual quality... but then Matrox has long been the king of 2D.
A lot depends upon what monitor your using, and your eyes as well. Some people's eyes just seem naturally more attuned to variances in 2D output quality whereas others are tend to be perfectly happy with relatively low quality 2D output even at the higher resolutions.

In terms of DVD playback, ATi has been the king of DVD playback for quite a long time now and are constantly improving DVD playback slightly with each generation of cards.
nVidia provides pretty good DVD though, and besides ATi they provide the best DVD playback of any of the mainstream graphics card manufacturers IMHO.

 

[davidrees]

my MSI GF4 Ti4600 card has amazing 2D quality - way better than my Visiontek GF2 - it is so good, that I now find 1024x768 to bee to low a resolution - I can see the pixels and they are very square looking and annoying - I dont like AA so I have to go to 1280 or 1600 to make it look smoother.

 

[jcmkk]

GeForce 3 Ti and up by Leadtek or Gainward have the best 2D of any GeForce based cards. They have really improved from the GeForce 2 days. I really noticed the difference with this system (Gainward GeForce 4 Ti 4400) and my old system (MSI GeForce 2 Pro) using this same monitor.

<<EDIT>> Oh yea! If you are really concerned about 2D, then you may want to go with a shadow mask based monitor instead of a Sony (Aperture Grille).

 

[shyguy74]

Thanks for the replies, guys. Since Gainward was mentioned by a couple of you as having the best 2D out of the Geforce4 manufacturers, I think I'll be going for that. After all, as much as I play games, I still spend more time on the desktop than in a game

 

[BFG10K]

My Leadtek GF3 Ti500 looks just as good as my Radeon at 1600 x 1200 x 32. I can't compare DVDs because I've never used my ATi card for that but my Ti500 looks extremely good for DVD movies.

 

[Jumpem]

My Ti4600 came with PowerDVD, and the couple of DVD's that I tried looked great. But who would want to watch a movie on a computer monitor?

 

[Mavrick007]

Supposedly Nvidia addressed some of the 2d issues with the new GF4 gpu and have better dvd as well. I haven't seen a Gf4 beside another to notice the difference, but they seem to be sweet enough looking to me. 2d is important, but good fast 3d is more of a concern to me right now.

 

[BFG10K]

But who would want to watch a movie on a computer monitor?

I would, especially since most monitors look better standard TVs in terms of image quality.

 

[mellondust]

For dvd playback assuming you have a fast computer, I think the dvd software has more to do with visual quality than the card it is being run on. I have used powerdvd 4.0, windvd 3.0 and the dvd player in windows media player on a geforce 2mx. I have found powerdvd and windvd to be very comparable with powerdvd being much more compatible with winxp but windvd having a slightly crisper picture overall. Windows media player dvd thing was not even close, a peice of hud in my opinion. My friend uses a the ati dvd player with his radeon 32mb card and I still think powerdvd and windvd running on my geforce look much better. I would not worry too much about the dvd playback, just get good software. Of course this is just my opinion.

 

[BMW330ci]

How are the ASUS GeForce 4 2D image quality?