help me understand 2D Quality

[mrzed]

I need to understand.

It makes sense to me that one card would be much better than another at 3D. Fill rate and texture mapping and all that. But why would for example a G400 have better sharpness and colour at a given resolution and refresh rate with the same monitor than another card, say a Voodoo or S3. I would have thought that the monitor would be more important in determining this.

This is more than just curiosity for me, as I need to upgrade from my G200 to get better 3d, but I don't have a ton of $, and I don't want to sacrifice 2D quality, I spend most of my time working. Any sugggestions for budget cards that have good 2D and 3D. I was looking into an MX, but keep finding reviews that mention middling 2D.

 

[rickn]

there is just differences in the components that are used. With Nvidia based cards they leave the components up to their oem partners, some of which cut corners and cost by using lower quality components (filters, capacitors, etc etc). FCC regulation also plays a part in it. Companies like Matrox and ATI manufacture their own cards, and use the same components for all their cards, so you end up with products of the same quality across the board. Also, there is differences in RAMDAC microcode and 2d microcode that can make a difference in color saturation, purity.