Nvidia 2d quality not that bad on some cards....

[hans007]

Well for the past couple of months i was brainwashed into thinking that all nvidia cards looked like crap in 2d at high res. My previous experience had been a diamond v330 and v770 and an elsa erazor x. All 3 of those looked pretty unusable and headache inducing at 1280x1024. Now i've been selling asus v6800s and decided to try one out. Wow was i surprised. It was just as good as my voodoo5 even at 1600x1200@75hz. I guess SOME companies know how to make a decent rfi filter and well some companies just plain suck. We should make a list of which cards have good 2d quality at 1600x1200. Anyways i was so surprised by it that i bought a used asus v7700. If the 2d quality is just as good, the voodoo5 leaving my system permanently. Hmm.. i have been converted.

I guess i should apologize for bashing Nvidia 2d quality in a whole bunch of threads. So i apologize. I'll blame it all on crappy manufacturers now.

 

[Warrenton]

I thought it was the RAMDAC on nvidia cards, but its not.

BTW I am tempted to sell my GeForce 2 from Hercules (32MB) and use the GeForce1 ASUS V6800 Deluxe that I also own. But I am not sure the quality is much better. at 85Hz it fairly sharp.

 

[Hardware]

The Asus v6600 or was it v6800 was a 2d winner!

 

[Mem]

Yes on some cards the 2D image quality is great(Like my own Geforce2 MX),but lots of people assume for the wrong reasons it`s bad on all cards,when infact it`s better then some Voodoo cards etc.Your eyes are the best judge not other people, since most are bias anyway so you are the best judge.

 

[2dfx]

It sucks ass because Nvidia doesn't have that much control over the add in board manufacturers, unlike 2dfx and Matrox who make their own boards. Crappy RFI filters on my powercolour GF2 MX make anything above 1024-768 @ 75hz a blurry mess. Here's suppositively the hardware fix to bypass these filters which I am NOT going to attempt.

http://www.geocities.com/porotuner/

 

[snow patrol]

Voodoo 3 3000 AGP here, running fine at 1600x1200x32 @85Hz.

 

[YU22]

hans007
I to switched from V770 to Asus 6800 and I must agree that quality difference is noticable(even though my 19" is cheapest possible). Maybe it isn't pitty that Diamond left gfx bizness after all.

 

[hans007]

yeah my v770 oem 16mb was just plain horrible. 1024x768 had this wierd horizontal lines that sorta flickered accross the whole screen. Me and a friend both bought them but they were so bad we sold them and at the time the only other choice was v3 2000s so we got those. I saw some retail v770s 32mb ones and it was a lot better but still pretty bad flicker everywhere. These asus cards were real nice, though i had some 64mb ones and those didnt seem to be as good as the 32mb. My monitor isnt like a pro monitor(kds vs19sn), but its pretty nice and you can notice the difference on any monitor since well horrible is still worse than bad its all relative

 

[jinsonxu]

Hmm, so if i was to get a Geforce2, i'm better off getting one from Asus?

 

[oldfart]

Man, this is driving me crazy! I currently have a Voodoo 3 and love its high quality 2D. Very nice. I couldn't go for a downgrade. I'm trying to decide between the Radeon and the GF2 as my new card. I've eliminated the V5 5500 for several reasons that I wont waste bandwidth on. All of this talk about the GF2's poor 2D has me concerned. Ben says it can be worse on a Trinitron type monitor (which I have). There are a couple of guys that are selling OEM Creative Labs GF2 cards on the FS/T boards for a really great price ($170-188). I'm very tempted to get one, except for the 2D issue. Anands review of the retail CL card says 2D was good. The other Nvidia issues: (1) driver of the week club. Driver a works for game a, but sucks for game b. Driver b works for game b but sucks for game a etc. And lastly the TC issue in Q3 (and possibly other games). BTW, has anyone bought one of these cards from Decoy or Untamo? If so, please give an HONEST review of the 2D quality?

The Radeon: All reviews show the 2D and 3D image quality to be stellar. No crappy 2D, great colors, no Q3 TC problems. Looks great. My concerns on this card: (1) ATI and their history of poor driver support. (2) Its not as fast as the GF2. (3) No available Linux drivers (I dual boot).

Comments?

 

[Pariah]

I owned a CLAP2 for about 3 months and I can honestly say it had the worst 2D quality of any card I'd owned up to that point (Matrox Millennium2, G200, V3 3000/3500, Geforce1). It had annoying red shadows on most of my windows, random desktop corruption and it was just blurry at anything above 1152x864. I switched to a V5 and can now run 1600 without problems. I have since purchased a Prophet2 64MB for a second computer and I must say that the quality is better than the CLAP2, no more red shadows or desktop corruption, but it is still noticably more blurry at higher resolutions than the V5. I would give you my opinions on the Radeon since one of my friends bought one, but unfortunately he has an Abit KA7 which has a known compatabilty issue and it crashes probably 75% of the time before it even gets to the desktop and when it does only makes it maybe 5 minutes tops before crashing the system.

 

[Radboy]

I have same concerns as old fart. Currently have V3-3K (1280x1024 2D), & looking for something w/ more horsepower. Since I spend most time in 2D land, I need good 2D - can't risk blurry.

Read that Radeon 'rivaled Matrox for 2D' Matrox has rep 4 best 2D, but their 3D is lagging.

nVidia has best 3D, but some have 2D blurry. Need someone to make good 2D + 3D.

Radeon seems like the way to go if, like me, u spend most of ur time in 2D, w/ occasional 3D. No?

 

[oldfart]

Hi Radboy. I think I'm going the Radeon route. Like you, 2D is very important. The Radeons 3D is not quite as fast as the GF2, but has better quality. The framerates are still very fast. The only area I see them lacking is in 16 bit. 32 bit is fast as hell. The lack of Linux support sux, but hpefully that will change. I'm willing to sacrifice a few FPS for a better quality card. I think I'm going to get it from one of the good traders on this very board. Radeon Deal

BTW Radboy, I remember you from AGN. I was a lurker there and didn't post much. Welcome to Anands! <--The smileys used to be better

 

[glen]

What the heck is supposed to be wrong with the 2d?
Mine looks awsome. What am I missing?

 

[PoeticPower]

Hows the 2D on a Hercules 3D Prophet DDR-DVI?

 

[xtreme2k]

my Asus V7700/Pure GTS 2d is pretty good
even on my Sony 17&quot; FD

 

[slpaulson]

My clap2 doesn't have any funky shadows and I have a pretty nice monitor (pf790). Maybe you just got a screwed up card or something. Mine looks just as good as my moms voodoo3.

 

[Vrangel]

Oldfart
Check this new article about TC on Nvidia cards.
Theres nothing wrong with GeForce. S3 cards show same problems.
Driver would have to be optimized for Q3A alone to fix it.
Or id software would have to do a better job.

Bad 2D you can fix yourself. There are 3 filters on the output.
Remove all capacitors except the last one on each filter.
Short all inductive coils . You get stellar 2D at the cost of
somewhat higher RF emissions.

 

[Doomguy]

oldfart: Why do you say the radeon has better 3d quality than the GF2? Not counting the quake 3 problem its not ahead at all in image quality. The radeon has poor game compatiblity compared to the GF2 and most likely a ton more ingame graphic glitches.

 

[YU22]

oldfart


<< driver of the week club. Driver a works for game a, but sucks for game b. Driver b works for game b but sucks for game a etc >>



I have used TNT, TNT2 and Gf DDR in last 2 years and only games I has issues with was Unreal&amp;siblings. And I test a lot of various games.




<< TC issue in Q3 (and possibly other games). >>



Here is a fresh article about that:

EDIT: dohh, Vrangel already posted that link.

 

[oldfart]

Thanks for the replies everyone. The 2D thing still has me bugged. Its not like there is just one guy complaining. Check any web board, the Nvidia newsgroups, etc. Its being talked about. There must be something to it. Some people say there is no problem &quot;my 2D is great!&quot;. Either the cards vary in quality, or people have different standards.

Vrangel, I did read that article. It was very informative. Some quotes from it:


<< This shot was taken on an ATI Radeon. No discoloration artifacts. Perfect >>




<< This shot was taken on a nVidia GeForce2. Massive, obvious discoloration. Is it just me, or does this remind anyone else of a Skittles commercial ? >>




<< The real problem, as we saw in Quake III, is when the textures are not pre-compressed. This means that the video driver has to compress the textures in software prior to uploading the textures to video memory. And there appear to be major differences in the quality of these real-time software compression routines in the video driver. I for one hope nVidia can fix their implementation, as it's quite poor in comparison to the Radeon and V5. >>


There are people who say this is not Nvidias &quot;fault&quot;. Well, maybe its not their fault that S3TC has this problem. Other Manufactures chose to use a much better method of TC. Is it Nvidias fault that they did not do the same? End result is one works and one doesn't.

As far as chopping components off the card to fix the 2D, not willing to do it. I'm a highly technical person, and am quite able to do this, but wont hack up a new card and void the warrantee.

Doom, I haven't heard any of this. From what I've read, it's the opposite. GF2 drivers are very picky from one game to the next. And the D3D UT is supposed to work very well, unlike the constant battle with Nvidia cards. I see people ditching their GF2 cards and going for V5 or Radeon for just this reason. All Radeon owners I've seen are very happy with the 2D and 3D quality and game compatibility.

Lets keep this clean guys. I hate when a discussion deteriorates into a juvenile flame war. I've done a bunch of research on this and this is what I see. GF2 was my first choice until the reports of the 2D and driver issues. We ALL don't have to get Nvidia cards, do we?

I still haven't bought a card, but will do so soon. Anyone have any other info to sway me???

Thanks

 

[Vrangel]

Another quote from this article:


<< , game developers need to use texture compression appropriately. A simple &quot;on/off&quot; toggle where all textures are automatically compressed is not acceptable. Developers should selectively tag the textures they want compressed to provide the best image quality. To guarantee that the game looks as good on the developer's machine as it did on the user's machine, developers also need to pre-compress all of their textures >>


I think the ball is in game developer's court.
ATI simply optimized their driver for Q3A.

EDIT
I have CLAP and 2D is sharp . 1280X1024X32.

 

[oldfart]

<< And there appear to be major differences in the quality of these real-time software compression routines in the video driver. I for one hope nVidia can fix their implementation, as it's quite poor in comparison to the Radeon and V5. >> >>



Looks to me like its in Nvidias court.

 

[Eli]

That site is interesting.

Why would they spend the money to put componenets on the PCB that actually limit video bandwidth/2d quality? That doesen't seem to make any sense...

 

[Vrangel]

Oldfart
Of course Nvidia could fix that TC problem at a cost of bloating drivers.
But then everybody would have bloated drivers to accomodate every game out there.
UT has precompressed textures on a separate disk. This is one solution.

Another one is to program game with TC in mind and turn off TC for textures
that arent fit for it. Like the sky transparent 256X256 texture. And lightmap textures...

If ATI continues down this road their drivers will be a mess before you know it.
Actually thats what ATI drivers were known for in the past.

And 2D is in card manufacturer's hands .Some use quality filters and 2D is great.
Probably its not too difficult to find good ones on this forum.
EDIT
Here comes another poll. (sigh...)
EDIT
Hehe poll is already underway.