PCI Video cards.. (NOT PCI-E) Max Resolution?

[lopri]

VGA and DVI, respectively. Actually DVI is more important to me. Currently the dominant market leaders (PCI card market, that is) are:

Geforce MX4000 PCI
Radeon 7000 PCI
Geforce FX5200(5500) PCI
Radeon 9200(9250) PCI

And not too long ago Geforce 6200 PCI started showing but it's still preety scarce and quite expensive.

I'm mainly interested in support for 24" flat-panel (1920x1200). DVI output is a must. Also, would memory size matter for "smoother windows experience" (lol) using PCI video cards? Specs for those cards are somewhat vague and I can't tell a said max resolution is for VGA or DVI.

Please share your experiences, if anyone. Much appreciated.

 

[Peter]

Radeon 9200 generally has no problem running full resolution DVI. 1920x1200 is feasible. Just don't expect any speed miracles.

The 7000, as well as the cheaper NVidia chips, often can't generate high-resolution DVI output with good enough signal quality to make the far end of the cable happy.

 

[jfunk]

Radeon 9200 specs:

http://www.ati.com/products/radeon9200/radeon9200/specs.html

 

[Peter]

The specs predate 1920x1200 DVI monitors. In fact, that mode uses the same bandwidth as 1600x1200, only with narrower horizontal blanking period. The 9000/9200/9250 can do 1920x1200, definitely. We're using plenty of those combos at work.

 

[HGC]

If you're not into gaming, which I'm guessing is true if you're interested in PCI, check out the Matrox cards. They have PCI choices that support wide screens.

 

[Steve]

I've personally run my 2405 at 1920x1200 over DVI on a PCI 9100, and over VGA on a 9200 and a 7500, all on PCI.

 

[Melted Rabbit]

I would not get any of the cards you mentioned. I would suggest an ATI FireMV 2200 PCI. The FireMV 2200 PCI is easy to find online, it could even run two 24" LCDs at 1920X1200 over DVI since the connector on the card fans out into two standard DVI ports by a cable. It is probably the only PCI card ever manufactured that can run a 24" flat panel on the DVI port, even counting Matrox cards. The FireMV 2200 has essentially no 3D acceleration though, but the 2D speeds should be fine. If you really need some sort of 3D acceleration buy a Geforce 6200 if you can find one or failing that a Radeon 9250, and last a Radeon 9200.

The problem is that the other cards have not as good TMDS transmitters and poorly designed signal traces for the DVI port. TMDS is the name for the signaling that is used for DVI. At 1920x1200 the DVI transmitter is running at or above the highest speed for the DVI specification, 165MHz. If the card cannot produce a clean signal at 165 MHz, the panel will show screen corruption and generally make your life miserable.

Right out of the gate the Radeon 7000, Geforce MX4000, and the Geforce FX series all have TMDS transmitters that are incapable of producing a clean signal at anything even approaching 165MHz in the first place. The internal TMDS transmitter on the Radeon 9200, Radeon 9250 and the Geforce 6200 may not pass the test perfectly at 165MHz, but at long as you keep the cable length short you should not have too many problems. What makes this even harder is that due to cost issues, most consumer grade PCI video cards also have poorly designed circuit traces on the board that degrade the TMDS signal even further. However, the FireMV 2200 PCI almost certainly has a better internal TMDS transmitter and will have a well designed board. The FireMV 2200 is designed exactly for what you are attempting to do, which is I assume displaying text or charts on another monitor.

 

[lopri]

How is 9100? Of course I don't plan to game on PCI card. Heh.. It's for my second rig which does most of dirty jobs. I don't really need 3D acceleration but I thought it'd be safer to go with either ATI or NV for compatibility/driver support's sake. Also thought PureVideo/Avivo type of 2D acceleration. It should definitely be able to drive 1920x1200 via DVI. Rabbit, how much are those cards you mentioned? I'd like to spend the least ammount of dough. Also, does memory size matter for 1920x1200? (128MB vs 256MB)

 

[1prophet]

BFG GeForce 3DFuzion 6200 PCI 2.0 Graphics Card $99.99 radio shack

BFG GeForce 6200 OC 256MB DDR PCI Graphics Card $153.99 bestbuy

 

[Steve]

Melted Rabbit, I said right above you that my Radeon 9100 PCI ran 1920x1200 over DVI without issue. Also, I'm not so sure that a splitter cable is going to get you that much bandwidth toward two displays from a single port.

lopri, the 9100 did the job fine, but you could tell at that res that you were using a PCI card, it was a bit painful. My 9100 was 128MB, but I don't have it anymore. Avivo is certainly not available on 9100s, only on x1300s and up. The bottom line is that PCI is not a good choice for high-res displays.

EDIT: Given that the theoretical max. bandwidth of PCI is 133MB/s, a 256MB card would be choked. So too would a 128 since actual available bandwidth on PCI is less than that.

 

[Peter]

sm, your math is fundamentally flawed there ... what on earth makes you compare throughput with size?

Memory size required for 1920x1200? 1920x1200x4 bytes for the main surface, some to spare for video overlay, cursor, blit buffers etc ... 16 megabytes would do. As for the bandwidth, you'll need 1920x1200x4x60 bytes per second (NOTE: ON THE CARD, NOT OVER THE PCI BUS!), about 530 MB/s. Let's use a 9250, 64-bit DDR RAM at 200 MHz, yields about 2700 MB/s effectively - easily enough for running two such displays in dualhead.

But yeah, MeltedRabbit is pretty much talking out of his rear end there. As the numerous posts around his have already demonstrated, there are plenty choices in PCI cards that do 1920x1200.

 

[Melted Rabbit]

Sadly, I wish none of what I had to say was true, but I am not talking out my behind:

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1367918,00.asp

Most of the info in this article is still pertinent, even though the aricle is two and a half years old, as these are the GPUs you are considering using. Besides the ATI FireMV 2200 PCI is only about $150 at newegg.com and it will have better TMDS compliance than the other cards mentioned. The thing you will notice the with a noncompliant signal is dot crawl or outright corruption of the displayed images. Also, the amount of memory on a given card does not matter when you are talking about memory quantities above 32MB.

 

[Peter]

We all know that article. Funnily enough, it is exactly that article that demonstrates how even the ATI cards from back then either had "fully passed" or "borderline" compliance - at the highest possible frequency. The latter, as stated in the article AND as my own real life experience with now dozens of machines* demonstrates, is nowhere near a relevant problem in real life.

What you are recommending is complete overkill, to cure something that isn't an issue to begin with.

From the list the original poster GAVE US TO MAKE A PICK FROM, I'll have the Radeon 9250. That'll sort it.