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PCI Video Cards?

G

gopunk

Lifer
i just bought that samsung 955df, so i'll be having dual monitors 🙂

just wondering if you guys had any recommendations... just so you know, 2d picture quality is much more important to me than 3d. ie, i'd prefer super clear text and no 3d capability if it came down to that choice. thanks!

maybe i should clarify... i don't really want a card that supports dual monitors. i just need a pci card with good 2d picture... i plan on letting xp or 2k handle the dual monitor stuff.
 
For good 2D quality, skip the NVIDIA chipsets and stick to the true ATI stuff. There is actually a PCI version of the ATI Radeon 32MB SDR available for the $80 range. It still offers some 3D, but not cutting edge, but ATI is well known for their superiority in 2D over NVIDIA. I know this card can be found at Buy.com, if you need somewhere to start looking.
 
Matrox.

Matrox has been in the multimonitor arena for some time and it shows, I'm running a G450 for the primary and secondary monitors while a Millenium is running the third. The drivers never gave me guff in either Win98 or 2k. (and the primary and secondary have different resolutions and refreshrates)
 
i'm not sure if i can afford a dual monitor one... i have xp, which i think has native dual monitor support. at least 2k did, if all else fails i can always go back to that.
 
A 4MB Matrox Millenium is an excellent $20 PCI card (probably can find it cheaper), it's pretty old so it doesn't have any 3D capabilities but the later drivers support slave mode and it has excellent 2D quality (note: I run 3 monitors, two video cards)
 
Gah! Is 4mb enough? I'm running in like 1152x864 resolution and I have this 4mb POS Diamond card and it really takes kills my cpu when I move windows around while playing winamp. I'm looking for a couple of PCI cards myself.. but gonna try to find a 16mb+ ATI or Matrox cards if I can =) On another note.. is 8mb enough to run at a very high resolution (such as above or higher) without any problems? I'd rather be safe than sorry and go with the 16mb.. but just wondering.
 
Demon-

Yeah, my 4mb card supports high resolutions.. but it seriously dies on them =) Maybe it's the memory on the card or the speed of the chip on it, but it seriously isn't good =) Thanks for the input tho.. I guess some 4mb cards work out fine..
 
My vote... and my card since good 2D is also what counts for me... Matrox G450. The price is right, and its still the best 2D card on the market. Driver support and stability are great, and the programmable ramdacs make them highly "tunable" so you can really tweak them to get the most out of your monitor.
 
Another vote for Matrox. My PC at work has a 4mb Millennium II with a 19" monitor. I run it at 1280x1024x24-bit color (4mb isn't enough for 32-bit at that resolution). The picture quality is excellent. It is a little slow, but definitely very usable.
 
would the g450 really work for me though? i mean, i already have a geforce 2 pro, that i want to use for one of my monitors. i was looking to just have a single head pci card for the additional monitor...
 
guess this should be in the video forum... whoops. i just noticed that.

so i did a little search, and it looks like the g450 is selling for 150+??

yikes.

just to be clear, really good 2d will equate to really clear text? or is the quality of the text mostly nonvariable?

is the 2d quality of the older matrox cards different from the g450? because considering the price of the g450, i'm thinking of getting an older matrox card, one that doesn't have that dual monitor stuff built in (i can't help but think i'm paying more for that), since i don't need it (xp supports it anyways).

thanks
 
The 2D quality is pretty close, unless you are doing some massively high resolutions the older cards work great. (they were designed for moderate resolutions in mind)

Edit: I'm on a system with 4MB Riva128 on board running 1280x1024x32 bit right now, and I did that with a Permedia 2 card that I used to have.
 
ATI and Matrox are tops when it comes to 2D. You should be able to find a Matrox G400 16MB for anywhere from $40-$60 that should do just fine! Just my two cents worth.😉
 


<< A 4MB Matrox Millenium is an excellent $20 PCI card (probably can find it cheaper), it's pretty old so it doesn't have any 3D capabilities but the later drivers support slave mode and it has excellent 2D quality (note: I run 3 monitors, two video cards) >>



I agree, the matrox millenium or the matrox G100 is a great choice. it has excellent 2d, unfortunately no 3d. but everything else looks great
 
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