to all Matrox owners who think your 2D quality is awesome ...

[merlocka]

Ummm... Yer all 100% correct

I was curious to see how some of the other cards I have would stack up in 2D quality to a Matrox card. I didn't currenly have a Matrox card, so I picked up a 16MB G400 from Alan Computech (only $38 + s/h).

I tested on a Sony G520 monitor, and all my observations are purely qualitative, since I was switching from card to card (rather than doing A-B tests).

I tested the following cards (driver revisions noted):

Gainward Geforce3 Powerpack (2311)
ATI Radeon LE (9016)
3dfx Voodoo3 3000 (10700)
Generic (reference) Geforce2 GTS with filter modfications (2311)
Matrox G400 (682)

My simplistic test included a quick colormatch to make sure everyone was on the same page, some basic observations of the desktop etc..., inspecting fine point text on Adobe and Word documents, juggling between resolutions and refresh rates to get the best quality, and (although this doesn't apply to 2d) I played a bit of Quake3 on each

My observations (again, completly qualitative) :

At a desktop resolution of 1600x1200, the only card which I could use in a work environment would be the G400. All other cards have some flaw which would annoy me too much. Most cards (Gainward, ATI, 3dfx) did not produce the text clarity at that resolution. The Geforce2 GTS has excessive fuzz as well as some reflections.

At 1280x1024 (or 960 if your a 4:3 fan), I would be able to live with any of the cards. The GTS would be borderline though (and after seeing the G400, I doubt it will remain in that PC). The G400 is the benchmark here, and I would say that the ATI and The Gainward were close enough that I couldn't complain. The big suprise here was the 3dfx card, whose 2d quality I found very comparable to both the ATI and Gainward. Again I could see that the Geforce2 was inferior to the other cards.

At any resolution below this, take your pick. They can all look great once I played with settings.

The interesting things that I noted from this are :

The Matrox card and the Geforce2 were the only cards where I could clearly see a difference between the rest of the pack. The Matrox on the good side, and the Geforce2 on the bad.

I couldn't pick a winner from the three "middle" cards (ATI, GF3, and V3). Perhaps if I had done A-B comparisons there might be some comments, but all three were quite good and nearly usable at 1600x1200 (in my opinion... I like small fonts for max desktop space). At 1280x1024, it was a toss up.

I wish I could say that the Geforce3 I shelled out $180 for (back in da day) was as good as the Matrox but it isn't.

I can say that the Radeon LE was not noticably worse or better than the Geforce3 (which made me a bit happy about my investment).

w00t for the Voodoo3, who's 2D quality was noticably better than the Geforce2 GTS.

Hope someone read this.

 

[thornc]

It's a known fact that the Geforce's 2D is horrible due to a signal filter they use on their design,
I've seen examples of people modifying this filter (this a hardware modification) and get much better
quality!

 

[merlocka]

It's a known fact that the Geforce's 2D is horrible due to a signal filter they use on their design,

The Geforce2 cards do seem to have a larger variability from vendor to vendor than the more recent nVidia lines. Although I noticed only minor improvements from redesigning the filter on the GTS, it's original qualirty wasn't "horrible" although some claims I've read state that their geforce2 cards are unusable at resolutions as low as 1024x768.

 

[SCSIfreek]

If you have extra money to blow get a voodoo5. the 2D on it blows away any ATI and Geforce Cards. However, Matrox and 3dfx voodoo5 are the same IHMO

 

[PCHPlayer]

Great post merlocka. 2D is too often ignored on the review web sites. A typical review lists the specs and jumps right to the gaming benchmarks with no mention of the 2D quality. 2D quality is important to me as well. I sometimes do development on a 17" monitor at 1600x1200. The text is small, but sometimes I need the real estate.

 

[merlocka]

if you have extra money to blow get a voodoo5. the 2D on it blows away any ATI and Geforce Cards

I do have a Voodoo5 5500 PCI which is a Mac version and I flashed it to the PC bios.

I was going to include it in my "roundup" but there are some refresh rate problems with the card. I just popped it in and checked it out. Any refresh rate higher than 75Hz causes a flicker on my (bad) card, but at that refresh rate it wasn't as good as the Matrox at 1600x1200, more similar to the ATI and Geforce3. This might be a bad card, which is why I didn't include it in my comparison.

 

[Rand]

Similar comments to my own feelings regarding 2D visual quality.

IMHO:
Matrox: G400/G450/G550 is #1. G200 though pretty old now, still manages to hold up favourably against ATi.
3dfx: V3 2000 is on par with ATi. V3 3000/3500 is very good, slightly better then ATi. V4/5 is slightly better then the V3. Many of the old Basnhee's were pretty good also. The old Voodoo Rush had the single worst 2D in any semi-modern graphics card though.
ATi: The Rage 128 was pretty good, though not terrific. The Radeon series is quite good though.
nVidia: Very bad, to pretty good depending on the model. PNY/MSI/Asus are generally among the worst IMHO.... Asus Ti500 wasnt bad at all though.
Elsa and VisionTek are barely short of ATi, and Gainward is generally on-par with them. LeadTek is often decent as well, falling slightly behind those.
The old TNT1/2's were pretty much invariably quite poor though... at least IMHO.

Attainable resolutions can often vary significantly depending upon personal tolerances, the individual graphics card (even within the same model), the monitor utilized etc.

Matrox is generally perfect or near perfect up to about 1800x1440, and often usable even slightly beyond that.
3dfx V3/4/5 is generally near perfect at 1600x1200, and usable though far from perfect at 1800x1440.
ATi: Pretty good at up to 1600x1200, not great but certainly usable. Quality drops off significantly above that though.
nVidia: As above it varies dramatically between models. Some are bad enough that their only 'decent' at 1024x768 and near un-useable above that. And some are reasonably decent up to 1600x1200.

Matrox holds the crown though, and deservedly so. It never ceases to amuse me that the 5yr old or so G200 manages to do surprisingly well at 1600x1200. A feat that ATi is only beginning to do consistently, and nVidia's rarely.

 

[jaeger66]

The 2D quality of nVidia cards isn't inherently bad, my Leadtek GF4 has significantly better 2D than my PNY GF4. None of them are as good as Matrox though, and the best GF is about as good as your average ATI card.

 

[jaeger66]

I should add that the differences in GF4 Ti quality are apparent at all resolutions.

 

[BlvdKing]

I have the 16mb version of the Matrox G450 which was only $50 dollars from the Matrox website. It blows away my Visiontek GF3 Ti 200 in 2D quality completely - no contest. It's so crisp and clear. Downside: try playing Quake 3 on a Matrox! It's a complete slide show.

 

[nRollo]

" my Leadtek GF4 has significantly better 2D than my PNY GF4"
Heck, even your Gainward Gf2 has better IQ than that crummy PNY GF4! My Hercules CGA has better IQ than my PNY GF4! My cousin's Nintendo Gameboy has better IQ than my PNY GF4!
LOL

 

[jaeger66]

<< " my Leadtek GF4 has significantly better 2D than my PNY GF4"
Heck, even your Gainward Gf2 has better IQ than that crummy PNY GF4! My Hercules CGA has better IQ than my PNY GF4! My cousin's Nintendo Gameboy has better IQ than my PNY GF4!
LOL >>


All true! The best thing to say about the PNY is that it's cheap(although still more expensive than it's MSI twin, which comes with VIVO) and available at retail if you need instant gratification. You certainly are jolly, BTW.

 

[nRollo]

"You certainly are jolly, BTW. "
My brain has been scrambled by looking cross-eyed at these fuzzy PNY generated pixels. I can't even really tell what I'm typing, snar erf terat some mispellings and other typos.

 

[BFG10K]

Elsa and VisionTek are barely short of ATi, and Gainward is generally on-par with them. LeadTek is often decent as well, falling slightly behind those.

My Leadtek GF3 Ti500 looks just as good as my Radeon VE at 1600 x 1200 x 85 Hz.

 

[Priit]

I agree with Rand's obsevations. Cheap (and also some expensive like Asus!) Nvidia-based cards (especially GF2 family) may come with horrible picture quality. I had cheap GF2MX from company named VideoExcel (owned by Chaintech) that looked almost unbearable even in 1024x768. Not only picture was blurry, colours looked washed and picture contrast was very poor also. When I got G450 instead it, oh boy, what a difference it make! Also, add integrated i810 video to the list of cards with very poor picture quality...

 

[Mitzi]

Both my older Matrox G400 MAX and my new Radeon 8500 have about similar, excellent 2D quality. I've never tried an Nvidia based card though.

 

[bluemax]

<< My Leadtek GF3 Ti500 looks just as good as my Radeon VE at 1600 x 1200 x 85 Hz. >>


I seem to recall that the Radeon VE was actually not up to ATI's reputation for good 2D. It was good - but noticably poorer than its faster brothers. Something to do with the 300MHz RAMDAC? I should check Anand's VE review again...

 

[AmigaMan]

Hey merlocka, just wanted to say this was a great post! Loving my V5 5500 right now, it's just this el-cheapo Envision 17" monitor that I want to chuck...