vid card selection help

[moosey]

...for a computer used for typing/internet and DVD's. it is a 15" lcd flat panel and i would like the card to have DVI. the asus MX card is $95. I wanted to spend a little less. Would the Creative card with DVI based on the geforce 256 chipset work well? Image quality matters

 

[eplebnista]

IMO, the best card per your specifications would be the ATI Radeon VE 32MB DDR available for $59+S&H at Mwave. Radeon's in general have excellent 2d and DVD playback quality, and are quite a bit better than most Geforce's on the market. I would have recommended this card earlier, however I thought you had settled on one card and were just looking for reseller's.

My $.02,
eplebnista

 

[brianp34]

I second that vote for the radeon ve. It has excellent 2D and flawless DVD as well as dual head. If you want to play games, a VE is atleast as good as a geforce 256 DDR and will easily beat a geforce 256 sdr (speaking from personal experience, not synthetic benchmarks.)

Brian

 

[AA0]

Avoid the MX cards for any 2D applications, they have the worst 2D of any nvidia cards.

 

[moosey]

i read somewhere that with the radeon VE the image quality wasn't the best (and the MX was actually reated higher at one site). so if the MX image quality isn't too good, what else is there? what about the kyro chipset? any other options? how much would an all-in-wonder radeon be and would that get the job done?

 

[moosey]

also, if using an analog connection which cards produce good image quality?

 

[brianp34]

I have a hard time believing anybody would rate the 2D quality of an MX card over any radeon. Compared to the 7200 64 meg, the 2D of the VE is right on par; same goes for the dvd playback. I'm running a geforce 2 ti (gainward) and the 2D qualitys sucks compared to the 7000 I replaced, and the gainward cards are supposeded to have pretty good 2D in comparison to other nvidia cards. If you're not concerned with games (And you can play games on the VE, its not going to scream but its by no means a total loser.) then you should definately go with a radeon, and the VE is priced right.

Brian