Why does 2D suck so bad on GeForce Cards?

[Se7en01]

I am a recent convert from Voodoo5. I loved the 2D and the 3D was awesome too on my V5. However, after it died I got a GF3 ti200. I love the Frame rates on ithe GF and it runs all my games wonderfully, however, I am annoyed with the 2D I see on my desktop. I am using WinXP and the 23.11 drivers. Is there anything I can do to make it better? And if not, will the 2D ever get better on Nvidia cards or should I get a Radeon?

 

[AA0]

2D is highly dependant on the brand of the card you get. You can also look at anand's article about it just recently, it will tell you how to improve the 2d, at your own risk.

 

[rogue1979]

Boy, the title of your thread invites alot of flaming! I also upgraded from a Voodoo 5 to a Inno3d Geforce Pro. Since then I carefully choose 2 Gainward cards, all three had excellent 2D quality. All Nvidia chipset cards have low pass filters on them. Some of these are not made of quality components and causes the 2D to be inferior. A simple modification done by removing 9 capacitors (sometimes 6 or 3) will disable the low pass filters and give you laser sharp 2D, even at 1600 x 1200. There is a thread in here explaining the mod in detail. The Geforce 2/3 chipset can produce excellent image quality, depending on the brand. The low pass filters are a mandatory requirement for all board manufacturers, not to be blamed on the Geforce chipset itself.

 

[EJ]

I've suffered through bad 2d on my Creative tnt1, Leadtek geforce 1, and now my Elsa geforce 2 ultra. Saw a story on firing squad that Leadtek will start using higher quality filters from their geforce 3 500ti on to their next cards.

So I don't care what Anand said about any Geforce 3 cards. He didn't compare the 2d and that's what I'm going to base my purchase on next.


EJ

 

[cmdrdredd]

If you really care about 2D you shouldn't be buying a Gaming card anyhow! Go buy a matrox card or a cheap radeon...both are better in 2D than a GeForce. nvidia designs cards for gaming and for gamers...the gamer usually doesn't look at the desktop much when running through halls in Q3, UT, RTCW, MOHAA etc

 

[Mingon]

<< nvidia designs cards for gaming and for gamers >>



Illinformed rubbish springs to mind, get a nvdia card by a decent make e.g. gainward and the 2d will be as good as anything, and the 3d performance in 3d design software will be above anything ati or matrox can offer.

 

[rogue1979]

Well said Mingon!

 

[Se7en01]

Wow, lots of GREAT info here. Thanks for the replies. I actually have the MSI version and thought when I bought it that they were a pretty good brand. Like I said, it does a great job in games but not the 2D. I wish I had bought the Gainwind now..

 

[EJ]

Can you point me to a review of 2d on a Gainward card?


Thanks,
EJ

 

[moosey]

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.html?i=1577&p=5

 

[TumBO]

I have the MSI GeForce2 Pro that I did the removal of the capacitors on and love the difference! At first I thought it was no big deal then I opened a webpage with lots of text. My reaction was one of... Whoa! I'm very happy that I took the chance.

 

[Rand]

<<

<< nvidia designs cards for gaming and for gamers >>



Illinformed rubbish springs to mind, get a nvdia card by a decent make e.g. gainward and the 2d will be as good as anything, and the 3d performance in 3d design software will be above anything ati or matrox can offer. >>





<< 3d performance in 3d design software will be above anything ati or matrox can offer >>



Now that's a loaded statement.
Hmm, shall we pit ATi's FireGL4 against any of Gainward's GF3's?
Albeit their not intended for the same market but you did say "anything"...
ATi has been slowly integrating some of the FireGL expertise into their OpenGL drivers for CAD apps, so at least with the Radeon8XXX it can match up quite well against the GF3 in 3D design/modelling/engineering/CAD applications.


To get back onto the topic at hand though, not all nVidia boards offer poor 2D visual quality.
Elsa, Gainward, and VisionTek are all quite respectable indeed, and LeadTek is a close second.
I'd be the first to admit they still don't quite match up to ATi, but they will still be quite adequate for most people at resolutions up to 1600x1200.
Even as low as 1024x768 I can visually see the differences between ATi/3dfx 2D versus that of Gainward, but the differences are pretty slight.... and while the difference increases even further at 1600x1200, Gainward and the like are still respectable.

Some manufacturers nVidia boards are not at all 'bad' in 2D, if you want an absolute guarantee of having excellent 2D then yes you should be going for ATi or Matrox... but if you can accept merely 'good' 2D then nVidia will be fine for you as long as your very cautious about which manufacturer you choose.

There is of course the modifcation to remove one set of the filters which can have a very distinct impact on 2D visual quality... but I tend not to think much of that as I don't think it's worth potentially damaging your card, and voiding the warranty just to get the 2D you can from another manufacturers card with no mods.

 

[Daovonnaex]

<<

<< nvidia designs cards for gaming and for gamers >>



Illinformed rubbish springs to mind, get a nvdia card by a decent make e.g. gainward and the 2d will be as good as anything, and the 3d performance in 3d design software will be above anything ati or matrox can offer. >>

So, you're saying that nVidia makes a product that's better for 3D design than the ATi FireGL 4, just for the record?

 

[Finality]

All you need are pliers.

 

[Se7en01]

THANKS! Finality, I removed the capacitors and Woohoo! Looks good now.

 

[Beater]

I had a Voodoo 3, than a Leadtek GTS, and now a MSI Pro and have not really noticed a dif in 2D. Must be half blind I guess LOL!

 

[BFG10K]

Must be half blind I guess

Or perhaps you've never actually had an nVidia card with bad 2D image quality, just like I never have.

 

[Mingon]

<< So, you're saying that nVidia makes a product that's better for 3D design than the ATi FireGL 4, just for the record? >>



With the quadro hack I think the performance is quite close



read me or me but probably best to read this ok

 

[Se7en01]

BFG10K, (You can't miss what you never had), if you had ever had a Voodoo5, you would know what I am talking about. The 2D on any NVidia card is "Bad" compared to a V5. I don't care what anyone says. Especially if you have never even seen it.

 

[DefRef]

This is the same old bullsh*t that the Nvidia-haters keep trying to drag up to justify their inability to deal with the death of 3dfx, the failure of Matrox and the inability of ATI to write drivers to save their lives. It's always a hoot to hear the people excuse their poor 3D performance by yelling, "Yeah? At least it ROCKS in 2D!!!" <snork>

I run at 1600x1200x32 on my 19" Hitachi and have had a STB Velocity 4400 (TNT), Diamond Viper 770U (TNT2U), CL Annihilator Pro (GF DDR), ASUS 7700 (GF2GTS) and a PNY GF3Ti200 and have NEVER had a problem with getting anything but a sharp image. Whenever I see these complaints, I think, "People need to clean the bong resin off their screens and start exhaling in another direction."

Maybe y'all got lousy monitors, cuz I spend an average of 4-6 hours a day staring at that thing and if it was as bad as you said, I'd be blind! I'm working on a 21" Nokia at 1280 x 1024 and it SUCKS compared to my Hitachi. (815 graphics aren't helping either!)

 

[Mingon]

<< BFG10K, (You can't miss what you never had), if you had ever had a Voodoo5, you would know what I am talking about. The 2D on any NVidia card is "Bad" compared to a V5. I don't care what anyone says. Especially if you have never even seen it. >>



Hmmm <jabs button> strange <jabs button again> nope nothing <changes glasses then jabs button again> errmm nothing still <cleans monitor jabs button stands on head> nope still no difference.


p.s. belkin KVM + elsa gts ultra + voodoo 5500pci = fair comparrison no ?

 

[Rand]

<< So, you're saying that nVidia makes a product that's better for 3D design than the ATi FireGL 4, just for the record? >>



With the quadro hack I think the performance is quite close



read me or me but probably best to read this ok[/i] >>


XBit Labs article compared a GF3 vs. a Radeon 8500, not the FireGL... and the Radeon8500 matched up reasonably well overall. I also have a strong suspicion those results might change drastically if one used the FireGL 8800's drivers on the card.. which can be done. The other XBit labs review was very old, and didnt touch about any professional level cards.

The only one of those links which even listed a FireGL 4 was Tom's, and that article was almost laughable it was so incomplete..... I think it safe to assume any who've much experience with such cards in their intended profile would agree.
The areas in which any Quadro card could match up to the FireGL 4 are extremely few and far in between, a much more realistic comparison would be the FireGL2 another card marketed at the low-end professional OpenGL rendering card, and even then it has difficulty matching it in many cases.

His 3D Studio Max R3.1 results for one were very unusual, 3D Studio Max often tends to be almost a best case scenario benchmark for the Quadro and yet it was literally blown away by by both the WildCat II 5110, and FireGL4. 3D Studio Max is extremely fond of the Quadro, and it renders Studio Max faster then a WildCat II 5000, Tom has it at almost half the speed of the WildCat II 5110 instead of the more realistic 15% difference one should see.
Tom didnt even mention the fact that the Quadro can maintain real time in the viewport while rendering in 3D Studio Max, while is an awfully big factor in it's favor.

Spec Viewperf is very much a synthetic benchmark, and it's results can tell a lot about potential... but it's seldom an accurate masurement of real world performance. Tom makes no mention of that and almost seems to pass it off as a real world benchmark.

Almost all of his benchmarks were very generic, he didnt even touch upon any specific performance benchmarks focusing on one feature like wireframe manipulation, gouraud shaded models, high polygon loads, structural elements, multiple light sources, phong and smooth blinn shading etc. etc.

Application specific profiles and optimizations in the drivers?
He didnt say a word about whether he used them in some or all of the tests.

All of the cards tested had very specific advantages... for example the FireGL lacks fillrate, but handles complex shading very well, and is incredible at calculating lighting. The FireGL is extremely processor dependent, and doesnt typically associate well with dual processor operation, it scales almost linearly with processor speed though. the FireGL driver team optimizes for anything and everything you can possibly imagine, and they consistently manage to eek out more performance then the hardware base would lead you to believe is possible.

Quadro's gaming roots make it a speed demon at manipulating heavily shaded objects, but is very weak under sustained high polygon loads and has the lowest hardware lighting sources support of any of the common CAD cards. The Quadro has the weakest driver support of any of the common CAD cards, and only has basic application specific optimizations.

The WildCat II's are pure speed in wireframes, and extremely good in CAD style shading, but chokes badly with the more complex shading used in 3D modelling. The WildCat II's put a very low load on the processor, and don't scale well with processor speed, the 3DLabs drivers are well suited for dual processor operation. The low processor utilization allow you to be more productive and keep the system responsive when rendering while other cards would keep the processor very busy.

Tom of course doesnt tell us any of this, nor gives us any benchmarks that really allow us to gauge performance in very specific tasks.
Image quality and rendering accuracy which is often more important then pure speed is not once mentioned.

Perhaps unfortunately he doesnt let on that the powerful T&L engines of many of today's gaming cards enable them to give decent performance in very light CAD scenes.
I'm not sure if the GF3 was available when he did his review but if so I find it unfortunate he doesnt mention that the GF3's flexibility in it's T&L engine often makes it slower for CAD tasks thn the pure brute force GeForce 2, and the GF3's drivers have severe performance discrepancies in many CAD apps. This holds true for the GF3's Quadro varient in the Quadro DCC which is often inferior to the GF2 Pro based Quadro 2 Pro.

Its still not anywhere near ideal, but a better review would be here from AcesHardware.

 

[Mingon]

Aaah that was the one I was looking for, sorry it was 7.00a.m when I replied and I was late for work. I still stand by what I said that the geforce 3 is close to the ati card in performance - the geforce 4 can only get better. This is getting rather off topic though as the subject was actually geforce cards which infers the home range and not the professional.

 

[HouRman]

I was wondering if the removal of capacitors will help a CL annihilator Pro Geforce DDR.

I use a 19" Cornerstone P1460 with high resolutions and it's pretty descent 2D. But I was just wondering if it could get any better because there's a big sticker on the card that says it follows FCC regulations.

I didn't see any DIY do it yourself links above that deal with the Geforce DDR so was wondering if it's done in the same way as a Geforce2.

 

[Furor]

Just did it to my Geforce 2 Ultra..was scared because I crushed one of the capacitors with pliers, so I used tweezers, and it worked..I can tell the colors of my background are much richer.