Radeon 8500

[Indiana]

The Radeon 8500 is supposed to have DUAL 400MHz RamDACs, which does sound very nice. I don't know about the DV, however - maybe they're sacrifiying one of the connectors again...

[EvilDonnyboy]

The second RAMDAC is definately not running at 400mhz. I've tried the secondary output on my 17" viewsonic monitor, and I can tell you it looks like shit. I don't know if it has to do with the DVI to D-sub adapter, a slow-ass RAMDAC or what. I only tried it for a few minutes tho, so I didn't try to tweak it, tho I'm not sure what would fix the blurry image and massive moire patterns.

The primary output is perfectly fine tho, looks just as good as my G400 on my 17".

[alexudal]

on 2D quality -- again

Well, yes -- specs says there's no 2nd RAMDAC that good as 1st one at 400 MHz on the 8500

Anyway, seems like nobody has a clue whether Radeon's 1st (good and 400-MHz fast) head is

a)real better, or
b)a tidbit better,
c)a roughly the same,
d)gosh, even worse -- in line focusing, sharpness, colors purity/hues, moire, antialiasing, ghosting, etc. filtering tricks,
e)same, but better in filtering features above,

than what G400 (Max) has to offer @1600+by1200+@32bpp?
And what about redraw (2D) speed -- like when dragging windows big enough across the desktop? How good Radeon 8500 at it, compared to G400 Max? Got no stable answer on that either.

I also wish those MURCers respond who know what the real good monitor looks like, to compare: 17" Viewsonics have definitely nothing to do with that. A hint: for this reliable comparison to ever happen you'd need no less than 19-20" CRT, arguably aperture grill of FD, or better Trinitron class, with 0.22-0.24 mm (and never more) dot size.

[Ashley]

The 7500 has dual internal DACs. The 8500 has a single internal 400MHz DAC, with the second (optional) head provided by an external 240MHz ADV7123...

(ATI uses the Analog Devices DAC at any rate, but presumably other ATI board manufacturers are free to use something else, or nothing at all...)

[Wombat]

There's no correlation between RAMDAC speed and visual quality. I don't know how this rumor got started, but please don't let it spread anymore. The same thing surfaced when people started "overclocking" their RAMDACs for absolutely no reason.

[DentyCracker]

Good Luck to ya. ATi does seem to have improved the frequency if not the quality of their driver upgrade

[cbman]

I was one of those people who started that trend.

LOL

Hahaha..

[Indiana]

Wombat, I know. But I can live with the display-quality of my old Radeon and the 8500 is already said to be better.
The faster RamDAC still enables higher frequencies, so the dual-head capabilities would be really great if it HAD dual 400MHz DACs. I'm sure I've read this in two different reviews of the card, have to search a bit.

[Novdid]

That's correct, it does have dual 400MHz DACs. But that doesn't mean the quality is good on the second connector, but I don't understand why it shouldn't be, if they use the same DACs and the same filters on both heads.

It could be the DVI > VGA adaptor as you said, but then you would be able to switch to a better one. Sadly that's a cost.

[Indiana]

I just looked at the specs and while there is nothing from the ATI site where you can exactly tell the specs of the second DAC, you CAN see that on the Radeon8500DV again they sacrified the second CRT connector.

That means no dual CRT or CRT+DVI combinations, just CRT+TV or DVI+TV which is a severe downgrade of the otherwise great dualhead functionality.
So I'm ging to stay with my WinTV a bit longer and get the "normal" Radeon8500 and maybe an additional Firewire card (this is cheaper anyway).

[rylan]

Actually the quality of the dac has a whole lot do with the signal you are getting on your display.

I work at a high-res medical display company, so I deal with display dacs all the time

Theoretically, if its got dual internal dacs, then the image quality should be the same on both heads. This is also assuming that the dacs are isolate the same on the die, routing on the board is equivalent, and the connectors and cables are the same.. if you have to go through a breakout cable then connect that to your monitor cable, then thats a signal quality dropout point.. every time you have to make a connection, you're introducing noise, reflection, and signal loss. So a high quality *shielded* cable (preferably BNC) is your best bet.

I'm not gonna get into technical stuff about the dac rise/fall/jitter stuff, but that greatly effect quality also