A card with image quality similar to matrox!

[mikeul]

I just read this on :

http://www.tweakup.dk/artikler/Grafikkort/triplexxabrepro/triplexxabrepro1uk.htm

"The Xabre boasts more than described here already, the picure quality is magnificent, almost at level with Matrox. Perhaps this is because of the high RAMDAC running at 375MHz. "

"The picture quality in both 2D and 3D is almost too god to be true, we discovered things in 3DMark that we never had discovered before"

[TdB]

I have heard the quite opposite, that it can´t even do decent bilinear filtering in 3d.

[Tempest]

Nice. But I'm sure there have for some time now been graphics cards that's image quality is comparable to Matrox's IQ. The problem is that the quality assurance of other cards has so far been worse than that of Matrox - you can end up with a card with good image quality, but you might also end up with a blurry one.

Edit: And alpha cards are few, so there it makes sense to use high quality filters and other parts. But when you put the card into production (especially if it is a low-cost card) you have to compromise between quality and cost.

[mikeul]

"I have heard the quite opposite, that it can´t even do decent bilinear filtering in 3d"

New drivers came out since.

[mikeul]

The card tested was not a card for review, but rather the mass produced card made by Triplex.

[mikeul]

I should have written this earlier, but well :
More info available at :
http://www.xabre.com (official site - nice but not too much info there)
http://www.xabregamers.cjb.net (nice with lots of info but a bit slow to load)

[dZeus]

wow, very nice card that Xabre... they should compete well in the market segment covered by the Parhelia and where we Murcers are interested in.

Truely a great successor for the Geforce 2 MX card we all have in our systems.

[Nuno]

That´s just plain wrong.

Actually, when a "reviewer" justifies the better image quality by a faster RAMDAC is just too way off the line. RAMDAC frequency has NOTHING to do with image quality. I really don´t know about Xabre 2d quality, but it surely hasn´t anything to do with the 375Mhz RAMDAC.

About the 3D quality, it´s actually very poor and this very good review at http://www.xbitlabs.com/video/xabre400/ found why.
It has a hidden registry setting like TexTurboMode that gives a horrible texture filtering quality and very blurry LOD setting. It is on by default, despite you being able to turn it off. When so, the Xabre does render a correct image, but then its performance goes down, nowhere near GF4MX levels...

Anyway, that doesn´t take away all the credit SIS deserves, they designed a budget DX8.1 card that has some trade-offs, and that´s fully understandable. Point here is that tweakup.dk review is way off line with all the Xabre reviews until now.

[YngwieM]

It's nice hearing that they have nice 2D...

But I'm with Tempest: each card is unique, speccialy in the analogical side... and the build quality of Matrox put's them atop of the others.

[mikeul]

"Actually, when a "reviewer" justifies the better image quality by a faster RAMDAC is just too way off the line."
The reviewer only wrote : Perhaps this is because of the high RAMDAC running at 375MHz. "
A higher RAMDAC results in higher refresh rates, thus softer on the eye.

"About the 3D quality, it´s actually very poor "
As I said, new drivers were released since.

[Nuno]

I´ll give the new drivers the benifit of doubt, but please don´t back up the 2D quality/RAMDAC frequency argument.

The spec´d RAMDAC MHz is the maximum frequency the RAMDAC can operate. What it does is to convert the digital signal into an anolog one that your CRT monitor can work with. The RAMDAC frequency is determined by the resolution/refresh rate you´re running at.

It´s not the frequency of the RAMDAC that counts, it´s its quality + chip design + signal filters quality.

To give you a hint about how the insane RAMDAC *max* frequencies are pure marketing, at 1280x960x32@85 Hz you´re running the RAMDAC at 148 Mhz. At 1600x1200x32@85Hz you´re running it at 232 Mhz.

[dZeus]

Originally posted by mikeul
"Actually, when a "reviewer" justifies the better image quality by a faster RAMDAC is just too way off the line."
The reviewer only wrote : Perhaps this is because of the high RAMDAC running at 375MHz. "
A higher RAMDAC results in higher refresh rates, thus softer on the eye.

"About the 3D quality, it´s actually very poor "
As I said, new drivers were released since.

I can wholeheartedly agree on this! 1600x1200x32 @ 120 Hz looks SO much easier on my eyes on my 19" than @ 85 Hz does, that it brings tears on my eyes, using my Geforce2MX!

In fact, it's so easy on my eyes, I don't even need anti-aliasing at 120 Hz!!! And a Xabre is probably fast enough to run without AA to get good performance in games!

[TdB]

did I read the review correctly? Have they adopted the see-trough-wall cheat from asus?

[Indiana]

Originally posted by dZeus


I can wholeheartedly agree on this! 1600x1200x32 @ 120 Hz looks SO much easier on my eyes on my 19" than @ 85 Hz does, that it brings tears on my eyes, using my Geforce2MX!

Well, the GF2MX does bring tears to ones eyes anyway...
Seriously now, even your 1600x1200@120Hz is only 230KHz so a typical TNT RAMDAC would be sufficient with this kind of logic.

Another example is the Radeonwhere the R8500 is slightly MORE blurry than the R7500 even though it has a 400MHz RamDAC (vs. the 350MHz one of the R7500).

[YngwieM]

I agree with you guys...

I still have a G200 and even with it's "slow" RAMDAC, it's 2D is far better than any GF I tried. (on a fine monitor, of course)