2D IQ: 8500 vs. 9700pro, which better?

[GNEP]

"Font smoothing" - justs AA's largish truetype fonts normally on any screen (CRT or LCD). This is done in software on all cards other than Parhelia, which accelerates it and adds gamma/colour correction.

"Cleartype" - uses the RGB subpixels to produce finer smoothing on fonts in XP. Only works on LCD screens where the RGB elements are in a fixed and known order. Parhelia does not accelerate this. Should not be used on CRT screens as it can produce unpredictable results, even on ?Trinitron tubes (a pixel might not be RGB but BRG for e.g.)

I think. Don't quote me on this...

The result? Use Font smoothing not cleartype in XP on a CRT.

[GT98]

Originally posted by chaoliang
I observed that ClearType improved something on a laptop display with poor qality. Maybe it was primarily designed for LCD? It blurrs on my Voodoo3 too.

From what I understand its made mostly for LCD displays. I like it since it gives the icon fonts a shadow under them making them easier to read

[chaoliang]

I observed that ClearType improved something on a laptop display with poor qality. Maybe it was primarily designed for LCD? It blurrs on my Voodoo3 too.

[Chrono_Wanderer]

speaking of ClearType, so far my personal encounter is: looks %^&(%^& on all my cards. It looks bad on G550, G200, and R8500 lol. so i never enabled it.

[Helevitia]

I can tell you without a doubt that the IQ improved dramatically from my Orginal Radeon to my Radeon9700 Pro. To give you an example, when I upgraded to XP, I turned on 'clear type' font and noticed an immediate improvement visually with my old Radeon. Once I got my 9700Pro, the text was horribly blurry with 'clear type' on. I turned it off and tada! Sharp as glass. I am sad to say that bove 1600x1200, ghosting, washed out colors and blurrines starts to occur and continues all the way up to 2048x1536.

Dave

[Chrono_Wanderer]

i checked again. the text is actually very very readable on my 19" viewsonic @ 1600x1200 for some reason, in fact no ghosting at all. strange. my G550 cannot do as well as the 8500

edit: but at lower resolution (i.e. 1280x1024) the G550 does much better... little text were "cut off" on my R8500 at that resolution.

edit: hehe nice new sig Helevitia!

[chaoliang]

Thanks a lot for the links, Indiana!

[Indiana]

You must've been lucky with your R8500. I found the 1600x1200 to be too blurry to be actually usable with my R8500, so I used the 1280x1024 instead.
With the R9700, the 16x12 is usable again, not really as razor-sharp as I would wish, but good enough.

Or maybe you got a "bad" G550?

[Chrono_Wanderer]

one weird thing i found: as an user of G550 and 8500, i think the 8500 do better in 2D than G550 at 1600x1200 for some reason. (the G550 has some ghosting on it)

[Indiana]

Originally posted by chaoliang
Could you pls give me the link of the test, Indiana?

I just did a search and came up with these links:

R7500:
R7500 test

Als Referenz diente, wie schon bei den anderen Tests, die ATI Radeon 7500, welche über ein sehr sauberes Signal verfügt.

R8500
R8500 test

Im Allgemeinem ist das Radeon 8500 Signal etwas schlechter, als das der Radeon 7500.

R9700
Hercules R9700 test

Beim Test des RV250 stellte sich heraus, dass es keine Verbesserung zum R200 gegeben hat.
Nur die Hercules 3D Prophet 8500 128 MB stellt eine Ausnahme dar und bietet die beste 2D Qualität aller von uns getesteten Radeon 8500 Grafikkarten. Teilweise war die Qualität bei einigen Herstellern sehr schlecht, mit den neuen Chips gibt ATI den Herstellern mehr Vorgaben, um die Qualität zu steigern.

ATI findet zu alten Tugenden zurück und bietet mit dem R300 eine deutlich bessere Bildqualität, als die des R200 .

R9700 BBA test

Die BBA Radeon 9700 Pro liefert das beste Signal unter den von uns getesteten Radeon 9700 Pro Referenz-Boards.

[Novdid]

What I have seen goes right in line with what Wombat and Indiana have posted. I have a 9700Pro and a 7500, both BBA, and both produce a sharper image than the 8500 and just about every nvidia based board out there.

[chaoliang]

Originally posted by Indiana
The ATI-News.de page did test the 2D signal of various 8500 and 9700 cards as well as the R7500 (=old Radeon). They also did measurements, not only subjective ratings.
And there the 8500 boards most were bad with the Hercules being about the best, the R9700Pro was much better and about the same as the original Radeon/Radeon7500.

Which is much more in line with my observations: The R8500 BBA had noticeably worse signal than my old RadeonDDR VIVO, my R9700 BBA is much better again, i'd even give it a slight lead compared to the RadeonDDR at 1600x1200@85Hz.

Could you pls give me the link of the test, Indiana?

[chaoliang]

Where can i get a 9700pro in Germany?

[Indiana]

The ATI-News.de page did test the 2D signal of various 8500 and 9700 cards as well as the R7500 (=old Radeon). They also did measurements, not only subjective ratings.
And there the 8500 boards most were bad with the Hercules being about the best, the R9700Pro was much better and about the same as the original Radeon/Radeon7500.

Which is much more in line with my observations: The R8500 BBA had noticeably worse signal than my old RadeonDDR VIVO, my R9700 BBA is much better again, i'd even give it a slight lead compared to the RadeonDDR at 1600x1200@85Hz.

[chaoliang]

Thanks for the explaination!