Radeon over G400?

[Bursar]

Darin: I understand what you're saying, and I'd like to say thanks.

Many other people (and to a degree I have been a bit guilty of this in the past), would have said something like:

"It's an Nvidia chip, ofcourse the 2D is going to be rubbish."

Your argument made sense and wasn't just a random flame against an Nvidia owner.

If what you say is true, then maybe my eyes really are awful, and I just can't tell the difference!

[Darin]

Bursar, I'm glad to see you didn't take offense to anything I said. I doubt your eyes are awful. You've already told us you don't spend a lot of time in 2d. If most of your computer time is in 3d, then I think you made a very wise choice. I don't think the 2d of nvidia cards is rubbish, I think there is a definate, but subtle difference in the crispness of the display compared to the Matroxs & Radeons. There is also a very subtle difference between 80FPS and 70FPS, but you can bet if 3d was where I spent most of my time, I'd be buying the one that did 80FPS.

If you didn't notice any difference between the G400 & the GF2, there could be a lot of reasons for that: maybe the "problem" with Nvidia cards is there output is more succeptable to cable capacitance, reflections, etc., and the BNC cable avoid lots of that (I think you are probably a rarity amongst gamers for using BNC cables), you also have one of the better monitors of it's time, so that doesn't hurt (we have a geforce here in the office, and I don't like it's output, but is it the card, or the monitor?), and if the nvidia cards do indeed have lower quality components in the analog signal stream, lower quality usually means wider tolerance, which means some might be good, and some might be bad. You might just have a good batch of capacitors & resistors, just like getting a really overclockable chip. Maybe Matrox cards rapidly interlace a message on the screen that says "This is the clearest display you have ever seen!" that is subconsciously recognized even though we don't really notice it, and you're just not very succeptable to subliminal messages. ATI discovered this, and implimented it in the Radeon. Matrox could do nothing about this without revealing their own conspiracy! But ATI was also smart enough to write drivers that make the card run in 16bit mode even if you pick 32bit, then flash messages that says "All the dithering is gone!", which helps it in 32 bit benchmarks, and explains why the Radeon does so much better comparatively in 32bit vs. 16 bit (the small frame hit in 32 bit is due to the overhead of the message). I'm sure there's more possibilies that I'm not covering.

I've always been amazed at how emotional arguments get over video cards (maybe irratability due to constant brainwashing?). It really wasn't that long ago when video adapters just output a standard VGA signal (less than 10 years). No 2d acceleration, not to mention 3d acceleration, and certainly no thought into which one has higher quallity or renders a scene more accurately. Now we feel a need to plunk down $200-500/year to upgrade our video cards, and will start family feuds with people we've never laid eyes on, which will last for generations to come, just to defend our decision as being the best one.

Kinda funny when you think about it.

[paulcs]

NVIDIA's 2D quality seems to vary from manufacturer to manufacturer. Elsa has already been mentioned. Guillemot has a good reputation. Diamond, of all companies, and Canopus also had many testimonials of solid 2D output.

It's funny. I've been testing a 32 MB DDR Radeon for several days now, and PowerDVD worked a lot better for me than ATI's DVD player.

Take my word for it. There are still driver issues, although nothing like I saw with the Rage Fury. It does a good job with Quake 3 and UT.

Uninstalling ATI's drivers remains a nightmare of epic proportions. Their uninstaller remains the most useless program ever written. Upgrading drivers is a bit of a hassle, but I think downgrading (from the "Special Purpose" drivers) or switching devices is best handled with a C drive format.

After running the uninstaller and deleting all files beginning with ATI, I found just over 360 files that I suspected were left over from the Radeon's driver installation.

Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net

[drzaius]

that's what i wanted to ask you guys...
what DVD decoder program are you using?
i'm using Matrox's DVD player that came with the G400, looks pretty good, but i don't anything to campare it with.

[Darin]

drzaius, sorry to take your post so off topic. You might want to check out this thread in the Radeon forum at Rage3d: http://www.rage3d.com/forum/ubbhtml/...ML/001728.html You will see that there are several former users of Matrox cards there. You might also want to do a search there (as well as the corresponding forum at www.rageunderground.com) for G400 to find other users that had a Matrox card, and do the same here for Radeon for anyone still active here that has one now. Look for people that are registered and have e-mail or some way of getting in touch privately. I think if you send a private e-mail you will be more likely to get an honest answer as opposed to someone looking to get on a soapbox in a public forum. Personally, I think you should stick with what you have if you're happy with it, but just in case you want to research it some more. Also, keep in mind that any new card is going to have growing pains, and take a while to get the bugs out. We all remember how long it took for Matrox to produce good GL drivers. So far, I like the Radeon, but I have an Intel chipset on Win98, and the only game I play is Q3A. The majority of the people having problems with the Radeon appear to be on vias or in Win2k (although the latest special purpose drivers seem to be alleviating a lot of that). This combined with ATI's less than sterling driver update history might make it wise to hold off until they sort things out, at least if you system puts you at "high risk" for incompatabilities.

(edit) took a few times to get the links right!)

[This message has been edited by Darin (edited 30 October 2000).]

[Victorian]

Still driver issues?!!!

I just spent the weekend from hell trying to get a reatail Radeon 64 VIVO working with my system (card went back to the store today and am I glad to see my old G400 MAX back in my system).

The '44' drivers that came with the card were the only ones that worked to any degree (and there were problems regarding the screen chaging sizes when I changed screen resolutions).

The newest 'official drivers ('56') wouldn't work at 1280 x 1024 (the resolution that I normally run at) and the newest 'beta' drivers ('63') wouldn't even install.

I tried *everything* including a fresh install of Windows (98se) and still no go.

I'm now in the middle of reinstalling all my software to clean up the mess those damn drivers caused.

The moral of this story? Who knows, but bring on that G800!!!!

System:
ASUS CUBX, Coppermine PIII 600, NEC Multisync FE950 (19") monitor, 384 megs pc133 ram, Soundblaster Live, Pioneer 16x DVD, HP9310i CDR, Acer 50x CD rom, IBM, Maxtor and Quantum hd's of various sizes

[ph0rk]

I've had our 32 meg Radeon review board in my personal box for the last 3 weeks. I just put my G400 back in 2 days ago.

After spending that much time with the Radeon, I have to say I was impressed...and very surprised to BE impressed. I dual-boot Win98SE and Win2k, and the card was fine for all it's 2D duties in Win2k, and also fine for all it's gaming duties in Win98. Never had my system crash or spontaneously reboot.

The 2D quality was just a *little* worse than the G400. I didn't notice it until I put the G400 back in, and went "hrm, this looks a little clearer than before." I'm sitting 1' away from a ViewSonic PF815 (22", flat apperature grill) so I think I can tell the difference Oh and yes, nVidia's 2D, even on the better cards, does tend to lag behind what the G400 and Radeon can do. Depending on your monitor (and/or your eyes), though, you might not be able to see it.

paulcs, I dunno why you've had trouble uninstalling ATi's drivers, I uninstalled both the Win2k and Win9x drivers just fine before putting my G400 back in and they went away fine...maybe there are problems that show up only when trying to upgrade/downgrade driver versions rather than switching video cards?

Well drzaius it looks like you already had your answer, but my big fat ego couldn't let me pass up an opportunity to share my opinion

------------------
cory@houseofhelp.com
http://www.houseofhelp.com
Duron 700@950, ASUS A7V, 256MB PC133, ViewSonic PF815, Matrox G400

[paulcs]

ph0rk, do me a favor and run a search in your Windows directory for the following:

ati*.*
atm*.*
atp*.*
atr*.*
ats*.*

(There are more. A lot more.)

If there are just a handful, and they're dated May 99, then they're from your Windows 98 install. If there are a lot, and they are dated August 2000, then they are from ATI's install.

Also, after running ATI's uninstaller and attempting to install Microsoft's Standard VGA driver, ATI's Standard VGA driver installed instead. This can be checked in the registry:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/CurrentControlSet/Services/Class/Display

Ideally, there should be one entry here, 0000 (your Matrox board, if it's still installed), although there might be a couple: your Matrox board, the Standard VGA entry, and maybe the Radeon. Check in the Standard VGA driver's folder if it's there. Are there are references to ATI instead of Microsoft?

Also, you might want to boot into Safe Mode and check device manager. Is the Radeon still listed under Display Adapter?

Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net

[ph0rk]

Ok, my bad. It's all just as you said, except for the Radeon appearing in device manager. ATi's standard VGA driver is even installed. Like, WTF? I guess it was too much to hope that the driver team had all been executed and their clones had been activated...

I must just be too trusting of uninstallers after all this time with my G400

[Bad Sector]

I've got two P3 boxes sitting right next to ea other. One w/ a Radeon DDR 32 (replaced an Asus/ Nividia V6800 GeForce DDR) and the other with my trusty G400 Max. They're both using Sony Trini's (20",19") and for my money the Radeon's 2D is "as good" as the G400 Max. In 3D, as expected, it smokes the Max and with comparable and/or better image quality. I've had no driver probs. I look at it as the G800 that I got tired of waiting for..... At it's price point, I don't think it can be beat.

I still like my Max tho.....love the dual head.

FYI: I have both cards running at 144.4 FSB (AGP clock @ 96) on Soyo 6BA+IV bx chipset mobos, with card coolers (2x80mm fans) blowing over and under each card.

Cheers, Bad

------------------
P3 700 @ 1.011 GHz w/ATi Radeon 32MB DDR
P3 600 @ 866 MHz w/ Matrox G400 Max

[ph0rk]

eeeeek! Run! It's Bad Sector!

/me ph33rs for my data.