DualHead - Can Anything Compete With It?

[Excalibur]

Liquid Snake - Thanks for the explanation. I am, unfortunately, not the same Excalibur.

Ashley - The thought of two video boards is, I guess, not so shabby, but I'm guessing that no matter how I stretch it, it just won't give me the flexibility that DualHead does. In my case, I use a TV as my second monitor. Also, can one run two ~monitors~ on seperate video adapters under Win98SE? Not that I have a second monitor to run in the first place, but I guess I'm just curious.

Thanks,

- Excal

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PIII-866MHz @ 866MHz, ASUS CUSL2 MoBo (v1002a BIOS), 256MB (Mushkin)PC133 CAS2 RAM, MGA G400 MAX AGP 32MB; not overclocked; PD 6.14 / BIOS v1.6 - 25, SBLive! 5.1, Windows 98SE, DX7.0a and lots of other goodies that would just be showing off to list.

[Hamlet]

Do what I'm planning to do. I'll put my MAX in my girlfriends computer, so I won't loose the TVout functions atleast.

Just waiting for the nextgen nvida. Unless G800 kicks som 3D ass, which i seriously doubt.

[RoGuE]

I disagree, I think the 'G800' will kick some serious 3D ass. But you'll probably have to wait until 2002 to buy one

[Oracle]

fyi the radeons not designed for 16bit performance. It was designed for the 32bit high end stuff, the 16bit performance is good and does not look that bad but the 32bit performance is great btw i have both a g400max and a radeon 32ddr.

laterz Oracle

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P3 600e @ 660 (6*110)
128mb 100mhz sdram
abit be6-2
Radeon 32ddr (biding time till the g800
voodoo 3 2000 pci (166)
soundblaster 16pci
4.3gb seagate udma 33
15.3 wd udma 66
creative modem blaster 56k ext
win 98
ie5
direct x 7.0a
pd 6.10beta
tgl 1.3
....................

[paulcs]

I actually think the Radeon's 16-bit 3D output looks pretty shabby. The 32-bit output looks pretty good, however, and the performance difference is truly neglible.

I've only tried the 32 MB Radeon DDR. However, I think the 64 MB retail board has the same issues.

I believe the Radeon VE's dual head scheme will be called "HydraVision." I've read that the VE will have a 64-bit DDR memory bus, like the G450, so it'll probably be a lot slower than the standard Radeon DDR boards and a maybe bit slower than the Radeon SDR.

I personally think ATI's driver situation remains chaotic. The Radeon's drivers, for the most part, actually work, but there are an awful lot of them. I ran ATI's uninstaller, booted into Standard VGA Mode, and manually removed all drivers that began with ATI. I investigated further found over 360 drivers that appeared to be part of the Radeon's driver install. Furthermore, I wasn't in Microsoft's Standard VGA mode. I was in ATI's standard VGA mode. Even after deleting all those hundreds of ATM, ATP, ATK, ATV, etc. drivers, I couldn't properly install at non-ATI boards drivers without serious problems. It always involved a reinstall of Windows.

I just got the feeling that everything the board did was micromanaged in drivers. I also suspect the reason that ATI add-on boards frequently work well with non-ATI videocards, but have conflicts with ATI manufactured videocards, is because ATI's driver situation is so complicated.

Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net