which recent Matrox card has the best 2D Quality? except Parhelia

[Mad Bunion]

we're upgrading 5 of our office machines and we were lucky enough that our new supplier carries Matrox cards.

what Matrox card do you guys think has the best 2D quality?

a lot of spreadsheets, OfficeXP and everything running at 32-bit on 17" monitors.

the choices we have are:

g400
g450
g550


Cheers!

[Ant]

I took a look at this recently and put them in this order:

G400
G550
G450

Although the differences were really marginal and only apparent at very high resolutions I felt. I don't think for what you want you would see any difference between the 3 so I'd go for the G550.

[The PIT]

I found that my G550 was much better than my G400. My G400 is now at work and the G550 is my server at home. There maybe some varition between batches.

[zandor]

I've played with all 3, and they all look pretty good to me. I haven't used them much at over 1600x1200@85, but I kinda doubt that'll be an issue unless you decide to get some much larger monitors.
I'd probably go with one of the G550 models just in case you might want to run some DVI flat panels at some point.
Another possibility might be G450 PCI cards if you're not worried about running out of slots. The nice thing about PCI card is you can reuse them as 2nd heads in anther machine later.

[Mad Bunion]

Originally posted by zandor
I'd probably go with one of the G550 models just in case you might want to run some DVI flat panels at some point.

I never thought of that! the DVI flat panels are actually something we've talked about only in passing...but is a road that I believe we eventually will take in the near future.

thanks everyone!

[thop]

i'm not so sure about the parhelia anymore. i already read two reviews that stated that the 2D quality is worse than previous cards. how can that be

[Ant]

Well if I remember correctly several reviews of the G550 rated it's 2D quality as quite poor, I'll give you my own impression as soon as I can.

[Indiana]

Tests (e.g. tecchannel, c't) where the actual signal coming out of the cards VGA was measured showed the G550s output to be very good, in fact better than the Parhelias. The Output of Parhelia might "look" good as it is nearly a perfect sine, but a sine is NOT the most desirable signal-form, a rectangular would be.
Interestingly the G450 (which quite some people complained about it's signal quality) seems to have a nearly identical signal (sine) to the Parhelia, while the G550 has a "better than sine" or " approximately square/rectangular" one

[xortam]

I'd question the quality of the testing that the reviewers did on the P output to determine its IQ. Matrox has put a lot of emphasis on this area with the new filters etc.. Can the BBs please give us a subjective opinion of the signal quality of the P versus the recent G series cards?

P.S. I see some BBs have responded concerning the P's IQ in this thread.

[thop]

Originally posted by Ant
Well if I remember correctly several reviews of the G550 rated it's 2D quality as quite poor, I'll give you my own impression as soon as I can.

i'm really looking forward to your review

[orangejulius]

Originally posted by Indiana
Tests (e.g. tecchannel, c't) where the actual signal coming out of the cards VGA was measured showed the G550s output to be very good, in fact better than the Parhelias. The Output of Parhelia might "look" good as it is nearly a perfect sine, but a sine is NOT the most desirable signal-form, a rectangular would be.

See <a href="http://www.tech-report.com/news_reply.x/3747/">comment #7</a>.

[Greebe]

Mine have been in this order:

Mil G200
Mil G400Max
Mil G450
Mil G550
Parhelia

[Ron]

Re: which recent Matrox card has the best 2D Quality? except Parhelia

Originally posted by Mad Bunion
what Matrox card do you guys think has the best 2D quality?

I've been using the G400 since it hit the market. I currently have 6 G550 cards at work, 5 in a CAD environment and the 6th in my office machine. My subjective evaluation says the G550 is the way to go. In the CAD environment we are using dual 21"s, on my office machine a 21 and a 19.

Ron

[Mad Bunion]

thanks everyone. your collective opinions really helped.

we just put in the order for five G550's. our supplier let me take 1 G450 to test as well. if its got better quality, I'll swap that into my machine.

Thanks again.