State of reviewing graphics hardware

[windigo]

Upon looking at the numerous reviews of Nvidia and ATi hardware and notice there aint much journalism there except for taking quotes from press releases and benchmarking with quake. the other thing i notice is that people are missing the point about image quality justifing higher frame rates to get rid of pixelation but colour saturation and colour representation is very important to colour quality. Only a couple of reviews state that the products from Nvidia and ATi are approaching Matrox levels in saturation and visual quality but benchmark scores with Matrox hardware are appauling. I agree that the benchmarks arent high but my visual quality even with all the detail set low is still 'not low quality' and when i bump only few settings it can become "fast and visually appealing" second of all these suped up cards seem to stall when you want Matrox style quality and they quickly drop in framerates and even go as low as a Matrox card's framerates, for the same quality I have had for over a year with my Matrox card. whats hurting Matrox I think is 'Mind Share' and the reviewers who place framerates higher than quality and are chained to benchmarks and quote from press releases inlieu of giving their own unbiased opinion. I would desperately like to see a review that said for a $500(Can) GF2 card the "visual quality" is a ripoff.

personally i take quality over quantity any day.....
this rant was just to releive the stress of waiting for Matrox's next card


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MSI K7TPro2 Duron 750@900
256Ram G400DH32mb
Pioneer SCSI 16xDVD

[Bursar]

What you have to bear in mind is that a lot of people who buy these cards are games players. For games, FPS is all important. When things are zipping around at 150FPS and you're trying to line your crosshairs up on a target, you don't really notice if the quality isn't quite as good as a Matrox card.

I have a GF2 Ultra, and until the GF3's start to appear, there isn't really anything that can touch it for performance.

I'll admit the 2D quality is not as good as my old G400MAX, but for I use my PC for (surfing nd gaming), it's perfectly adequate.

Most of the people that really complain about the nVidia 2D quality are those who work predominately in 2D (such as Photshop).

I'm sure the nVidia based cards will get there in time, but the cards are really for two different markets.

I'd have no problems suggesting nVidia cards to games players, but for 2D work, I'd recommend an ATi or a Matrox.

[DuRaNgO]

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">I have a GF2 Ultra, and until the GF3's start to appear, there isn't really anything that can touch it for performance.</font>

thing is, if you lowered the visual quality on let's say the Radeon 64 to look more like a GF2 or vice-versa, how would they then compare?

[windigo]

i agree with you that 2d aint that important to people who covet frames per second but you gotta be annoyed that noone not even reviews seem to be bothered by the fact that a year old card and some would say 3 generations behind still has Nvidia and ATi by the cajones when comes to 2d quality besides even the fps freeks do other stuff with their cards such as 3d modeling and level design where you would want and need good colour representation.
it seems there are only 2 choices to make go for quality and leave performance on the back burner or go balls out and let the quality catch up at a later time, a sad choice in my opinion because alot of people in this forum by what I can tell need both...quality is what we expect and the performance we "want".
so far i think ATi is closer than Nvidia or Matrox to providing that healthy medium.
hopefully M will bring something nice since weve seen what Nvidia and ATi are bringing to the table. and i hope reviewers can seperate the line they've drawn between gamer or buisness user there is much more than that out there I hope and so does my wallet

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MSI K7TPro2 Duron 750@900
256Ram G400DH32mb
Pioneer SCSI 16xDVD

[Wombat]

HEY!
I'll have you know that my G400 is almost twoyears old.

It is a little slow though. But I hope it takes its first steps soon. &ltsigh&gt, it seems like just the other day my little guy learned how to raster...

[SCompRacer]

I am in process of assembling my upgrade leftovers for a friend. He wanted an Elsa GeForce2 GTS 32MB, so I put it in my old P3B-F with a P III 450.

I can't get Quake II to run in any OGL selection, runs in software only. Quake III runs OK though. Have the 6.50 nVidia drivers. Any advice for me?