Interesting discovery with my PC display

For a good while, i was beginning to think my monitor was starting to die, I was getting "dancing pixel" type effects on my display, which worsened with increased resolution, and usually got slightly better with higher refresh rates, but obviously the effect was always clearly visible.

However, after speaking to some others on other forums, and also after looking as the OSD of the monitor (which did not exhibit these artifacts), I began to suspect the graphics card.

The effect basically appears to be almost a slight "rippling" effect as though water were travelling vertically over the top of everything.

So I sold my graphics card and the guy who i sold it to loaned me a couple of graphics cards to try.

The one I am using at the moment is a Geforce MX420 - a pretty poor card in terms of 3D capability but as I dont play games at all these days, it'll do.

One thing i've noticed is its got passive cooling on it, which brings me one step closer to that elusive silent PC.

The card itself has very noticably better image quality on my 22" CRT than the outgoing card, very little rippling effect at all now, just a stable, good quality picture.

Now, I am puzzled by this, surely the outgoing Geforce 6600 card should have at least matched this one for quality. I've got two theories. The first is that in their battle for the best frame rates, 2D quality is now a very neglected area of graphics card development; the second is that perhaps the very fans that keep these cards cool are the reason why I was noticing so much interference.

So it seems to me, if you want a good game PC, you have to sacrifice 2D quality... and conversely, if you want good 2D quality you have to sacrifice frame rates and / or compatability with games altogether.

Its got me wondering what these Matrox cards are like now...

Incidentally, after getting a visual demonstration of the effects of interference in a PC, while I have no complaints with the sound I get from my soundcard, I can see why some people seem to prefer DACs now...

 

I have a passive graphics card as well, it was the most important thing when I got it, I have an ATI 9600 SE with 128MB DDR RAM, its perfectly fine for GTA3 SA and VC.

My old TNT2 Riva had sharper text than my current one does.

 

Of course if your other card was slightly faulty then that might explain it

 

Matrox seem to be offering quite a few special graphics cards and the one that has caught my eye is a low-profile PCI Express x1 aimed at the non-gaming world that might even find a home in a SFF box whe I get around to building one.

 

And he sold it, git!

 

Speaking as a non-gamer myself, I've been very happy with the 2D/text image quality from the various incarnations of Matrox graphics driving Iiyama CRT displays that I've had in 2 past and the current PCs.

Currently have a P650 chosen because it was fanless, although WinDVD doesn't appear to support (all?) the hardware MPEG decoding features of the card as far as I can tell, which is my only minor complaint.

 

I was never entirely impressed with the image quality from my passive-cooled GF3 Ti200. However, things took a turn for the worse when I switched to a GF6600. NVidia are still neglecting the simple 2D image quality issues.

My father had a matrox G500 which always exhibited a shaky image... we thought it was mains interference (as my brother's monitor did the same thing at university when it was on the same ring main as a fridge), but turned out to be the card as it went away completely when he recently upgraded the machine and now has a Parhelia APVe. This gives a superb image on his monitors (Sony 19" and 17"), and I'd love one for my pair of 21"s, but for the lack of 3d capabilities (although I haven't really played anything since I got the 6600 except for theif, which came with it and is rubbish.... I've been meaning to play HL2 and Doom 3)

 

I'm running with an nVidia 6800 Ultra driving two 20" flat panels (DVI outputs) and there's no rippling or any artefacts whatsoever, and I think the 6800 is an above average 3D card (though I don't really play games).

 

It's the use of DVI which solves it jtc. The problem lies in NVidia's poor analogue output stages... Matrox and ATi are better in this respect, matrox particularly so, but matrox are nowhere in 3d and ATI are still very flaky in terms of driver reliability.

 

Yes I changed the Ati drivers on my card to the Omega ones which are much better all round. Shouldn't have to do it though, and your always a step behind when they're updating

 

ATi are good at false dawns too. The Catalyst driver was supposed to solve all the problems but it didn't. Now Omega.

By contrast, NVidia's Detonator unified driver has been extremely successful.

 

Isaac, though my panels support DVI, and my 6800U has dual DVI outputs, for other reasons I have recently changed to one connected with DVI (left) and one with analogue (right) and, having borrowed a pro-spec colour calibration spider, I cannot see any significant difference* between the DVI-connected panel and the analogue-connected panel. This does, of course, fly in the face of conventional wisdom, but I can only report what I see, and so I wouldn't agree that the analogue outputs are flawed. However, I think my card is perhaps a little different to most (PC) 6800's, due to the dual DVI (and, I presume, the fact that it has no analogue outputs, requiring a dongle to connect to an analogue input). Maybe that's the key...

John

 

The analogue outputs are on the board and connected through the DVI connector.

The reason that you don't see things on the analogue connected panel is because flat panels have an ADC in them and clock things in according to its internal clock which hides a lot of the issues such as output filter ringing (seen on a high-res CRT as several ghost bars to the right of any high-contrast vertical edge for example) and slight timing defects. On an analogue monitor the exact position of the pixel is determined by the timing from the graphics card rather than fixed as it is on a panel.

I will hang on to my CRTs until OLED displays hit the big time shortly. Then a 19" 1920x1200 DVI panel will probably the way to go.

 

Same here - I only have one monitor (a Dell 19inch CRT) and I can see no problems on my 6800GT (100hz, 1024/768). I have to use the dongle as mine's dual DVI out.

I thought the dongle had a D/A stage in it, and the card was fully digital???

 

The omega drivers aren't made by ATi iirc, they're 3rd party aren't they? They're certainly not on the ati site.
Yes the Detonator is good but its also an enourmous file. Not such an issue now I guess but still

 

Nope. Read up on the DVI-I connector pin definitions. Also feel free to check the dongle with a multimeter or continuity tester.

 

So Isaac, you reckon the Parhelia is the way to go for 2D quality? I dont really play games any more so lack of 3D wouldnt bother me too much - although i always thought they had basic 3D facilities akin to a low end Geforce card?