Buying a Sapphire fanless VGA card or a Matrox P650

Pirata · Post by **Pirata** » Mon Feb 23, 2004 7:10 pm

Hi fellows!

I've been looking into those beautiful Sapphires for some time now, along with the Matrox P650, and I just can't decide.

I look for a fanless card, without much 3D power, that is DVI compliat at 165MHz, which means it is able to display HDTV on a proper screen (which I plan to buy soon). This means that the card has to be able to display 1920x1080x60Hz through the single link DVI connector. This data comes right from the DVI standard webpage:

http://www.ddwg.org/dvi.html

ATI RadeOn 9600 Pro and higher GPUs are DVI compliant up to 165MHz, as ATI informs in its website. I guess Matrox also supports full DVI, since they are committed to picture quality. Neither Sapphire nor Matrox inform with detail about supported DVI resolutions. Matrox says that top resolution is 1600x1200, and that makes me think that I got it all wrong, and tha no graphic card in the market can support HDTV resolution.

I have contacted both companies, with no answer yet.

So, this is for anybody owning one of these cards: do the Sapphire or Matrox cards support 1920x1080 in DVI output?

mrzed · Post by **mrzed** » Mon Feb 23, 2004 10:07 pm

I can't answer you question, but the most likely place to find such an answer is likely avsforum.com.

Best general home theatre resource out there.

Boomerang Rapido · Post by **Boomerang Rapido** » Wed Feb 25, 2004 5:58 am

Well I can't answer your question either, but you COULD try the forums at www.matroxusers.com. They should at least be able to give you the info on the p650.

kie · Post by **kie** » Wed Feb 25, 2004 9:58 am

just had a look on my sapphire 9800pro and the screen properties shows that it can go up to 2048 x 1536 pixels. However I don't think my monitor supports that so I'm too scared to try it

note that the screen properties won't necessarilly show all the possible resolutions but instead only what it thinks the monitor can support.

PretzelB · Post by **PretzelB** » Wed Feb 25, 2004 11:07 am

The best place to go is avsforum.com as the other poster recommened. You will find that almost everyone there uses a Radeon card. However, I'm not aware of any limitation in the Radeon cards below the 9600. I have a 7500 on my Samsung DLP and HDTV and DVD playback are outstanding.

My suggestion is to first decide on the TV. Then hit avsforum.com and see what card people use with that TV. Each TV is very different. Be prepared for lots of tweaking.

halcyon · Post by **halcyon** » Wed Feb 25, 2004 12:57 pm

DVI compliance shootout:

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,3 ... 527,00.asp

On Radeon cards, it depends on the card. Unfortunately not all cards have been measured.

I'll try to dig more results from c't magazine archives if I can.

regards,
Halcyon

Pgh · Post by **Pgh** » Wed Feb 25, 2004 2:09 pm

I'm using the DVI output of a passively-cooled Sapphire Radeon 9000 to drive a WUXGA (1920x1200x32bpp) LCD at 60Hz. Works fine.

Pirata · Post by **Pirata** » Wed Feb 25, 2004 3:24 pm

Finally, my men have arrived!!

@PgH: can you provide me with more data about your monitor? What size is it? What brand? Are your graphic card and monitor unrelated products, or are they a combo, specially modded/tweaked in factory for working together?

Tell me: have you had to tweak around a lot with Powerstrip (seemingly the AVSforum recommendation) in order to define special DVI modes in the driver control panel applet, or were HDTV modes defined right from the beginning?

32bpp is 24bits (16.7M colors) plus a byte for... what?
Are you using something called "reduced blanking"? Is it necessary that the DVI output in the graphic card have copyright protection support in order to connect to a TV?

@PretzelB: do you mean you're using the DVI output or the analog output? What resolution are you using? It is important.

@ both: any of you using a HDTV card? Can you channel the picture to the HDTV easily, or tweaking was once again needed?

Pgh · Post by **Pgh** » Wed Feb 25, 2004 4:07 pm

The monitor is a Samsung 240T. The videocard is a Sapphire Radeon 9000 AGP. They were purchased separately from different online merchants. The monitor was insanely expensive, but I don’t regret the purchase. The videocard was cheap, about $65 if I remember correctly.

I didn’t have to do any special tweaking to get it to work… it just worked - which surprised the hell out of me. 1920x1200 was one of the options available after installing the ATI driver. I’ve never used Powerstrip.

>“32bpp is 24bits (16.7M colors) plus a byte for... what?”
Not sure what you mean. The 32bpp (bits per pixel) comes from the “Settings” tab on “Display Properties.” It says “Highest (32 bit)” which I thought meant 32bpp.

I don’t use it for HDTV yet – but I hope to in the future.

(BTW - It works fine in Windows XP but I haven’t yet been able to get it to run at 1920x1200 in Linux yet. It’s stuck at a “stretched” 1600x1200. If anyone reading this can offer help I’d appreciate it.)

(-> If you really want to get a case of high-def lust look here:
http://www.seamlessdisplay.com/products_3x1.htm)

Pirata · Post by **Pirata** » Wed Feb 25, 2004 6:09 pm

@PgH: I've just read a review

http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=1141

where it is stated that the monitor supports up to only 1280x1024 through DVI. I guess they got the specs from Samsung. What's up?

PretzelB · Post by **PretzelB** » Wed Feb 25, 2004 6:42 pm

My set is the hlm507w from Samsung. As I said, I have a Radeon 7500 on my HTPC which records shows and plays DVDs. I do have a Hauppage pvr250 to help with the encoding but no HD card in the HTPC.

I recently upgraded my Comcast digital cable to get HD. I have a Motorola 6200 which recently activated the DVI output.

So now I have a small dilemma. My set only had 1 dvi input. I need to manually switch the dvi cable from the cable box to the htpc when I want to watch a movie. It's not a problem so far.

My set has two native resolutions of 800x600 and 1280x720. When I first hooked up the htpc the radeon 7500 recognized the correct resolutions right away. After I upgraded to a newer version of the drivers, that didn't work. I had to use Powerstrip to get the card to recognize 1280x720. Powerstrip seems to be a requirement these days. You might as well budget $20 right now if you're going to hook up a pc to a TV.

Samsung has just upgraded their DLP line and it should be out now. I think the newer sets have two DVI connections so you won't run into my current problem. Check out their website for the specifications.

I still think you need to decide on a tv first and then look for a video card. I only search for stuff about my tv but from what I've seen, there isnt' a tv that won't work with a Radeon 7500. My best suggestion is to choose a tv and then research the avsforum site to see what others have in their htpc.

Pgh · Post by **Pgh** » Wed Feb 25, 2004 7:16 pm

Pirata wrote:@PgH: I've just read a review

http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=1141

where it is stated that the monitor supports up to only 1280x1024 through DVI. I guess they got the specs from Samsung. What's up?

That review is from June 2002. The last version of the 240T supported 1920x1200 DVI.

There is an old thread about this on the AVS Forum:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthre ... msung+240T

The 240T now seems to have been replaced by the 243T.

My 240T is definitely running at 1920x1200 DVI.

Pirata · Post by **Pirata** » Thu Feb 26, 2004 4:44 am

Well... I didn't notice the review's date!

I just can't believe the thread you pointed out! It's from 2001!!
Were there such "beasts" as your 240T in 2001?
In that AVSforum thread, it is stated that DVI outputs such high resolutions by using "reduced blanking" I got an answer from Matrox's german tech service stating that the P650 supports it too. So the P650 could also drive HDTV sets! Well! So: Matrox is a good option, but I've heard terrible things about really bad drivers, and no support under Linux, which is my future OS for sure...
I've even wandered around in the Matrox support forums, and the very same costumers there talk about selling their Parhelias because they just don't work well. Does anybody know something about it? Has anyone had any experience with Matrox?

Oh! one question you might like to answer. In the same review I pointed out, it is mentioned that the monitor is not fit for games. I can live with that, but what about movies? Movies are just 24fps, so they should show pretty well, shouldn't they?

EDIT:
@ PgH:
I am trying to evaluate the degree of work that it will take getting HDTV resolution if I buy an ATI card. I hope that buying a 9600 or 9000 instead of a 7500/8500 will save me all the work and uncertainty of relying on Powerstrip to create a custom, 1920x1080 resolution for the DVI output. You say that the only thing you had to do to get that resolution was simply connecting the monitor to the card, and 1920x1080 was already in place, which is the way it should always be. Why didn't you need Powerstrip? Because, as I suppose, your card (9000) is newer than the AVSForum people's are? If you look at ATI's website, in the chip specs, DVI support improves from each generation to the next. That could be the reason. Maybe you could point out some AVSforum thread you know about, where it is explained which ATI chips need work and which don't.

Anyway, all this is very good news!

PretzelB · Post by **PretzelB** » Thu Feb 26, 2004 9:39 am

I don't think there has been a major change in the gpu for the Radeon cards after the 8500, which I think means the 9000 on up. The cards have been made faster and memory was added, but I THINK the base technology is the same. That's why I find it confusing when people think they need a 9600 or 9800 just to play DVDs. If you're interesting in playing games it's a totally different story.

One thing I think should be pointed out is that ATI is horrible at writing software. Many will violently argue with me but if you look around almost any forum you will start to notice that most people don't run the latest drivers from ATI. The reason is that the newer drivers most likely don't work with something in their pc.

That was what happened to me. Everything worked great with the old drivers but I had to upgrade to support my BeyondTV software. When I did I lost the ability to recognize the native resolutions of my DLP. I've even read where ATI is taking those resolutions out of their drivers on purpose, which basically forces everyone running a HTPC to buy Powerstrip. I think most at avsforum run the 3.4 drivers while the latest if 4.2 !!!

ATI does seem the best with picture quality but you need to be prepared to struggle getting it to work with your tv.

Pirata · Post by **Pirata** » Thu Feb 26, 2004 6:52 pm

How good is the support for ATI cards under Linux? I heard that ATI gives away all needed specs and that a Linux community takes care of the drivers. Just how true is that? How good are those Linux drivers?

Hoy do you explaun PgH's easy success? He hadn't to tweak anything and got everything right. He uses a RadeOn 9000.

PretzelB · Post by **PretzelB** » Thu Feb 26, 2004 8:15 pm

Pirata wrote:How good is the support for ATI cards under Linux? I heard that ATI gives away all needed specs and that a Linux community takes care of the drivers. Just how true is that? How good are those Linux drivers?

Hoy do you explaun PgH's easy success? He hadn't to tweak anything and got everything right. He uses a RadeOn 9000.

Check the Linux forum at avsforum. I suppose it's the same as all other Linux support - users do most of work.

As I said, the older drivers typically work best. Many won't upgrade past 3.4. Every card, driver, and tv are different that's why say the first step is to get the tv. I'd be lying to you if I said that the ati cards work with no problems with all tv's. My personal experience was the same 7500 card failed to work with the same Samsung tv after I upgraded to NEWER drivers. When something that used to work suddenly breaks because of newer drivers, I think that's bad programming IMHO.

For what it's worth, my GF4 TI200 had no problem recognizing my TV. Nvidia seems to do a better job with drivers. The picture quality was terrible so I went back to the ati 7500 and just worked through the issues with Powerstrip.

Pirata · Post by **Pirata** » Fri Feb 27, 2004 5:03 am

What was the picture quality problem with NVidia?

Pgh · Post by **Pgh** » Fri Feb 27, 2004 2:46 pm

Pirata wrote:...

I just can't believe the thread you pointed out! It's from 2001!!
Were there such "beasts" as your 240T in 2001?

...

Oh! one question you might like to answer. In the same review I pointed out, it is mentioned that the monitor is not fit for games. I can live with that, but what about movies? Movies are just 24fps, so they should show pretty well, shouldn't they?

...

Why didn't you need Powerstrip? Because, as I suppose, your card (9000) is newer than the AVSForum people's are? If you look at ATI's website, in the chip specs, DVI support improves from each generation to the next. That could be the reason. Maybe you could point out some AVSforum thread you know about, where it is explained which ATI chips need work and which don't.
!

The 240T has been out for quite a while. I wanted one long before the price came down enough to buy one. When it was introduced I think the price was more than $8k. The price bottomed out at around $2.5k last spring. The 243T is available now and the price seems to have gone up a little on the remaining 240Ts.

I don’t play games either but I do watch a lot of DVDs on it. It looks great to me – I’ve never noticed any streaking. Movies in the theater are 24fps, on DVDs I believe it’s higher. Try looking up something called Telecine (spelling?).

When I contacted ATI, Nvidia, and Matrox about WUXGA DVI output from their cards they were no help at all. They all said they only “officially supported” UXGA. The Radeon 9000 was cheap so based on what I had read in that AVS thread I decided to give it a try and, as I said before, was amazed that it worked with no tweaking required. I would think any Radeon that used the same Silicon Image TDMS(?) chip that the 9000 uses would probably work.

PretzelB · Post by **PretzelB** » Fri Feb 27, 2004 8:30 pm

Pirata wrote:What was the picture quality problem with NVidia?

For me, the Nvidia GF4 TI200 with dvi was horrible when compared to my ati 7500. It wasn't even close.

Pirata · Post by **Pirata** » Sat Feb 28, 2004 7:17 am

@Pgh:

I would think any Radeon that used the same Silicon Image TDMS(?) chip that the 9000 uses would probably work.

I think the TMDS transmitter is integrated into the GPU. Could you confirm this?

Pgh · Post by **Pgh** » Sat Feb 28, 2004 10:30 am

Pirata wrote:@Pgh:

I would think any Radeon that used the same Silicon Image TDMS(?) chip that the 9000 uses would probably work.
I think the TMDS transmitter is integrated into the GPU. Could you confirm this?

I don’t know if it is integrated now - but it used to be a separate chip.

I think now you’re probably going to have to do what I did - just try it and see if it works. I would guess that you could find a passively-cooled Radeon 9000 now for less than $50. Try buying from somewhere that has a liberal return policy.

Or… I see that ATI is coming out soon with a HDTV version of their All-In-Wonder cards. I would think that since it is designed for HDTV it would support 1920x1080 via DVI. It will probably be relatively expensive though.