XFX 5700 Ultra Dual DVI

[sandviper]

Single DVI not cutting it for you? We look at a Dual DVI solution that is powered by the FX 5700 Ultra.

http://www.viperlair.com/reviews/video_graph/xfx/fx/5700u/

[Quasar]

Looks like a so-so card. I think your comments sums it up best Vipe... the FX5900 XT is gonna kill any FX5700 Ultra sales.

Sean, better than you've done in the past with the benchmarking, but there's no talk at all about image quality in 3D, 2D and dual DVI. Was it good? Fair? Sucked? Considering it's a Dual DVI card, I think it would have been good to touch on those topics.

[Jak Crow]

I tried two of these cards, and both of them had poor quality output from the bottom DVI connector. It's output made it look like there were thousands of dead pixels on the screen.

Gainward and InnoVision have dual DVI 5700 cards.

[sandviper]

Gah... that sounds horrible. You sure you didn't have a bad card? I can't comment on the XFX since it was Sean that reviewed it.

[Jak Crow]

I tried two different ones from different sources. Exact same problem. I have two 20" LCDs and I REALLY NEED dual DVI. An engineer from XFX seemed concerned enough by the issue that I had a conference call with him and another engineer, but I didn't hear back on the matter and returned the second card. I'd also talked to someone on nvnews that had experienced the same problem with 2 different cards as well. I ended up returning the 5700 and found a 5900U someone was selling. I'm planning on getting a 5200 PCI w/ DVI to handle the other monitor since the 5900's VGA output is TERRIBLE.

I think really putting a dual head video card thru its paces for a review requires trying both outputs, on top of just benching its performance, especially when most cards are dual head these days. For example, I've heard Radeon cards' DVI is limited to 1280x1024, but I'm unsure if this is true since most reviews don't talk about it.

[Goldaar]

Jak, have you tried the new 9600 Dual-DVI cards? I believe there are a few manufacturers that make them, and quite a few reviews online for them. Also, welcome to the forum.

[sandviper]

We looked at the HIS Dual DVI not long ago:

http://www.viperlair.com/reviews/video_graph/his/9600dvi/

Perhaps Mica can shed some light on this.

[Mica]

Cant really test both connectors at once with dvi as none of my monitors have dvi connectors. I didnt notice any difference between the two connectors, i will double check though just to make sure. I found the iq on the card to be awesome though.

[ricercar]

How strange. My dual-DVI XFX 65700U has dual-good outputs.

The XFX 5700U dual-DVI was obtained in order to circumvent the second connector DAC quality problems. I have four cards (NV28GL, NV34, NV34, NV35U) where the VGA connector output was defective while the DVI is good.

[Jak Crow]

Interesting. My previous card was a Gainward GF4 4600 w/ dual DVI and output from both was excellent, so needless to say, I was disappointed with the results of the XFX cards.

[Sean]

Hmm, I had no such problems...But my flat panel DVI's were both 15" and no larger... I am not really sure what the problem could be, but I had no such issues at all...

[Jak Crow]

Oh yeah. That was another thing. The image quality problem was less apparent at lower resolutions. My LCDs are 1600x1200 screens.

[VoOdoO]

I wonder if it has to do with the DACs? Would make sense if its only the high rez's that have the issues.

[ricercar]

Bwah? DVI output circuits don't have DACs. I mean the whole DVI advantage is to remove two DACs from the signal path: one DAC from the card and one from the display.


That being said, I'm using quad 1024x768 panels and have nothing larger to test.

[Jak Crow]

I believe the 5700 requires an external TMDS transmitter to run the second DVI. Perhaps there has been a problem with that or the internal one on some of the cards. That could explain things. I'm not sure which output is the internal transmitter and which is the external one though.

[VoOdoO]

Originally posted by ricercar
Bwah? DVI output circuits don't have DACs. I mean the whole DVI advantage is to remove two DACs from the signal path: one DAC from the card and one from the display.

Learn summit new every day :)

[ricercar]

Yeah, the whole LVDS/TMDS thing has been confusing to me, and it once was my job to document it for NVIDIA.

IIRC, NVIDIA GPUs have three flavors of outputs:
- one integrated TV encoder
- two integrated DACs for dual analog VGA output.
- one dual-link LVDS/TMDS and one single-link LVDS/TMDS integrated transmitters.

This means an external DVI transmitter is required for LCD monitors but not laptops (this is where i get fuzzy). My guess is that the 5700 output quality issue mentioned earlier in the thread is related to NVIDIA's internal transmitter. There's a good article at ExtremeTech called DVI Shootout (http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,1370516,00.asp) that explains this.

Before we get into the actual results, it's worth discussing how DVI is implemented in graphics hardware. For DVI (digital visual interface) to work, you need a transmitter and a receiver. The transmitter is embedded in the graphics hardware, while the receiver is housed in the display. Assuming the monitor itself is digital TFT, the circuit path should be purely digital as well – LCD displays are digital devices, as are Plasma displays and DLP or LCD projectors. Although a few CRTs exist with DVI interfaces (mostly in high-end widescreen televisions) almost all PC monitors with DVI are digital devices.


Properly implemented, this can result in superb image quality. Instead of having to use a DAC (digital-to-analog converter) to convert the digital graphics information to analog output, the entire signal path is digital. (An aside: This makes flat panels with VGA inputs somewhat suspect, only because you have two conversion steps: digital to analog in the graphics card and analog to digital in the display).
Edited for spelling.

[Jak Crow]

Apparently the 6800 will have no internal TMDS. Based on the ExtremeTech artcle, it looks like it will be a good thing for nvidia.