2D Quality/TV Out
We all know that 2D quality is something that is very important to many people, and as was first introduced in our Parhelia review we will test the 2D quality of this card, both with black text on a white background and vise-versa. Also new is a image test with 4 800*600 pictures stitched together to create a 1600*1200 background image. The monitor used was a refurbished Dell 21" P991 Trinitron monitor, and all tests were run at 1600*1200. The monitor provides a very good picture as well as allowing for two separate inputs to be used. We used the Parhelia, MSI 8888, and the MSI GeForce Ti4600 8X's ability to clone the primary screen to test seven of the eight video out ports of these four cards (cannot test the third head of the Parhelia with clone). The reference video card was a Matrox G400 (not MAX) which is one of the better 2D video cards that have been released. So how did the integrated video card of the 2D, in my eyes?
| |
G400 |
Parhelia (H1) |
Parhelia (H2) |
MSI MX (H1) |
MSI MX (H2) |
MSI GF4 (H1) |
MSI GF4 (H2) |
Chaintech IGP
|
| Black Text |
5 |
7.5 |
7.5 |
5 |
5 |
4 |
3 |
5.5 |
| White Text |
5 |
8 |
8 |
6 |
6 |
3 |
1 |
6 |
| Bitmap |
5 |
9 |
9 |
4.5 |
5 |
4 |
4 |
5 |
| Overall Rating |
5 |
8.25 |
8.25 |
5.25 |
5.5 |
3.75 |
3 |
5.5 |
We can see that in this case (and note that it's just one person's testing) that the Parhelia has a quite better quality graphic, with the image being very crisp and vibrant, on both heads. The MX did about as well as the G400 beating it when it came to white text on a black background, as it was crisper than the G400. The only difference between the two heads of the MX was when it came to the image, and this wasn't much of a difference, just a slightly nicer image. The GeForce Ti4600 8X does rather poorly compared to the G400 and even its slower sibling, the MX 440. The black text was slightly blurry on the first head and very blurry on the second head. White text was somewhat off color on the first head, but was horrendously purple on the second head, thus the score of 1. The image quality was slightly below that of the G400 and wasn't as vibrant. Overall the GeForce Ti4600 8X has a very weak 2D output. The IGP graphics of the Chaintech motherboard did pretty well, equaling the quality of the GeForce 4 MX, which is a good feat.
How did some video cards do with TV-out quality? Let us see how four video cards (G400, Parhelia, and GF4MX, GeForce Ti4600 8X) handle sending the images to the TV-in of the MSI GF4MX card, compared to the reference image. If anyone would like to see the uncompressed images please e-mail me or let me know in our forums.
Reference Image
Parhelia TV-out
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G400 TV-out
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MSI 8888 TV-out
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MSI GeForce Ti4600 8X
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There was very little difference between the Parhelia, MSI 8888, and the G400. The MSI GeForce Ti4600 8X card on the other hand has very poor TV-Out, quality, not to mention a image that is not properly displayed. The Parhelia and the MSI GF4 MX take the (note that this was just a loop back for the MSI test). All the cards except the GeForce Ti4600 8X are just slightly brighter than the reference images, the GeForce Ti4600 8X has a very bad quality with a definite green ting to it.. The quality of most of these cards is pretty good and would look good sent out to most TV's, however I wouldn't use the GeForce Ti4600 8X for this purpose, unless I happened to get a bad card. Sadly I wasn't able to get any TV-Out images from the Chaintech motherboard, as it died on me, in a RAM installation problem, before I could do this test as well as the audio tests.
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Chaintech 7NIF2 nForce 2: We take a look at Chaintech's latest nForce 2 implementation, the 7NIF2. The board not only features the nVidia IGP, but it's also based on the Micro-ATX form factor.
