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 G4Ti4600-VT2D8X's ability to clone the primary screen to test six of the seven video out ports of these three 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 MSI card's do against these two 2D champions, does the Silicon Image Sil166CT64 DVI chip do well for reproducing 2D, in my eyes?
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G400 |
Parhelia (H1) |
Parhelia (H2) |
MSI MX (H1) |
MSI MX (H2) |
MSI GF4 (H1) |
MSI GF4 (H2) |
| Black Text |
5 |
7.5 |
7.5 |
5 |
5 |
4 |
3 |
| White Text |
5 |
8 |
8 |
6 |
6 |
3 |
1 |
| Bitmap |
5 |
9 |
9 |
4.5 |
5 |
4 |
4 |
| Overall Rating |
5 |
8.25 |
8.25 |
5.25 |
5.5 |
3.75 |
3 |
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 G4Ti4600-VT2D8X 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 Ti4800 has a very weak 2D output.
What is running the TV-In/Out of this card, is it the same as that of the MSI GF4MX (MSI-8888)? Let us see:
The ViVo controller is the Philips SAA7108AE (). But what kind of quality can the TV-in part of this card produce, compared to the ATi TV Wonder, and its 'slower' sibling the MSI GeForce 4MX. All used the SVHS ports with the reference video being provided by the Matrox Parhelia video card's DVD MAX function. The video is the same used in our TV-out tests mentioned in our Parhelia review. So lets see how the MSI card fairs with video in, and if anyone would like the uncompressed images please e-mail me. The following is the reference image stripped directly from the DVD movie.
How is the TV-In qualities of these cards, when we use the current TV-Out quality leader, Matrox's Parhelia?
GeForce 4 MX TV-in from Parhelia
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ATi TV Wonder TV-in from Parhelia
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MSI GF4 Ti4800 TV-in from Parhelia
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We can see that the ATi TV tuner crops the video fairly badly (look at the right part of the fence on the ATi version and the reference image above). We can also see a 'honeycomb' design on the ATi image, while the MSI GF4 MX image is nice and smooth. The GF4 G4Ti4600-VT2D8X has some interesting paradoxes, on one hand it doesn't smooth the video, but also it increases the brightness (as is seen in the upper right hand side) and thus lowers the quality. It seems that the MSI GF4 MX card is doing some realtime smoothing of the video while the ATi card isn't, as we can see by looking at the text as the ATi version is sharper. Overall the MX card has some very nice quality with one 'problem' while the ATi card has two basic errors, and the GF4 G4Ti4600-VT2D8X has the lowest quality but actually captures the picture correctly.
What about TV-out quality? Let us see how all four competitors (G400, Parhelia, and GF4MX, GF4 Ti4800) handle sending the images to the TV-in of the MSI GF4MX card.
Parhelia TV-out
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G400 TV-out
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MSI 8888 TV-out
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MSI GF4 Ti4800
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There was very little difference between the Parhelia, MSI 8888, and the G400. The MSI G4Ti4600-VT2D8X 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 G4Ti4600-VT2D8X are just slightly brighter than the reference images, the G4Ti4600-VT2D8X 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 G4Ti4600-VT2D8X for this purpose, unless I happened to get a bad card.
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Next Page - 3D Quality
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G4Ti4600-VT2D8X: With the GeForce FX still MIA, we take a look at their current flagship, the GeForce 4 Ti4600, souped up with AGP8x. The MSI version also breaks away from reference by including their own cooling system.
