GF4 or R9500/7000: which has better image quality

[Jake the Dog]

I'm not after a super fast vid car, but do want something with good 2D quality. I play the occasional Half-Life mod so Matrox cards are unfortunately not an option. I'm looking at getting either a Ti4600 or R9500Pro/9700 (I can still get 9500Pro). I've been a long time nVidia user and have no idea what the latest Radeons look like.

which of these cards has the better 2D colour, contrast and sharpness?

also, I presume the 95/7xx Radeon's work fine with XP's multimonitor support. is this correct?

 

[Groltz]

I'm not after a super fast vid car, but do want something with good 2D quality. I play the occasional Half-Life mod so Matrox cards are unfortunately not an option. I'm looking at getting either a Ti4600 or R9500Pro/9700 (I can still get 9500Pro). I've been a long time nVidia user and have no idea what the latest Radeons look like.

which of these cards has the better 2D colour, contrast and sharpness?

also, I presume the 95/7xx Radeon's work fine with XP's multimonitor support. is this correct?

I can't say much about 2D. The GeForce 4's made some big strides over their predecessors in 2D. I've been using a Ti4600 since they first hit the market and can't find any complaints in that regard.

In gaming, however, both of those ATI cards are superior than the Ti4600. Both can do AA/AF at higher resolutions without as big a hit in framerates. Both supposedly have better 3D image quality as well.

I'd recommend a 9700 if it's within your budget. I seem to have read somewhere that all the older 9500's that were actually just crippled 9700's have disappeared from the market. Supposedly identifiable by how the RAM chips were lined-up, "L" shaped instead of straight-line. Clocker might know more about this.

 

[LiamC]

My ATi experience.

I have been reading a lot about how ATi's drivers have improved, installers improved etc.

I bought a Radeon 7000 for my wife's 'puter because she does a lot of 2D and I wanted great image quality without Matrox's price. 3D wasn't a concern.

Loaded the Radeon drivers and away we went. ATi's 2D quality was noticeably better than the GeForce2 GTS 64 (Hercules) it replaced. Colours crisp, text sharp at 1024 and up to 1280 on a LG Studioworks 76i (1024 @ 75Hz - shadow mask) and a Mitsubishi 19" Flat (Trinitron, aperture grille - 1024 @120Hz, 1280 @ 85Hz).


Where ATi drivers suck. This is on a W2K machine.

ATi's installation instruction say - remove existing driver, install VGA driver and then (and only then) install new/updated driver.

In Windows 2000, you can't do this. There isn't a VGA driver. Go look

Even if the (ATi) driver has been uninstalled - the *.INF file is still their, so everytime you reboot (after "removing" the driver), the bloody machine picks it up again and instlls the driver. ATi says cancel the install, but W2K doesn't give you the option!

When you go to install the new driver - hoping everything will work out - ATi's install routine says a previous install has not completed and craps out. -> aaarrrggghhh!!!

Install in safe mode - nope. See above. Old driver is still hanging around.

Tried replacing the ATi card with a Kyro and that's when I found out W2K doesn't have a VGA driver - one is there as a fall back, but you can't install it and make it stick. As soon as I put the Ati card back in, W2K found the old driver!

Work around - find the OEM.INF file with the ATi details (in %system%\INF folder) - delete it. Find the compiled OEM file (PNK??) and delete it.

Reboot

Install new driver.

This worked. It took me 4-and-a-half hours to update a video driver that only wanted to refresh the screen at 60Hz.

Not quite up to NVIDIA standards yet. But the image quality is superior to a GeForce 2GTS and slightly better than a GeForce4 (you'd have to do a side by side comparison to notice) at least up to 1280 resolution.

Hey if anybody knows a simpler way to update ATi's driver, I'd like to know about it.

 

[Mercutio]

Easy way: Boot into safe mode. Delete whatever is listed under display adapter. Reboot. Install driver (default location should be C:\ATI\catalyst-whatever).

Or just run the ATI installer with whatever driver happens to be installed, that's worked just fine every time I've tried it.

 

[Groltz]

Another way: Use Driver Cleaner to remove them.

 

[CougTek]

Easy way: Boot into safe mode. Delete whatever is listed under display adapter. Reboot. Install driver (default location should be C:\ATI\catalyst-whatever).

That's the trick people having problems with VIA and ATI drivers never seem to catch. Installing a driver in normal mode when all sorts of crap is bloating your memory is the recipe for spending four hours and a half on a supposedly simple driver update.

I know few do it and many will tell me "Meh, but most of the time you can install in normal mode and everything goes fine..." I agree, most of the time... Want to play safe, boot in safe mode when messing with drivers.

 

[LiamC]

Umm guys, I did boot in safe mode

Me

Install in safe mode - nope. See above. Old driver is still hanging around.

The ATi installer had fits each time I tried it saying that a previous driver install had not completed and aborted.

I even botted two or three times into safe mode in succession, thinking that maybe the driver needed to sort itself out. Still no joy. It did not work because the ATi driver would not install in safe mode. That's why I resorted to the method I did.

 

[LiamC]

:eekers:

botted, booted, whatever!

 

[Clocker]

Buy one of these:
Sapphire ATI OEM RADEON 9500 128MB DDR BULK from Newegg (or similar)

and use the software mod:
http://www.maxdownloads.com/~ian/wizzard/

to get 9700 speed for the 9500 price. Works great. Make sure you get the red PCB version with the RAM in the shape of an 'L'.