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Questions about TV out video cards
tubuku01:
just wondering..........i'm currently running a VisionTek Geforce 3 ti 200 with s-vid out. i'm also using that toshiba tv that alot of mamers are using. my question is..is the quality of the video-out on the ati cards better (better picture, little bleed, etc.)? i'm not talking about features because only the picture interests me.
the card i'm using now runs the video nice, but me being the everlasting perfectionist MUST have nice video out for my mame cab. ;D
i'm planning on building a pc strictly for use in the mame cab, and i'd like to stick with my current card for my regular pc gaming, sorry to make it long, so thanks for reading. :)
GGKoul:
I'm presently using a 29" Zenith TV and it's connected to my video card, a GeForce 2 MX 440, via the S-Video out.
And after reading all these posts on about how ATI cards offer better TV video capabilities. I'm going to too purchase an 64 meg ATI Radeon 7000 or 7500 card to see if there is a noticeable difference.
As I too am a perfectionist ....
So I'll let you know my findings ASAP.
Thanks
-GGKoul
Lilwolf:
before throwing out a Geforce card and buying an ATI... I want to mention.
the ONLY trouble with Geforces is that you don't know what your buying. NVidia doesn't make a TV-out chip. They sell their chips to other companys that buy their own TV-out chip. Some are Great (maybe even better then ATI) and many many suck.
So what does this mean. ATI has consistency with a GREAT tv-out chip. But so does some Geforces... but you wont know until you get it.
what I've heard about different brands
don't go elsa ever
Phillips tv-out chips set is great (they did just come out with a cheaper one for the geforce 4 4200's though... don't know if they are any good).
ViVo are almost all good (because the cheap chips don't support the video in).
lightspeed:
LilWolf brings up some interesting points regarding the TV-out quality of nVidia cards - some offer excellent output, others suck.
Another thing to be aware of - ATI also resells their chipsets, so you can by a card based on the Radeon that is manufactured by a different company. You'll want to avoid these - like many of the nVidia resellers, the TV components they use are very sub-par. Stay away from anything that mentiones "Powered by ATI" - these are the third party cards. If you do decide to purchase an ATI card, make sure it was manufactured by ATI ("Built by ATI" is usually displayed on the box. Thier website will tell you how to tell the difference:
http://www.ati.com/support/powered.html
I've also heard excellent reviews on Matrox products for their image quality and TV output. This is kinda thier market niche - they certainly don't offer the best performance (not needed for MAME anyway), but the picture quality of thier cards is renoun.