{ "numMessagesInTopic": 10, "nextInTime": 1681, "senderId": "1zj3IMdztHIjlZ9eNecfIBXIL2qdBBDijzJW2z5vEx_i1t5Bg0cPOpqUnEfLgv7396hHfs9boqzZE1VG6lhSY-9RJCPGMR2uJYA4Vbbq", "systemMessage": false, "subject": "Re: [IBM_T2X_LCD] Re: New Member VP2290b with GeForce 6800 AGP?", "from": "Peter Booth <pbooth@...>", "authorName": "Peter Booth", "msgSnippet": "I think that any pixel junkie will be an attypical Lasik patient. I had radial keratotomy 20 years ago as part of a research project in Australia. After 12", "msgId": 1680, "profile": "alohashirt2003", "topicId": 1664, "spamInfo": { "reason": "0", "isSpam": false }, "replyTo": "LIST", "userId": 21187636, "messageBody": "
--- In IBM_T2X_LCD@yahoogroups.com, "sosantoso" <sabrina123abc@...> wrote:
>
> Thanks fluppeteer. Got a few more questions for you:
Hi John. You're welcome - and I'll do my best...
> You mentioned something about your laser surgery being uneven?
> What's that all about and how was your experience. The only
> negative comment I hear is in regards to night vision. I am
> now at -450 and am thinking of getting Lasik (I assume we're
> talking about the same thing). One thing I hate about glasses...
> everything looks smaller, including my multiple monitors lol.
Yup, mine was Lasik (-450 right eye, -525 left). My left eye
still has a slight astigmatism, but is otherwise fine. My
right eye has a pupil that's large enough that they should
never have attempted Lasik (although, because my right eye
is dominant, I deliberately had the left done first - had it
gone horribly wrong I wouldn't have had the right done).
I seem to have two problems. One is that the two eyes are
slightly off matched focal length - eyes are designed to
cope (otherwise you couldn't look at things off to the side),
but it's slightly harder the more tired I am. More of a
problem is that my right eye still gets light from the
uncorrected area around the edge of the lens. This gives
me two focal lengths in one eye, so for distant objects I
have a perfectly sharp image with an overlaid blur. How bad
it is varies depending on light - in dim illumination it's
quite bad. The difference is less noticable the nearer to
the eye I try to focus - so it doesn't distract me at all
within a foot or two (although the eyes being slightly
offset does). Hence I'm pretty comfortable at a distance
where I can actually use the resolution of the T221.
Last time I went to an opticians it took them two goes -
the first time, because I'm good at compensating for a
variable focus having always had an astigmatism, they
kept getting inconsistent results (telling me "not to
try to focus" and then tell them which chart looked
sharper was blatant nonsense), and the second time they
offered to give me glasses to make me short-sighted in
both eyes, for computer use. I turned them down.
My other half is happy with her Lasik, but it took them
two goes to get it right. I'm dubious about the "95%
success rate", considering.
I know several people who are perfectly happy with it,
however.
> As for HD, I'm going to give that up, non of my monitors
> have HDCP or what not requirements, and watching movies on
> it is very much not a priority; so the most I will use it for
> is Photoshop CS2 and everyday computing. The NVS440 is too
> pricey. About $400. I think I want to spend about 150-200 per
> card (2 cards to drive 2 Vps). I like the idea of using the ATI
> to get to 41 hz. There were some comments in past threads that
> between 33 and 41hz is not much difference, so I could maybe
> go with Nvidia.
*Nod*. The NVS is an interesting solution, but certainly not
a cheap one. The same applies to pretty much any quad-head
card, to a greater or lesser extent.
The consensus (at least, based on a very old investigation
including the original 6800 in Tom's Hardware) is that nVidia's
on-chip TMDS (DVI) transmitters aren't quite such good quality
as ATI's, or the Silicon Image external parts. They may or may
not have improved with newer hardware. ATI have made a big
thing of their AVIVO architecture, so there may be a better
chance of that having higher quality. Chances are a FireGL
(or, to a lesser extent, a Quadro) will do better than a
consumer card, because the components tend to be a bit higher
quality. The core chips may not be any better, though - there
are reports of the Quadro FX4000 (effectively a 6800GT/Ultra)
having trouble with a T221 out of the transmitter that was
on-chip (the other using a Silicon Image part). Even with
external chips, poor board design can still mess it up. The
6800XT has had a new core spin since the original 6800, so
I've no idea whether it might be better or worse than the
original.
It's unlikely that any of these chips are designed to run
at more than 165MHz. That doesn't mean that they won't, but
you're into trial-and-error territory. There's a greater
chance of a FireGL going further above the limit than a
consumer Radeon (I *think* - bear in mind the generation
difference) but I wouldn't guarantee two cards with the
same specification will have the same performance. The
same applies to the VP2290bs.
That said, it sounds like you have a good chance of getting
over the default 25MHz, at least. It's probably a case of
trying a card that others have found promising, and hoping
for the best.
> The FireGL X1 cards (used to get 41hz) are pretty cheap on Ebay..
> alas.. they are AGP which I am going to graduate from. Can you point
> out to me what specs I am suppose to be looking at? I see the FireGL
> comparison page, it has memory bandwidth, geometry, pixel/sec
> etc...all I understand is... more is better lol. (I've been so
> trained by the marketers of the world).
Ah - I thought you were looking for an AGP card for now, with
a view to getting PCI-e cards next year after a motherboard
upgrade?
For driving the T221, it's largely irrelevant. Something
with dual-link DVI has a better chance of at least reaching
165MHz out of single link (in theory), but there's no guarantee
beyond that. Any vaguely modern card should have enough memory
and bandwidth.
The FireGL will get you three things:
1) Official ATI support for the T221, although you may be on
your own with 33Hz. If you're prepared to try the recently-
mentioned "ATI Tray tool" utility (thanks, Yeang) you may
do just as well with a consumer card. The same applies with
nVidia consumer cards - with the possible exception of
triple-stripe mode on a DG5, I'm not aware of a benefit to
the driver. There's nothing special about 1920x2400x2.
2) Possibly better-quality DVI output, especially for a
given generation. This doesn't mean that a more modern
consumer card might not do even better (although Yeang's
experiments with a 1900XT suggest not). It's hard to know
how consistent the cards will be.
3) Workstation drivers, which will significantly speed up a few
important apps. This is the main reason for a big price
premium (because they can). Doesn't sound like you need this.
For gaming, any decent modern card will make an X1 look
very ordinary indeed. It's effectively a Radeon 9700 Pro
(see www.rojakpot.com for details of workstation and
consumer graphics boards), so it's a Shader Model 2
card with 8 pixel pipes, at 325MHz. The RAM runs at 310MHz,
compared with 2-3 times that for the (Shader Model 3)
6800XT that you were looking at. You'd be unlucky not
to find a 6800XT that was appreciably faster - even a
6600GT would give it a run for its money.
The question is how much you want decent gaming performance
compared with how much you want to maximize your chance of
getting the VP2290b up to high refresh rates. You *will*
get to 25Hz from almost anything, and I can run Photoshop
happily like that (although it takes a bit of getting used
to - I recommend turning on the Windows thing that draws
ripples around the mouse pointer when you tap the control key,
otherwise you'll lose it).
Generally, if you want to run anything at full resolution,
geometry performance will not be the limiting factor on a
T221 variant: the number of pixels to be filled means that
it's very rare for the number of polygons to be so great
that this becomes an issue (geometry rate limits how fast
you can get triangles ready to draw; pixel rate is how
fast you can turn them into pixels). This isn't so true
for workstation graphics, which tend to have big data sets
(oil rigs, motors) that are simply shaded, but games tend
to have a smaller number of highly textured polygons.
For modern games, memory bandwidth is important, and
pixel shaders are important. Usually, cards have "enough"
geometry shaders that they can keep up with their pixel
shaders - especially on a T221. The devil is in the details,
though. Many cards of 6800 vintage take a hit when you go
over 1600x1200; the 7800 vintage will go to 2048x1536
(i.e. more than 1920x1200) before performance drops off
(limited by the size of a cache on-chip). This may be an
issue if you plan to game with the monitor switched to
1920x1200.
There are other features - the shader model 3 cards
(nVidia 6 series and later) can do some nicer effects,
and the equivalent shader model 3 Radeons (X1xx series)
can - most notably - do high dynamic range with antialiasing.
No card in your price bracket will do high quality graphics
at a decent frame rate at 3840x2400 - and 1920x1200 will
only be an option with older games. You might manage 1280x1024
though (or 1280x800 if you want to fill the screen better).
That's all pretty general. Basically, I wouldn't take the
fact that a given X1 has decent DVI performance as a guarantee
that any other FireGL or Radeon is particularly capable, at
least without finding more sample points or a friendly ATI
insider to ask. If you really want to play games, get a
decent gaming card, and it'll probably do a half decent job
with the VP2290b.
> Also I assume I could go
> with the MV line (which is without AVIVO)? I also found some FireGL
> PCIe on Ebay, but they are not the current production versions, for
> example V5000 or 7100 in comparison to the current 5200 and
> 7200/7300.
The MV cards are the equivalent of the nVidia NVS line -
although I'm not sure whether we have evidence that they're
happy running T221 resolutions. Like the NVS line, they're
2D cards: they will stink beyond all that is holy if you try
to run a 3D game on them. The X1 was at least fast in its
day... If you're thinking about the far side of your upgrade
to PCI-e and running two VP2290bs, there might be a point
(depending on how they compare to the NVS440s) - if you're
upgrading anyway I'd not bother with PCI - but I'd hold on
until the next card generation and Vista. If you're looking
at dual output cards, I'd stick to consumer gaming cards.
I would expect PCI-e FireGL cards to be mostly pretty
expensive. They may or may not have decent DVI performance;
I'd consider it quite risky if you're trying to save cash.
> Of course, maybe this is all too early since we don't
> have Vista yet. Hey, anyone here installed the latest release of
> Vista?
I've seen Vista run on a T221. I'm very wary of Aero Glass
(the 3D interface) and its effects on the graphics card
from the point of view of memory requirements and overdraw
rate. If you usually only have a few windows open, you may
be fine. That's not my workflow.
> http://www.ati.com/products/workstation/fireglmatrix.html
Actually more helpful than nVidia's version. Other than
the X1, which is known to have worked at least once, and
to be cheap, I'd be wary of workstation cards for what you
want to do. That way lies wasted money.
> I also read on here someone driving the T221 using a Radeon 7000 PCI
> card. I think that card has 64mb. Do you think it's possible to
> drive the monitor using a 32MB PCI card?
Probably depends on the card. If it can do a genuine 24-bit
display, and assuming the GPU can handle the resolution,
then maybe (3840x2400x3 = 26.3MB). Some cards only support
32-bit mode (usually faster than 24-bit), and *that* can be
a problem (3840x2400x4 = 35.1MB). Don't even think of 3D.
> I'm trying to see if I can
> drive it using a PC Card( cardbus) on a laptop that has single link
> that can do 1920x1200 on a normal DVI monitor. I don't mind if I
> have to downres to WUXGA at 13hz so long as it works. This will be
> temporary (a few months) till I move and build a new desktop in Q2.
> [listed under Products> VT Book on the website]
>
> http://www.vtbook.com/
I've looked at these before, but don't recall whether we've
actually tried one on a T221. If you're only trying to run
at 1920x1200, I'd be surprised if it doesn't work - the T221
is very lenient. You don't need the large amounts of memory
unless you're trying to run at the full resolution - 1920x1200
will fit easily in 32MB. I'm reasonably sure the VTBook won't
get near 3840x2400, and it's certainly not a gaming option,
but if you only want WUXGA you'll be fine (and at full refresh
- again, you'd only need 13Hz if you wanted higher resolution).
If you *did* want to run full resolution from a laptop, you
should look at a DigitalTigers SideCar (some of which have
Quadros in them), but they're not cheap. An alternative is
to DIY something with a cardbus->PCI card bridge.
> And lastly, what you last wrote was the the 2 DVI on one card
> driving one VP2290b would be considered 1 monitors under XP? I need
> to know this since I have 5 monitors already hooked up to one
> system. Thanks again for your insights.
Two DVIs on one card is considered by XP to be one monitor
*if that card is configured to use spanned[nVidia]/stretched[ATi]
mode*. Otherwise they appear as separate monitors. If you have
five monitors on a system, you might be able to try this
anyway (unless they're all single-head cards) - there's nothing
T221-specific about it. Have a look under the nVidia/ATi-specific
display settings, assuming you're using one or the other. I
presume that there's no driver issue with having multiple cards
in combinations of spanned and not spanned, but I've not been
lucky enough to try it.
Hope that helps. Usual disclaimer that all the above is only
correct to the best of my knowledge, and you might want to
check before basing anything that costs you money on my level
of competence.
--
Fluppeteer