by Al Massey
I have been more than a bit concerned lately by some of the email and comments I have received regarding image quality and video. Some of you seem to think that getting a large monitor capable of displaying 1280 x 1024 resolution or better, your video problems will go away. A user who had just purchased a 21" monitor capable of delivering SHARP HIGH RESOLUTION images recently cornered me at the General Meeting. He was very distraught that his investment didn't deliver as promised and was in the process of asking for his money back.
After spending a few moments with this gentleman I determined that he had spent a large portion of the family fortune on this monitor but had given absolutely no thought to the video display card. Therein lies the root of his problem and I daresay some of yours also.
Coincidentally, I received a message from a friend, a well placed employee of one of the premiere video card manufacturers taking the media to task for not doing their part in educating the world on the importance the graphics card plays in image quality.
It is apparent that more and more users are investing in increasingly larger and larger monitors and these monitors are capable of higher resolutions than ever thought possible. Problems arise quickly when folks invest heavily in the monitor and forget about the device that provides the video signal to the monitor.
The fellow with the 21"monitor I spoke of earlier was using the same graphics card he had used in his 14" monitor. Funny thing after following my advice and buying a top notch video card with 8MB WRAM on board his problems went away and he now enjoys clear sharp images at high resolutions.
Over the course of the next few months we will be visiting this issue of video graphics and examining which cards to use for what purpose. You will need decidedly different cards if you are interested primarily in games than if you will if you're interested in graphics manipulation.
This month we will kick things off by introducing you to Number Nine's Revolution 3D. This card is available in both a PCI and a AGP version and is powered by Number Nine's own processor the "Ticket to Ride. This is a powerful chip capable of handling both 2D and 3D graphics operations. The Ticket to Ride is a 128-bit processor that can handle full screen MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 video playback at 30 frames per second. Got that, 30FPS. This is not a wimpy card.
While the card is fully compatible with DirectX 3.0 and DirectX 5.0 and should enhance the performance of all your Windows 95/98 games it really shines at providing outstanding 2D graphics speed. In point of fact Number Nine is aiming it's marketing right at the heart of the CAD, high end desk top publishing, media creation, financial, medical imaging and scientific application markets rather than the Game Market.
While our review card came equipped with 8MD of WRAM it can be upgraded to 12MB or 16MB fairly quickly and inexpensively. Installation was pretty much a breeze under both Windows 95 and NT 4.0 respectfully. (I did not get a chance to install it under Windows 98 at press time but will in the near future and report on it if I have any problems.)
Number Nine's "Hawkeye" control utilities continue to be among the best I have ever encountered and present a broad range of features including Board Information and Status Monitor screens, Color Perfect color correction, Monitor adjustment tools, a Chameleon Cursor that allows you to adjust cursor size, and my personal favorite, Resolution Exchange that allows you to change resolution on the fly
I found the board remarkably sharp at its maximum 32 bit color (16.7 million colors) and resolution of 1280 x1024. The Revolution 3D boasts a maximum resolution of 1920x1060 (with 65,000 colors and 16MB on the card in 3D, or 65,000 colors with as little as 4MB in 2D mode). The Revolution 3D is the company's third-generation accelerated 2D/3D graphics card, based on its new Ticket to Ride chip.
Al Massey is a HAL-PC member and can be reached at almas@hal-pc.org.
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