Paul,
See below...
Video cards have a 2D and a 3D portion to them. We spend the big bucks
to get enhanced 3D performance, but the 2D part of the cards, for the
most part, hasn't changed in years. In that sense, any modern card with
a working AGP interface is going to work for you. (A PCI video card
might be perceived as too slow at screen updates, when handling large
bitmaps.) As I'm not a dedicated Photoshop user, it would be unfair
for me to suggest a card, as there can be tiny differences between
them that annoy professional users.
Yes, I understand that about 3D vs. 2D, which is why I don't see the need
for an expensive card.
I've switched cards -- the Radeon 7000 is back in the new system. No
flicker, needle sharp text and images, immediate redraw, passes all DXDIAG
tests. I'm going to stick with it for a while and see how it goes.
If you have a color calibration system and a good CRT monitor, then
you can probably calibrate out any color issues. (Calibrator, as in one
of those devices that you hold up to the CRT, to calibrate the color
response.)
Yes, I use a color calibration system -- ColorVision's OptiCAL with Spyder
(the device you stick on the monitor to read the color). I use a good Sony
21" monitor. I haven't loaded OptiCAL on the new system yet, but will in
the next few days. I also will install a second video card -- inexpensive
PCI card to run a second monitor for Photoshop use -- you put the image on
the main monitor all the palettes (controls) on the second monitor. It's a
great way to work. (I'm a photographer, so I spend a lot of time using PS.)
I'm assuming OptiCAL will "do its thing" with the Radeon card, but until I
install OptiCAL and run the calibration and profiling software, I won't be
sure the Radeon is the best solution. There is no reason it shouldn't work,
but you know how that goes.
Other than that, video cards have some differences between them, as
to how sharp they are at high resolution. You could try Google on
the name or model number of what you plan on using, combined with the
word "fuzzy", to see if the card you are interested in is a dud
or not. Some cards in fact don't have bad video chips - they have
too much filtering of the output just before it goes to the VGA
connector. Some of those cards can be fixed by removing the filter
caps from the PI filters near the connector. The filters are
distinguishable by the fact there are three color channels, so you
see three groups of identical components near the VGA connector
on the video card. People used to care about this in years past,
and there used to be recipes for removing the caps by snipping
them (yuck!). It is a wonder the video cards weren't damaged by
that.
I'm not inclined to start snipping things off of video cards, but I'll have
a look!
Too bad the flicker cannot be stopped on your Matrox. Have you
tried disabling all hardware acceleration ? There is a slider to
do that, and maybe with all acceleration disabled, it will stop
flickering.
Yes, I tried disabling hardware acceleration, disabling hyper-threading,
trying different resolutions and refresh rates, but nothing made the flicker
go away. One interesting thing is a fellow-photographer I met on the
Photoshop newsgroup has the same mobo as I do and he uses a Matrox G550
(mine is the G450, but virtually identical), and he doesn't have the
flicker. Go figure. He e-mailed me that he has a G450 he's not using and
offered to send it to me just to test. Even though the Radeon is working
now, I may have him send the card. I sure would like to find out that my
G450 is defective, rather than conclude that there is something wrong with
my mobo. It's all perplexing since the G450 should work just fine with the
P4P. Oh well.
In the installation guide for the Radeon card, it says that prior to
installing the card, the AGP aperture size should be set to 1/4 the size of
the memory on the card. I found the AGP aperture setting in BIOS and it's
at 64. I left it there and the Radeon is working fine. I'm curious what
that setting does. Do you know? The Radeon has 32MB on it, so that would
suggest I set the AGP aperture to 8MB. What do you think?
John
