Eugene 2003-09-18 05:17
Hi I have a Radeon 9800 Pro card and would prefer to keep it since it is the best suited for DX9 graphics acceleration in the future. However it only has one DVI output and I have two monitors I want to hook up, a Cinema display and a plasma TV (with DVI and RGB inputs). Since the cinema display only takes DVI output, that leaves the RGB output as the only option for hooking up the plasma. I find that the quality of the output is significanly poorer though, versus using the plasma TV as the sole monitor using the DVI output.
The RGB output as a 2nd display output to the plasma specifically has much darker hues not fixable with control panel or adobe gamma tinkering. Also the clarity and number of graphic artifacts like crude pixelation of the image are significant.
So I'm looking at a 2nd PCI card to go with the 9800 pro but Radeon customer service says that Radeon 9800 does not work with a 2nd video accelerator card in a PCI slot. Is this true?
If not, what card would be a good recommendation if the 2nd monitor ( the plasma tv ) is mainly used to connect to a DVI output on the PCI card to display DVDs primarily.
Thanks for your input
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ecarlson 2003-09-18 07:57
Have you ever considered buying a DVD player?
- Eric www.InvisibleRobot.com
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Eugene 2003-09-18 10:40
Is this a sarcastic joke? If I just wanted a DVD player I wouldn't be here reading all the threads.
Let's just say I believe in the advantages of Home theatre PC over a consumer DVD player. Either way, I found several more things with further tinkering I'll report that continue this thread. I apologize if this is basic stuff for the experts on these forums but I post it cause it would have been helpful to me if someone else had mentioned this stuff.
The VGA output on the Radeon 9800 Pro connected to the plasma TV's RGB input is not sensitive to whatever you toggle with using control panel and adobe gamma on the main cpu. Only way to adjust it is to adjust through the plasma TV's menu system itself. This fixed the "darker picture" and "pixelation" issues I mentioned earlier.
I notice that the DVD will play fine on the plasma TV as long as you select the plasma as the primary monitor. DVD's will not play for whatever reason on the secondary monitor. ATI driver problem? This was using WinAmp so it might be software dependent. Technically VGA versus DVI output should not be dramatically different for playing DVD's according to other reviews I've read regarding this issue and the cost of using the VGA output on the card versus getting another DVI card, DVI cable is significant.
So right now I have an LCD hooked up to the Radeon 9800 Pro DVI output and the plasma to the VGA output displaying in its native 1024x768 resolution at 60 frequency. I'm still curious as to what others have had success with regarding using a 2nd PCI card with the 9800 Pro or 9800 so please contribute to the thread if you have experiences.
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ecarlson 2003-09-18 12:42
Thanks for the additional information.
I was only being half sarcastic with my previous post. I did just add a TV/FM/VidCap card to my computer, and it's pretty neat, but sometimes it amazes me what effort and expense people go through with their computers, when they could have solved their problem better by buying an inexpensive TV or DVD player.
- Eric www.InvisibleRobot.com
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Mangyrat 2003-09-19 03:49
check out the database for cards that work with the 9800. ati says a lot of things lol. if i rember right i saw some one with a 9800 and matrox g400 or somthing like that they were useing 3 dvi monitors. if your gona get a card for dvi and not need the vga might as well get one with dual dvi so if you decide to get a 2nd flat panel monitor later on you can run them all
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Mangyrat 2003-09-19 03:57
the 7500 pci shuld work for what you want to do. but it only has one dvi and one vga. here is cut and paste from database cant find where i saw the setup of 3 dvi monitors and 9800
WinXP, 4 monitors, 2 video cards
Water Cooled Pentium 4 2.60C Ghz @ 3.50 Ghz on a 1076 Mhz bus. 1 GB DDR433, 2x10K Raptor S/ATA drives.
Card 1:
AGP, ATI Radeon 9800 Pro chipset
Works flawlessly overclocked @ 420 mhz core :-)
Card 2:
PCI, Powercolor ATI Radeon 7500 chipset
Had to find a PCI slot that the system liked -- it did not like 2 of them. Once I found one that was acceptable, the initial windows screen was garbled, but it corrected itself, and 3rd and 4th monitor capability are working well. Windows media player seems OK on 3rd/4th monitors. I'm very impressed.
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