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Selecting videocard

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  • tails_ Offline
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Selecting videocard

Post by tails_ »

What should I say? I like my Radeon X550 a lot but it's too old for FulHD video (it just doesn't has enough VRAM to put 4 videoframes, subtitles and 2 desktops) and I'm not talking about hardware playback. And it's too old for rendering 3D graphics for PS2.

So, let me put here list of requirements for new card and you guys tell me either what to choose or where to go :P

1. Interlaced videomodes support
2. No crap like "640x400 is too low resolution, we will not set it haha" (Saw that on all nvidia cards I had (8600GS, 7600, GT240)
2a. No videomodes emulation (I can confirm, my GT240 resamples VGA videomodes to default resolution for monitor sent with EDID)
3. Possibility to create ANY custom resolutions (even stuff like 384x512,512x448,640x200 etc)
4. VGA port (or DVI-A port)
5. Support for 3D graphics at least to play PS2 games through emulator.

What will this be used for:
1. Playing old and not so old computer\console games in native resolution without any postprocessing
2. Watching video without any resizing/resampling in native NTSC\PAL\HD\FullHD resolution
3. Making VGM files of course :P

Thank you for any suggestions, today's video cards really piss me off v_v
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Post by RichterEX2 »

Sounds like you're gonna need two different cards. One for HD things and modern gaming, and the other for classic stuff. Although, I once had great success with my old GTX 280 using my old CRT TV and YCrCb output through its multi-out port...before it died on me. Also it could only do it in 480i.

Or you could get something like the ArcadeVGA, which sounds like a great compromise. As far as PS2 emulation goes, I doubt it would handle it though. Unless maybe you were running it at its native resolution.

Re: Selecting videocard

Post by ZekeSulastin »

Have you looked at "Add custom timing mode" or similar? That should let you do all kinds of fun and interesting resolution tricks. It's not one of the things easily exposed in Windows and I no longer have the guide, so you'll have to find it yourself; in Linux you'd add additional metamodes in xorg.conf. (You _REALLY_ need to be careful with custom timing and a CRT, though)

Also, in Linux you have pretty fine-grained control over scaling - there is no global scaling tickbox; you instead define special metamodes with the exact input resolution and output boundaries you want. You can even forgo specifying resolutions and apply an actual transformation matrix to mimic CRT curvature. Not sure offhand how to make it not blur on an LCD if you're using an exact multiple, but realistically for me it either doesn't bother me much or I'm running it through filters like Blargg's NTSC anyways vOv
Last edited by ZekeSulastin on 2012-12-16, 5:27:01, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by tails_ »

ZekeSulastin
Are you about adding custom resolutions on new videocards? I believe situation is better for linux but for now I'm stuck with Windows.

Current situation is like this: on NVIDIA cards there is custom resolution adding tool but it doesn't allow you 2 things:
1. You can't set resolutions lower that 640x480
2. You can't set exact video timings, you can just enter integer value for frequency and number of total drawn lines/pixels.
Newest cards also doesn't support resolutions lover that 800x600 or so, 640x480 is upscaled to 1280x1024 on my screen. Same goes for all standard VGA resolutions.

And in ATI(AMD) cards there's no custom resolution setting tool, the only thing you can do is try to mess with windows registry and EDID values written there. All ATI cards also have broken interlacing support since HD4000 series I guess. You just get half of screen stretched vertically :\

For now I use awesome tool called "PowerStrip" to get all these weird resolutions.
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