I wanted to replace my 3500TV so i went out and bought a Radeon 9250se. But the 2d quality is nowhere near that of the 3500tv...aagh, the dvd playback is less well defined and the text under regular applications blurry.  I will be sending the 9250 back.

Now this may be considered nit-picking but there is a noticable difference and downgrading my card isn't what i want to do. What can i replace the 3500 with and still get the same tack-sharp 2d?

FYI i am running a PIII800 Via Apollo Pro chipset, AGNeovo 17" DFP.

Please help as i am a little miffed and don't want to keep having to send cards back to my supplier!!

all thoughts and suggestions gratefully recieved

Andy

What do you want to do with the card ?
For best 2D quality I would recommend a Matrox G400, but for games this card is as old as the V3 was. Anyway, you can look on Ebay for it, shouldnt cost too much.
How about a Voodoo4 or 5 ?

hey rolo,

my main requirement is pin-sharp image quality (2d, dvd). I had a look at the Matrox and they sure do look the business.

The 3500tv has this funky, high quality, cable/adapter which converts the dvi signal from the card to the VGA my flatpanel accepts. If i used, say the Voodoo 5500 with a 'regular' dvi-vga convertor, would the picture be as sharp?

All fussy points i guess, but purists have this hanging over them unfortunately


Andy

PS Have you used a G400?
PPS I wonder if the 4000/5000 series 2d quality will be as good as the 3500?

Hey Andy,
yes, I have a G400 Max here. It is dual head, so you can connect a monitor and a TV simultaneously. The image quality is still superb, although the card is 5 years old.
A Voodoo4 should be almost as good as the matrox, but not match it. Voodoo5 has some loss in image quality I guess because of SLI, but I am not sure. I read in other forums that the DVI-out of the V5 connected to a flatscreen is horrible, especially in high resolutions.
I will have a look at my G400 in the evening, I can tell you then what connectors there are...

An Ati all in wonder card has improved visual with dvd and everything.

So, a quick reminder. I wanted to upgrade my card to get rid of the annoying a/v cable of the 3500tv which kept dropping out of the back of my pc and wanted something which would be pin sharp with general 2D and DVD. The 3500TV was already pin-sharp in 2d and fine in DVD's but was only a little slow with general XP tasks (no problems though).

I bought a G400 because it was only £8 (about $16) to try out the 'matrox quality' i had heard about. Here are my findings.

I installed the G400 and after i had ironed out one minor problem, due to me not uninstalling the previous drivers, it worked.

Wow, the quality of the display is noticably better than the Voodoo 3 3500TV, which was great in itself; and is far & vastly superior to the ATI 9250se i also tried. (crappy DVD playback on that model also)

Relative ratings compared to the 3500TV (+ rating = better, - rating = worse)

2D quality = ++
Quicker with general XP tasks (one + point), slightly sharper text (second + point). Very good quality.

DVD playback = -
Noticably less clear & sharp than the 3500TV (one - point). However in Zoom Player the color controls are supported (although they turn the movie into Black&White!), whereas they are not with the Voodoo.
Gameplay = -
Using Half-Life (the first one, i have no other games!) )The card is noticably quicker than the 3500TV (+point) BUT there is much more jerkyness while scrolling. Under the 3500tv the game was very playable, probably wouldnt bother playing it with this card. (two - point)

Conclusion
Note: The G400 does not support hardware decoding of DVD's so I suspect the loss of quality over the 3500 while playing DVD's will be due to it decoding the files in SW. The cpu load does seem to be about %30 higher (PIII 800) while viewing movies over the 3500TV.

1)Gameplay.....I didnt buy the card to do this so am not overly concerned.
2) This card is perfect for office applications, i don't see why anyone would need anything more than this inexpensive (2nd hand) card.
3)I will be buying a G450 to improve the DVD playback and hopefully get rid of some of the jerkyness in games.

So over all, BETTER than the Voodoo 3 3500tv, but i will be upgrading eventually to the G450. I am happy for now and I don't feel the need to put the 3500tv back in my machine.

Note: the card install was as simply as click, click, reboot, done. Ahh, refreshing after my ATI issues! (matrox also has an simple bios flash utility, no floppies required.)

I would by Matrox again.

PPS The output is so good i keep having to remind myself that I dont have a DVI connection, it looks so sharp....mmmm

andymaxwell,
First of all, you bought a very low end ATI card. Not only is the 92xx series already outdated, you bought an se model which is a crippled version of the normal card.

The 3500TV was the top of the line when you bought it, you should have gotten a top line card if you wanted good results. I would have suggested a AIW 9800 Pro if you would have asked before you bought a card. Even the AIW 9600 Pro or AIW 9600 XT would have been acceptable. If you can take the card you bought back you should do so and buy at least the All-In-Wonder 9600 Pro.