On Fri, 12 Oct 2007 22:40:30 -0400 kony <spam@spam.com> wrote:
| On 12 Oct 2007 13:17:21 GMT,
phil-news-nospam@ipal.net
| wrote:
|
|
|>| So in other words, it doesn't do it just fine.
|>
|>It is perfectly capable of the geometry. A video card that cannot do the
|>geometry, whether one of that vintage or one made today, is indicative of
|>bad engineering. Just pure bad engineering.
|
| But in the end, it doesn't do fine as you already conceded
| any normal monitor would have to be reengineered to
| downgrade itself.
I wasn't even talking about the need to support a wider range of frame
rates in my statement you quoted. I was saying that any video card that
cannot adjust its geometry to any geometry, or at least all the standard
and common ones, within its rate, is badly engineered.
As for downgrading of monitors, you clearly do not yet understand that
expanding the frequency range of the analog to digital simpling clock
is not a downgrade. A downgrade would be if it were changed in such a
way that some frequency it otherwise could have done cannot now be done
as a result of a change. That kind of change is not what is needed to
support the cases I was talking about in another thread, which you do
not seem to fully grasp. The kind of change need to support them is to
_expand_ the range of frequencies, plus a wee bit of software change:
instead of:
if ( vert_hz < 50.0 || vert_hz > 120.0 ) {
display_error( "video out of range" );
}
change the software to:
if ( vert_hz < 20.0 || vert_hz > 240.0 ) {
display_error( "video out of range" );
}
With such changes, a monitor can now handle more cases than before, and
still handle every case it could have before. That's not a downgrade.
|>My point is: _artificial_ limitations are a bad thing.
|
| So is trying to reuse an old video card for something beyond
| it's capability.
Even the "old" video cards _could_ do what the OP wanted.
Today's video cards might look great when you read specs. But they have
some serious problems, particularly in the closed interface designs and
poorly coded driver software. While we might well have faster GPUs and
more RAM on board, the quality of things like drivers and other software
is going down.
There is absolutely no excuse whatsoever for any driver to refuse to allow
setting any user supplied video geometry within its range (which is a very
wide range), as well as no excuse for it to no default to using the geometry
that is native to the monitor by default when none has been specified. Yet
these problems continue to persist.
The quality of video cards and their drivers _is_ going down in areas other
than what the GPU and clock speeds are, and RAM size. Those factors are
the only basis for choosing a video card.
|>| New Higher-Res Widescreen LCD - $250
|>| Used Maxtrox G450 - $5
|>
|>Cost increase to have designed the LCD to handle down to 23.976 Hz - $5
|
| That seems likely to be a number made up out of thin air.
| Just redesigning the monitor, programming new firmware,
| taking down production line and redoing it all would likely
| cost more than $5 per without even considering the actual
| hardware change.
If you want to take back and retrofit an old design, of course. But I
never said such a thing. I'm saying that the $5 difference is the most
there would be had this been done DURING THE ORIGINAL DESIGN. It would
be more like $2. The software (see above example C code) could have
been done with zero cost by having just typed different numbers at the
time it was originally done. The ADC clock generator might have needed
to use a different chip that supported a larger divide ratio, but these
are all within a tight price range. A chip with ONE more bit to the
clock divider means the lowest frequency it can reach is half the Hz.
The next monitor product being designed should include such support of a
wider range ... not for me specifically ... but for support of 23.976 and
24 fps video standards that do exist. Such support would have been costly
for a CRT and required a video upconverter to a higher frame rate. But
LCD has no such need, so there is virtually no cost involved (LCD "converts"
all video to its own "static format").
|>If you can find a video card that works at least as well as the G450 does
|>in my Linux system, have at it. Hint: that rules out everything made by,
|>or with chipsets from, both ATI and nVidia (but in several months ATI may
|>not be in that list ... remains to be seen).
|
| Lots of people use nVidia on linux, you might ask them how
| they do what you need done.
Merely using nVidia on Linux and actually getting the video card to do what
you want are two different things. So far no one I have talked to that uses
nVidia is able to achieve much beyonds what the video defaults to. That
means that using nVidia on Linux is a "narrow experience".
I got 2 new PCs in at work a few months ago. They had nVidia video chips
built into the motherboard. Ubuntu would not go above 640x480. Fedora
managed to get 1024x768. Text console would not go above 80x50. They
were sent back to IT. Then came a couple with ATI video chips. At least
a reverse engineered driver was available (not the crap from ATI) for Xorg.
Text mode was still stuck at 80x50. So I'm basically using the new PCs as
ssh-connected build engines and have 2 older PCS with G450 running Xorg at
1400x1050 (the Acer 20" LCD has its sampler clock at the very lowest Hz it
can go and I boosted the video card has high as I could get it and it just
made it with spot-on pixels). Text mode is at a nice 144x88 and still fast
enough at scrolling to not slow me down (text under X is too slow for my
fast programming style).
Let me know when a video card comes out that _is_ quality in _all_ aspects
of operation and usage.
--
|---------------------------------------/----------------------------------|
| Phil Howard KA9WGN (ka9wgn.ham.org) / Do not send to the address below |
| first name lower case at ipal.net /
spamtrap-2007-10-13-0945@ipal.net |
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