derSammler wrote:
That's not true at all. As already stated above by oohms, the graphics chip has nothing to do with that. I have a no-name S3 ViRGE 325 card that has better image quality than even the best Matrox cards. But then again I have three ViRGE/DX cards which are all crap. A Savage 4 I own also has so-so image quality. From two Mach64 cards, one is very good, one as bad as my ViRGE/DX cards. It all depends on board design. (and for that matter, on aging caps as well)
Almost all "old" S3 cards I've tested had bad image quality. And I mean *bad*. Black wasn't black, it was gray, or even worse, various shades of green. AndI had cards made by Diamond (for example), not only generic cards. Low quality RAMDAC on all? Probably, but I've also had a lot of Rage Pro cards (AIW Pro AGP and PCI, Xpert, etc). They all had outstanding image quality, colors were great, text was sharp, no flickering, crystal clear image.
Matrox? Everybody keeps saying they were the greatest, I remember trying a G400 long ago, only to find out that text is not very sharp. Faulty card? I don't think so, I tried later many more, all had the same problem. And that's G400, a card much newer than Rage Pro and with almost double RAMDAC speed.
I'm not saying that there isn't a good S3 card. I'm just saying that, based on my experience, it's most likely to get a bad S3 card than to get a good one. Same with Rage Pro - you will have a high chance to get a good one.
One more thing - image quality, especially from VGA signal on CRT monitors is very subjective, some like vivid colors, some don't. Some want very sharp text, other find slighy blurry text more pleasant.