No-one even bothered to address the fact that Matrox has gone to great lengths to offer quantitative data as to why their card is much sharper at higher resolutions than the notoriously blurry GeForce and Radion cards. People on newsgroups have complained about said blurriness ad nauseum, but mostly from subjective viewing. I use 2,048 x 1,536 resolution on a Viewsonic 817 monitor, at home. Most users, even gamers, spend a lot of time staring at a 2d desktop, sometimes at resolutions in excess of 1,280 x 1,024 where sharpness matters, especially for long term viewing. I have always and most likely will always use Matrox cards, because when it comes to sharpness at higher resolutions, they cannot be beat.
To read the quantitative tests performed by Matrox about 2d quality, see:
http://www.matrox.com/mga/products/tech_info/pdfs/ parhelia/us_displ.pdf
The human eye can only see around ten million colors. This makes it sound like 1 billion colors is overkill. But, consider the following facts.
The human eye is much more sensitive to changes in luminance than changes in chrominance. The JPEG standard utilizes this fact to allow for enormous compression ratios, by performing much more greater lossy compression of chrominance values(hue/saturation) than luminance (lightness) values. In fact, the human eye is so sensitive to changes in lightness that we can, on average and with good vision, see approximatelly 7,000 to 8,000 distinct shades of gray. 24 bit color, as found in all popular modern video cards is only capable of displaying 256 shades of gray. Even 30 bit color, as found on the new Matrox card, can only represent 1,024 shades of gray, almost 1/8th of what the human eye can see. We would need at least a 39 bit color scale (13 bits per color = 8,192 shades), to provide a neutral gray lightness scale that matches what the human eye can see.
Note that although the discussion so far has been about the human eye's capability to see shades of gray, the human eye is much more sensitive to the color green than either blue or red. In fact, we can see much more than 1,024 shades of green and "green-like" hues, although the exact number has not been scientifically researched. For colors like blue, to which the eye is least sensitive, on the other hand, 1,024 shades may be more than enough.
I hope this explanation can once again dispel the confusion between the 10 million colors that the eye can see and the 1 billion colors provided by this card being overkill. To summarize, keep in mind that the color gamut representing human vision is very far from linear. A one billion color card with equally weighed red, green, and blue components is overkill in certain parts of the gamut, and not nearly enough in other parts.
Of course, keep in mind that the capability of modern monitors will also factor into all of the above.
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No-one even bothered to address the fact that Matrox has gone to great lengths to offer quantitative data as to why their card is much sharper at higher resolutions than the notoriously blurry GeForce and Radion cards. People on newsgroups have complained about said blurriness ad nauseum, but mostly from subjective viewing. I use 2,048 x 1,536 resolution on a Viewsonic 817 monitor, at home. Most users, even gamers, spend a lot of time staring at a 2d desktop, sometimes at resolutions in excess of 1,280 x 1,024 where sharpness matters, especially for long term viewing. I have always and most likely will always use Matrox cards, because when it comes to sharpness at higher resolutions, they cannot be beat. To read the quantitative tests performed by Matrox about 2d quality, see: http://www.matrox.com/mga/products/tech_info/pdfs/ parhelia/us_displ.pdf
The human eye can only see around ten million colors. This makes it sound like 1 billion colors is overkill. But, consider the following facts. The human eye is much more sensitive to changes in luminance than changes in chrominance. The JPEG standard utilizes this fact to allow for enormous compression ratios, by performing much more greater lossy compression of chrominance values(hue/saturation) than luminance (lightness) values. In fact, the human eye is so sensitive to changes in lightness that we can, on average and with good vision, see approximatelly 7,000 to 8,000 distinct shades of gray. 24 bit color, as found in all popular modern video cards is only capable of displaying 256 shades of gray. Even 30 bit color, as found on the new Matrox card, can only represent 1,024 shades of gray, almost 1/8th of what the human eye can see. We would need at least a 39 bit color scale (13 bits per color = 8,192 shades), to provide a neutral gray lightness scale that matches what the human eye can see. Note that although the discussion so far has been about the human eye's capability to see shades of gray, the human eye is much more sensitive to the color green than either blue or red. In fact, we can see much more than 1,024 shades of green and "green-like" hues, although the exact number has not been scientifically researched. For colors like blue, to which the eye is least sensitive, on the other hand, 1,024 shades may be more than enough. I hope this explanation can once again dispel the confusion between the 10 million colors that the eye can see and the 1 billion colors provided by this card being overkill. To summarize, keep in mind that the color gamut representing human vision is very far from linear. A one billion color card with equally weighed red, green, and blue components is overkill in certain parts of the gamut, and not nearly enough in other parts. Of course, keep in mind that the capability of modern monitors will also factor into all of the above.