Creative FX5900 Review Images

[R1CH]

Hi,
Just a little comment about this review - the images of the FPS tables, komplett.co.uk prices, etc are all taken with cleartype enabled. Could you please think of those of us with CRTs where enabling cleartype results in blurry and difficult to read text? :). Please turn it off when taking screenshots in your reviews.

Other than that, nice review, but 5900 is just too expensive for me :(

[MikeC]

Thanks for the comments. I wasn't aware that having cleartype enabled while taking screenshots could result in blurry text. I checked the review on a few other systems I have and didn't notice blurry text. Two of the systems have CRT's while the other has an LCD. I enabled and disabled cleartype during each test.

Here's an original screenshot from the review, which had cleartype enabled:


http://www.nvnews.net/reviews/3dblaster_fx_5900_ultra/bf1942_midway_bm.png


Here's one I just took with cleartype disabled:


http://www.nvnews.net/reviews/3dblaster_fx_5900_ultra/bf1942_midway_bm_noct.png


Both of them look perfectly fine to me with or without cleartype :)

[Clay]

Cleartype is a big personal preference thing. I think without it, though, that the text looks real scraggly and anemic. :D

[JonathanM]

Originally posted by maxpower
Cleartype is a big personal preference thing. I think without it, though, that the text looks real scraggly and anemic. :D

Yeah, I second that.

[The Baron]

Yeah, for my tables, ClearType is on. Makes it easier to read on any monitor.

[saturnotaku]

Originally posted by The Baron
Yeah, for my tables, ClearType is on. Makes it easier to read on any monitor.

Most definitely. When I had a CRT I used ClearType and it was even more important when I made the switch to LCD.

Regardless, both charts look fine. Perhaps the text looks blurry because of some kind of refresh rate issue?

[R1CH]

It probably is a personal preference thing, but I really don't like how the red/blue smearing shows up on CRTs. It's noticable to me at least :(.

http://r-1.ch/ctypemfr.png

Anti aliasing is fine ('font smoothing' as they call it), just cleartype adds the red/blue stuff that is designed to work because of the pixel placement on LCDs. I agree, it looks great on LCDs, but I personally find it irritating on CRTs.

[Clay]

Originally posted by R1CH
It probably is a personal preference thing, but I really don't like how the red/blue smearing shows up on CRTs. It's noticable to me at least :(.

http://r-1.ch/ctypemfr.png

Anti aliasing is fine ('font smoothing' as they call it), just cleartype adds the red/blue stuff that is designed to work because of the pixel placement on LCDs. I agree, it looks great on LCDs, but I personally find it irritating on CRTs.
Yep, that's pretty noticeable there with the 300% zoomed in image. :angel: j/k I think, however, that if we took a vote the majority would be in favor of ClearType. I'd say that about 9 out of every 10 people I know (friends, clients, co-workers, etc) prefer ClearType. Have you used Microsoft's web-based ClearType tuner (http://www.microsoft.com/typography/cleartype/tuner/1.htm)? I've found that if people don't like ClearType's default settings that the almost always find an adjusted setting that they really like via this tuner.

[R1CH]

Originally posted by maxpower
I've found that if people don't like ClearType's default settings that the almost always find an adjusted setting that they really like via this tuner.
That's not really an option once a screenshot has been taken and the cleartype is stuck in the image data with whatever preference the user had. Maybe in future the graphs/charts/tables/etc can be made out of HTML and CSS so that images aren't even needed :).

[Clay]

Originally posted by R1CH
That's not really an option once a screenshot has been taken and the cleartype is stuck in the image data with whatever preference the user had. Maybe in future the graphs/charts/tables/etc can be made out of HTML and CSS so that images aren't even needed :).
Sure, we could represent the data via HTML/CSS. I'm sure that Mike has his reasons for representing them as images though. :)