Refresh Rates??

RWB

So why is it that all of a sudden my monitor supports up to 180Hz with this Radeon 9700 Pro? Cat 4.5's.

I'll set it to run at various refresh rates, and it will work perfectly fine, but yet I have had refresh rate issues on this monitor in teh past on my older GF4 a while back when I set it beyond 85Hz...

Kinda odd that it works fine now, and I can see(more like "feel") the difference too.

RWB

See...

It used to say that my monitor was a HMD 400 or something along those lines.

Ohh yeah, this is 180Hz at 1280x1024!!

Straight_Man

Basicly, the new card is syncing tighter to monitor. Probably partly DDC2 & PNP functionality matches monitor better, between how card and drivers use that. What modes include, and need to be unique to monitor for best results, are a combo of color depth, and horizontal and vertical refresh rates. I'll give you an example-- my LCD here likes 71.7 Hertz V refresh at about 1280x1024 at 32 bit or at 16 bit. Default for the drivers for this monitor was higher for both the 16 and 32 bit rates, and montior had to get a stepped down refresh rate (Vertical) to mesh right. Same refresh combo works with Linux using 24 bit color.

At a guesstimate (logical guess based on lots of play over years with montiors and drivers across a range of O\S platforms and versions), what you are seeing is the card buffering and the effective acceptance, calc, AND buffering net rate, not the pure refresh at monitor. Larger memory cards can and do buffer ahead, and older montior tables can result in an exaggeration of this. But, the extreme number says both things I mentioned are coming into play to get the numbers you see. Second, card might have managed to match an uninterlaced rate, and an older card might hve been matching to a backward compatibility mode in monitor for interlaced feeds, which would toss the refresh rates used much lower. Guesstimate also goes on like this-- you monitor's native res is probably in teh 1280x1024 range, and that is what it is tuned for. Letting it run at lower res or color depth will give you higher refresh rates possible, and if the card is moreover buffering entire frames to feed to montior you might notice a real high number and not a real high comparatively benching of FPS compared to old rate. Video cards have fast RAM, very fast. They can buffer and retreive and think ahead of monitor more. To be honest, to get that actual rate physically present, I think you would have a Plasma screen monitor or a brand new monitor that is really overperforming.

Older cards and drivers for them top out way below what a Plasma display can do, for example. Bench it in game and 3D benches and see if those numbers really double compared to old card becnhes, OK, because that is what the refresh rate, if true, should yield. If benches do not yeild that increase, you are seeing numbers that show how fast the CARD can handle frames given monitor, not the monitor alone.

OTOH, if benches for FPS speed for complex AA anf AF graphics do indeed more than double, tell me what model monitor and brand you have, PLEASE!!!

RWB

What?

OK, I'll bench, but my understanding is that the higher the refresh rate is the slower theperformance of the bench. Like you would get a better score in 3D mark running 60Hz than you would at 75Hz.

Time to bench I suppose.

RWB

Umm there is no option in 3D mark to change my refresh rate... where is it? Or what do I do?

RWB

Found this, it shows my monitor brand and model.... plus it says the max supported is 75Hz at this resolution... wierd.

Medlock

Same here, man. I'm using a ViewSonic UltraBrite A90f+. Max refresh @ 1280x1024=75hz. But I swear I saw (felt, just like you said) when I set up the refesh rate. I thought up until now that maybe it was just me, because in that same tab (on the same video card I might add) it reports the same max refresh at this res. I don't really know what's up with that.