What to look for in buying a monitor

Enrich · Post by **Enrich** » Mon Feb 20, 2006 2:32 pm

Sorry if im asking about an old topic as i did look hrough the past couple of pages and found a couple of posts on the nea same subject.

But what do you look for when buying a monitor.

WHat i am idealy looking for is a 19" or better flat panel. I currently have a 19" crt and its a mammoth beast on my desk. Main reason im looking for a new monitor is i want to get a new desk, but not have to limit myself to a corner desk to accomidate the size of the monitor.

I would like to stay in the 300bucks or so area, cheaper if possible

But im not sure what the specs are about, like the 8ms, 12ms, 2ms, and all that stuff.

BTW, i do have the Geforce 7800 card, and it has th DVI outputs on it. I am also curious about this, and if there is much of a difference if any at all.

Post by **Ddrak** » Mon Feb 20, 2006 5:10 pm

Anything less than 12ms is fine. 12ms is about an 80Hz refresh rate.

Get a monitor with both DVI and VGA (analog) inputs - it's just better like that.

DVI is definitely better than analog inputs - it's the difference between the computer driving each pixel directly and the computer encoding stuff up into an analog symbol that the monitor then has to do a "best effort" at matching to the pixels.

There's not really much more to say. I'd recommend getting a USB hub in the monitor just cause it's easier to run everything to the monitor than to the computer, but it's not really that big a deal.

Dd

Nikore · Post by **Nikore** » Tue Feb 21, 2006 5:10 pm

I know you said a 300 dollar range, but serouly you should consder getting this LCD. I have it, and its like the best montor ever, the only one I would want over this one is the 30".

Also you can normally find a e-coupon that might knock 30% off (I found one with like 10 minuts of googleing).

Kula · Post by **Kula** » Tue Feb 21, 2006 6:46 pm

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6824001066

I love mine.

Fallakin Kuvari · Post by **Fallakin Kuvari** » Thu Feb 23, 2006 2:09 am

I'm looking at new monitors..

Thinking of getting this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6824112176

Edit?! Or that Dell... its sexah.

Lunarstorm · Post by **Lunarstorm** » Thu Feb 23, 2006 10:17 am

The Dell LCDs are outstanding, I can't recommend them enough. I personally favor the 2405, but they're all kick-ass in terms of price/quality ratio.

If saving money was a main objective, if I wasn't going to get a Dell, I'd get a Samsung.

Cheers,

Loon

Lunarstorm · Post by **Lunarstorm** » Thu Feb 23, 2006 10:23 am

For the wealthy, monitor orgies become attractive:

http://www.digitaltigers.com/zenview-arenaelite.shtml

That's a 24" in the center, sandwiched in between two 21" and then the 19" on top. A couple of my coworkers have setups like this and paid tens of thousands for them (before 12ms LCDs were common.)

Whee,

Loon

Enrich · Post by **Enrich** » Thu Feb 23, 2006 2:26 pm

IS there any difference between DVI and DVI-D?

Lunarstorm · Post by **Lunarstorm** » Thu Feb 23, 2006 5:09 pm

DVI has 3 different formats (DVI-D, DVI-I, and DVI-A). Most people don't realize this and simply say "DVI cable" without worrying about the exact format. One way to summarize the three is this:

DVI-D = Digital
DVI-A = Analog
DVI-I = Both

They are not interchangable, thus you can't use a DVI-D cable on an analog system. With PC monitors, I wager DVI-D is the most common.

This only becomes a problem if your device didn't come with a cable. I'm told if both of your connections are DVI-I, you can use any cable, but otherwise you want to be certain that you buy the right one.

Cheers,

Loon

Tallas · Post by **Tallas** » Fri Feb 24, 2006 5:49 am

Nice deal at slickdeals for a viewsonic 19" LCD, 8ms, 500:1 DVI-D monitor.

Post by **Ddrak** » Fri Feb 24, 2006 1:37 pm

Lunarstorm wrote:DVI has 3 different formats (DVI-D, DVI-I, and DVI-A). Most people don't realize this and simply say "DVI cable" without worrying about the exact format. One way to summarize the three is this:

DVI-D = Digital
DVI-A = Analog
DVI-I = Both

They are not interchangable, thus you can't use a DVI-D cable on an analog system. With PC monitors, I wager DVI-D is the most common.

This only becomes a problem if your device didn't come with a cable. I'm told if both of your connections are DVI-I, you can use any cable, but otherwise you want to be certain that you buy the right one.

Cheers,

Loon

It's worse than that. There's also the difference between Single Link and Dual Link. To support high resolutions, PC video cards and monitors use both links of a dual link cable. If you run with single link then you may be left stuck wondering why you can't push your resolution to the native resolution of the LCD.

http://www.datapro.net/techinfo/dvi_info.html
http://www.ramelectronics.net/html/DVI_info.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Visual_Interface

Note also that a DVI-I cable will *not* plug into a DVI-D socket. The analog holes aren't there, so the cable won't fit.

Dd

Lunarstorm · Post by **Lunarstorm** » Fri Feb 24, 2006 1:54 pm

*nod* I didn't go into other details (e.g. single and dual link, HDMI, HDCP connectors, etc etc.) as I figured it'd just be overkill after he only asked about DVI and DVI-D.

Loon