Yep, a small bezel is good! If you've really got the bucks, get a 24" LCD 1920x1440 (?). Too rich for me right now (around US$2200 I believe).

Cheers

I have been looking at these three

Samsung 241MP

Samsung 240T

Sony SDM-P232

The 241MP has no DVI ? I don't know how much difference there is between DVI and VGA I have never had a DVI monitor.

The 240T has DVI from what I can tell it supported 1280 x 1024 from the DVI and 1920 x 1200 from the vga when it was released but it has been updated to support 1920 x 1200 on DVI but I have only read this on message boards.

The sony one looks about the best but I can't find a single review of it or any info other than the sony website.

Anyone have any info on these ?

DVI is *essential*. Do not purchase a monitor that lacks it. The difference is HUGE between the fuzzy analog inputs (still better than most CRTs though), and the crisp clear DVI input.

Cheers

Here are two screenshots of a small icon on my DVI monitor, taken with my digicam. One of them shows the screen in DVI mode, the other shows the same scene using the analog inputs. Mind you, the analog would look a little better if it wasn't routed through my KVM switch, but .. well. you be the judge.

First pic is attached here -- you figure out which one this is.
Next message has the second pic.

Cheers

Second pic -- see previous posting for explanation.

Cheers

The text on the first is clearer. I'll guess the first is DVI. If not, then DVI sucks;)

That's one of my problems with LCDs, actually. It's certainly very nice for text to be clear, but CRTs have something of a natural antialiasing effect that looks nice on images, I think. Of course, that's really just prejudice based on how I want stuff to look.

I actually use text more than images, so I've decided that the next monitor I buy will be an LCD, but I still think that images look a little too sharp on them. I'll get used to it, though, and will like it more, eventually.

That's one of my problems with LCDs, actually. It's certainly very nice for text to be clear, but CRTs have something of a natural antialiasing effect that looks nice on images, I think. Of course, that's really just prejudice based on how I want stuff to look.

Yeah, you're right, pr0n looks much better with the smoother anti-aliased display of a CRT.

Kinda like a built-in airbrushing effect.

Er, so I've heard...

I was just excited because I got a new 17" CRT to replace my old 17" CRT. At least I got it for free.

That (photos) was my complaint on LCDs, until the current crop appeared -- finer dot pitch, higher contrast, and vastly improved viewing angles have combined to push LCDs firmly over the top for me. My photos look a LOT better on my new LCD than on my top-end Eizo CRT monitor. Anyone want a used 21" FX-E8? Really cheap?

EDIT: anyone nostalgic for that airbrushed CRT look could just use the analog inputs instead of DVI.

Cheers

anyone nostalgic for that airbrushed CRT look could just use the analog inputs instead of DVI.

Heh.

Still, though, just because I'm anal, I feel compelled to point out that there's a big difference between analog LCD and CRT fuzziness. In all but the cheapest CRTs, the phosphors are still reasonably smaller than a pixel of resolution. With the LCDs, the individual elements are supposed to be the same size as a pixel, so imprecision on an LCD looks worse than the same imprecision on a CRT, IMO.

The 2nd one is much fuzzier that must be the analog one. Is it true that the max resolution for DVI-D is supposed to be 1600 X 1200.

No. I've personally run 1920x1200. I don't see any reason that they would put an arbitrary limit on it, especially one that's already been surpassed.

Yeah, you're right, pr0n looks much better with the smoother anti-aliased display of a CRT.

You're absolutely right.

Sorry for the slow response. It's hard to type using only one hand.

Actually, I've found some stuff that says it can do a maximum of 1600x1200@60Hz when used with a digital CRT, and that's for single-link, which apparently only uses about half the pins of DVI-D. Dual-link can apparently do up to 2048x1536 on either LCDs or CRTs.

This is all DVI version 1 stuff, BTW.

Sorry for the slow response. It's hard to type using only one hand.

Phlurmp!!!!!

(I am at times *soooo* naive!. I just got it!)

Ouch, you have ghosting on both of them.

Bruno

1600x1200 is sort of a soft limit given the current crop TMDS transmitters (165MHz). That's probably the source of your "limit" comment. However, by using reduced timing intervals, it's possible to push 1920x1200 from current hardware. We do this by reducing the blanking interval for Apple's current Cinema HD.

However, to surpass this resolution we would need a new crop of hardware. So panel manufacturers (some high end ones like Eizo, Totoku and IDTech) are now using dual-input displays (IDTech's 22" display actually taks 1, 2 or 4 inputs). Either dual-link or genlock (or other syncronizing method) to get multiple digital outputs feeding portions of the display. I have this running on 3MP (2048x1536) as well as 9MP (3840x2400) displays. 3MP at 60Hz and 9MP at 24-30Hz depending on config.

Incidentally, current ROM revisions for our Mac cards support DVI Hotplug right now - plug in a display and it will instantly come online. This allows you to switch displays live or add a second display live. No user intervention is needed in the OS. If you don't mind manually selecting a menu item, then you can also make a VGA or TV connection live. Just another interesting item. That Dell article is a nice primer. It makes a few bold statements about what is currently supported by the industry however. No all display adapters conform to the full feature set available - hot-plug for instance. I can tel you right now that there is no display adapter in th consumer space for Windows or Mac OS outside ours that offers the level of display suport and special features we have. Stay tuned for our new control panel for Mac OS X (partially designed by yours truly )

Bruno

That sounds like what I read except they made it sound more like a hack to get 1920x1200.

Do the current ATI cards (9000 pro, 9500 pro) for PC support 1920x1200 on DVI. One review I read said the 8500DV did not.

Nice, but does it work with Linux?

Or is ATI still being extremely anti-social in that regard?

Cheers

Mm.. actually, I think my monitor is being driven from an ATI card, so I suppose they must have finally kissed and made up at some point.

Cheers

ATI Linux FAQ

Press release announcing Linux support

The driver RPM bundle

I thought all linux users could build video cards for $2 out of old calculators and duct tape? Or is that just MP3 players?

You would see lightning speed driver development from any company if given the opportunity to supply a large Linux OEM account. Linux isn't a significant contributor to the bottom line of this industry, so it tends to be at the bottom of priorities for the majority of hardware/software companies.

But as Drakino pointed out, there have been steps to bridge the gap. And I know some additional Linux work will be starting up soon in this very office, a few cubicles over.

Bruno

Or you could release specs for the cards so that interested developers could write drivers on their own.

Actually, nVidia has done a surprisingly good job making it so that they can release binary drivers without having to contend with differently compiled kernels, etc.

I'm guessing you guys are busy trying to figure out how to develop the world's ugliest Linux GUI to control the video card.

You'll have issues when using the nVidia binary drivers if you're a kernel developer or if you ever want to submit a kernel bug report. It'll taint the kernel and they'll just throw out your bug report since in theory the nv driver could have been stomping all over your memory and you wouldn't know.
Also aren't the binary drivers based on the Windows code? It's how they can release new versions so quickly after the Windows driver comes out. They have some abstraction layer built into it that allows the Windows driver code be wedged into the Linux kernel. This is all what I've heard anyway so it could be false.

- Trevor

All lcd displays I've used for a decent amount if time, so far (not so many, and just on laptops, and that's why I am asking ) had this problem:

They have a preferred, "native" resolution. When switching to any other one, the image would look blurrier or somehow much worse in quality. Is it still true with current, most recent LCD displays (or, do you know if there are some specifically NOT affetced by this problem)? Other than that I'd really love to buy an LCD now...

It's not a preferred resolution, but a native resolution. LCDs have a fixed number of elements of a fixed size. A CRT on the other hand has the cabability to re-focus to produce a variable number of pixels (how blurry will depend on your dot or trio pitch). An LCD has to have its display scaled to produce alternate resolutions. Theis is accomplished in a number of ways: biult-in scaler hardwae in the panel (some are better than others), built-in scaling hardware on the graphics chip (ATI chips have a built-in ratiometric scaler) or by using a software scaler (we're doing this on the Mac right now for Apple displays at certain resolutions).

The quality of the scaled image will depend on the scaler as well as the resolution you're switching to. Resolutions that don't divide evenly into the native resolution are the easiest to scale. There will always be an even number of panel pixels to represent a scaled pixel. To add to the effects (good or bad) of scaling, you'll also have to contend with font-smoothing on Windows and Mac desktops. This sometimes makes a world of difference - without smoothing you'd have completely unacceptable text for most scaled resolutions, however, becaus the scalers will do their own smoothing, the OS' text smoothing can really muddy things up.

The best looking smoothing IMO, is using a software scaler like we're doing on Apple panels. It has a small performance impact of course. Built into our drivers, the scaling code will use the chip's 3D hardware to scale the display data which is then sent to the LCD at its native resolution. On Apple panels external scaling is a necessity, as they lack any such hardware themselves (one of the reasons their LCDs are priced relatively low).

When buying an LCD, buy it for its native resolution. Don't buy a 1600x1200 panel if you always want to run 1280x1024. In that case you can save yourself plenty of money by going with a 17 or 18" display. Going to lower resolutions will require going with smaller displays, however you would not be happy running those lower resolutions on a very large screen anyway (the pixels would be far too crisp and enormous).

I don' generally change the resolution of my primary monitor unless I am testing something. When playing a game, the scalers mentioned above are tolerable, so it's not an issue.

Bruno

however you would not be happy running those lower resolutions on a very large screen anyway (the pixels would be far too crisp and enormous).

Yeah, but it'd be perfect for Strong Bad's duck pond game.