Upgrading from 2 DVI out Geforce 4 4600- how many years/months will it take?

[mfavin]

There's a lot of informed opinions here regarding the video card market. I've had a Gainward Geforce 4 4600 2 DVI card for over a year now and would like to upgrade.

Unfortunately, there are no cards available that offer superior performance for less than $700 ("workstation" Quadro / Fire GL), that can run 2 LCDs / 2 DVI. All cards in the $300-$500 price range are 1 DVI / 1 analog. There are Geforce FX 5600s and I believe ATI Radeon 9600s that are 2 DVI, but these are slower (often MUCH slower) in most applications than my year-old card.

So how long do you think it'll be before at least one company makes a card for dual LCDs users that's faster than a GF4 4600? 3 months? 6 months? a year? two years?

[For those who might ask, running analog on an LCD is highly inferior to DVI- so going back to 1970s RGB Analog tech isn't a real option.]

 

[mfavin]

Any thoughts?

 

[Confused]

Might want to have a look in this thread


Confused

 

[alpineranger]

The current analog signaling scheme is actually not as old as many people think. Prior to VGA, a great many video standards used digital.

 

[mooojojojo]

I just wonder.. why would you need anything faster than a TI 4600

 

[rbV5]

For those who might ask, running analog on an LCD is highly inferior to DVI- so going back to 1970s RGB Analog tech isn't a real option.

DVI isn't always superior, in fact I just read Thisthanks to DurocShark's post in the video forum. It appears "a dual-DVI card based on a currently popular GPU" didn't do so well in signal quality testing, especially using the integrated TMDS transmitter. Implementation is the key here, and it appears that certain DVI solutions aren't exactly up to spec, especially running in higher resolution modes (exactly when you'd want the "better" signal delivered using DVI) Its no wonder that DVI hasn't been so user friendly to the HTPC crowd🙁

Looks like analog might be a better option in certain situations.