What difference to DVI input from analog?

Pnoy02

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Nov 13, 2004
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Is the picture worlds apart in LCD monitors from this outputs? I'm thinking about an LCD, most don't come with DVI, is it worth it?
 

Hikari

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Jan 8, 2002
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? Most LCD displays do come with DVI. The only ones that don't are the cheapo displays.

I think the picture is quite a bit better with DVI, at least on a resolution above 1280x1024.

Originally posted by: Pnoy02
Is the picture worlds apart in LCD monitors from this outputs? I'm thinking about an LCD, most don't come with DVI, is it worth it?

 

amheck

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Oct 14, 2000
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I just got 2 new Dell Monitors, two 20", one widescreen, one not. The VGA conection was horrible. I actually had to go buy a new video card to see if it got any better and now I'm using DVI and the text is not blurry anymore. What a difference.

YMMV.

Aaron
 

Agamar

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Oct 9, 1999
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amheck - That is not a valid assessment, since you changed 2 variables in the equation (added new video + changed to DVI"). I am assuming these 2 dell monitors were the first flat panels you had run on the old video card. The new card may very well have a better 2d output. Anyway, DVI will give you a small improvement over VGA if the resolutions is high enough.
 

biostud

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Feb 27, 2003
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My parents have the 17" 1280x1024 Acer AL1721 running on a GF2GTS on the VGA connecter, and was wondering if it would be worth it to invest in a cheap ATi card with a DVI connector. They only use it for Mail/Web/Office programs.
 

siyan

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Dec 27, 2004
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Originally posted by: biostud
My parents have the 17" 1280x1024 Acer AL1721 running on a GF2GTS on the VGA connecter, and was wondering if it would be worth it to invest in a cheap ATi card with a DVI connector. They only use it for Mail/Web/Office programs.

Go take a look at it...if it seems that things are somewhat blurry (ie: something that should be one pixel wide spills over into the next pixel and whatnot) and no amount of monitor signal lock tweaking will fix it, then you could probably do better.

Anyways if its blurry for you then perhaps you should just get a cheapo DVI card.

My parents have a Viewsonic 18" LCD on VGA (Ti4200 128MB) which is acutally quite nice. My own Samsung 191T (9800 Pro) shows almost no difference between the DVI and VGA inputs, at least at the native 1280x1024 resolution. However, I don't imagine the VGA output on a GF2GTS is all that great.
 

imverygifted

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Dec 22, 2004
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my monitors that have had both dvi and vga the dvi has been noticeably better, however my friend just got a 19" LCD w/ only a vga and it looks just as good as my dvi maybe its because im not comparing vga to dvi back to back but i think monitors with just vga show vga a little better than monitors that have both a vga and dvi?
 

Pnoy02

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Nov 13, 2004
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Exactly, my thoughts were it may be just the monitor performance and certain monitors may benefit more from DVI while others you wont notice a thing. I'm not really into "improved looking text" as much as I want to see more vibrant colors and better picture quality. I'm consider some >300$ LCDs and most don't come with DVI, although there is one that has it but compared to the one I'm looking at(analog), I'm unsure whether to invest to the DVI monitor or to the one I have planned.
 

amheck

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Oct 14, 2000
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Originally posted by: Agamar
amheck - That is not a valid assessment, since you changed 2 variables in the equation (added new video + changed to DVI"). I am assuming these 2 dell monitors were the first flat panels you had run on the old video card. The new card may very well have a better 2d output. Anyway, DVI will give you a small improvement over VGA if the resolutions is high enough.

Fair enough. But I still stand by my statement, as least for my setup, that DVI is much better, at least for me. Originally, I had a NVidia Quadro with VGA out only. I got the two 20" monitors in and was hugely disappointed (could only hook 1 of them up at a time, of course). I then went to by a 9200SE to test out DVI with. I'm running that now with the 2001FP and 2005FPw side by side in dual monitor mode. The DVI connection looks totally crisp and clear, while the analog connected monitor looks fuzzy, like it did with my other video card.

 

Hikari

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Jan 8, 2002
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Same here, Amheck. I've tried both my 2005fpw and a cheapo work HP 17" LCD, and both look much better with DVI. That means more crisp and clear via DVI. And, this is both on an Nvidia 6800 card and an ATI Radeon 9600.

The only reason to use VGA is if you can't use DVI for some reason.
Originally posted by: amheck
Originally posted by: Agamar
amheck - That is not a valid assessment, since you changed 2 variables in the equation (added new video + changed to DVI"). I am assuming these 2 dell monitors were the first flat panels you had run on the old video card. The new card may very well have a better 2d output. Anyway, DVI will give you a small improvement over VGA if the resolutions is high enough.

Fair enough. But I still stand by my statement, as least for my setup, that DVI is much better, at least for me. Originally, I had a NVidia Quadro with VGA out only. I got the two 20" monitors in and was hugely disappointed (could only hook 1 of them up at a time, of course). I then went to by a 9200SE to test out DVI with. I'm running that now with the 2001FP and 2005FPw side by side in dual monitor mode. The DVI connection looks totally crisp and clear, while the analog connected monitor looks fuzzy, like it did with my other video card.