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Newegg has the Asus VE247H 1080p 23.6" LED-Backlit Monitor for $190 - $20 off with coupon code EMCKJJB66 [Exp 1/19] - $10 rebate [Exp 1/31] = $160 with free shipping.
1920x1080, 10,000,000:1 dynamic contrast ratio, 2ms response time
170° (H) / 160° (V) viewing angles, HDMI, DVI-D and D-Sub inputs
$160
good?
So I'm thinking of a new monitor for an old machine. I checked the resolutions of the board. The only # of lines the board can put out are 1024, 1050, and 1200 (other than much lower values). Currently I'm running it at 1600x1200 on a CRT.
If I set my board for 1050 will I miss the 150 lines?(1200-1050) If I set it for 1200, will the monitor throw away the 120 lines or scrunch (technical term) the 1200 lines.
And what do I gain? I can't get the extra 320 across.
I'm sure you can find a rez you'll like with this or any other LCD, quit being so nutty.
Pete you should use LCD monitors at their native resolution, or the text will render poorly. Compare the maximum resolution of your video card to the LCD monitor. If the video is too low, upgrade it or stick with the CRT.
If I set my board for 1050 will I miss the 150 lines?(1200-1050) If I set it for 1200, will the monitor throw away the 120 lines or scrunch (technical term) the 1200 lines.
And what do I gain? I can't get the extra 320 across.
What video card is it? It is possible that your resolutions are limited due to the driver being old, or a crippled OEM or MS-Windows bundled driver. For example most nVidia Geforce era or ATI Radeon era cards can have custom resolutions set in their control panel.
Other video adapters like Intel's, require some extra work - it is possible to get the custom resolutions but I don't recall on the very old ones if they could go as high as 1980x1050... I do know one I tried could do 1440x900.
Otherwise, some monitors have their own display settings which allow you to choose between a letterbox mode where the resolution the video adapter can handle has black bars around it and thus it displays pixel per pixel at the native resolution. The alternate setting a monitor might be switched to is stretched mode where it dithers the output resolution to fill the entire screen, making the most use of the monitor's screen space but more blurry as a result - perhaps ok for old arcade games or momentary use to set up a server, but not too good for general purpose computing.
I do not know the available screen settings offered for this monitor, BUT even if your machine is old, even if you can't get a newer driver or the monitor settings right to make use of 1080P resolution, you should be able to find a PCI or AGP card that can do it and isn't very expensive... for example Ben posted a Geforce 6200 AGP deal here, and it does have DVI which (or HDMI) is desirab
Dave_C, (Why does ben change dave's name to bacon?)
Wow, thanks for the complete response. I have to look into a lot of what you brought up.
I spent an hour trying to determine if the AGP board on Ben's today would work in my BioStar board with Sempron chip. Not sure yet.
Right now I'm using the onboard graphics, 64M out of RAM.
It's an old machine I stuck together a few years ago but more than meets my needs.
I guess I'm questioning if this (or any) LCD would give me a better image than I'm getting now. Oh, I can't find a spec for the Dell monitor I'm using so that is a big DUH on me. How can I know where I'm going if I don't know where I am?
Thanks again,
Pete
This is a TN panel, if your old monitor is a TN LCD, this will be a very similar picture quality although in recent times the contrast of TN panels has gone up some.
Biostar board with Sempron and 64MB doesn't give me enough info to know much, if it is an nForce (nvidia) chipset then probably the driver control panel will allow for setting the native resolution as a custom resolution, otherwise if it has an AGP slot it is probably a 4-8X slot considering the Sempron CPU era, and the Geforce 6200 or any other last-few generation(s) AGP card should work. I don't recall how far back in time the cards were 4-8X but I would guess Geforce 2 or Radeon 7xxx series or higher is a good place to start looking... Google should find reviews with more info on anything you would consider.
If it is a Via or Sis chipset IGP, I don't know for certain as I have tried to avoid their chipsets for quite a while, never tried to mate a modern resolution monitor with one. If you want to watch HD video on the system, personally I would go for a newer card than a 6200 as the 8000-series and newer have full HD video decoding... though of course they cost disproportionately more for AGP format, but you might find a deal on one used in some for sale/trade forum, perhaps anandtech.com forum if not ebay.
Dave, If you're still watching. I was away for a while. Sorry.
The video chip set reports as VIA/S3G UniChrome Pro IGP.
I can select from about 100 resolutions. It is set at
1600x1200 (32 bit) 60 Hz.
The only other 1600x1200 resolutions are:
32 bit 70 Hz and 16 Bit or
256 Colors at 60 and 70 Hz.
My Dell m991 CRT says:
Optimal preset resolution 1024x768 at 75 Hz or 85Hz
Highest preset resolution 1600 x 1200 at 75 Hz
Highest addressable resolution* 1600 x 1200 at 75 Hz
The AGP slot, according to the docs
AGP Aperture Size
The Choices: 1G,512M,256M, 128M (default), 64M ,32M.
AGP 2.0 Mode
The Choices: 4X (default), 2X, 1X.
I don't watch videos. I do CAD, spreadsheets, other technicel stuff.
I'm getting the feeling that, if I actually get the advertized CRT resolution, I'm doing better than an LCD can do.
Is that plausable?
Thanks in Advance
Pete
You may be asking the wrong person. Some praise the higher contrast of a CRT but personally I'd take a low end LCD over a high end CRT because I want the per pixel precision and crispness of an LCD, in addition to the space and power savings. It should make CAD more precise, and yet make the lines look more jagged.
Unfortunately since your monitor doesn't go up to 1920 x 1080 there is no way to try a custom resolution and see if it works at that res. even if it seems like it might. Since it is Via/S3, I doubt the driver control panel would help, you'd need an app like Powerstrip.. or there may be some sort of freeware now that can also set custom resolutions, if so maybe google would find it, BUT your video may be just barely too old to be able to do this resolution, partly the age and partly because Via/S3 & Intel video were lagging behind the capabilities of nVidia and ATI.
I don't know how sensitive your eyes are to low refresh rates (flicker) but personally I couldn't stand anything under 80Hz and even that I'd notice compared to 100Hz, so to me the higher resolutions your monitor supports I couldn't use, while lower refresh rate on an LCD monitor doesn't cause flicker.
If you were thinking of buying an AGP video card you'd want one that specifies it is AGP2 /4X compatible, for example see the text on this Geforce 6200:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814133151
"An AGP 2.0 (or higher) compliant motherboard "
I would think about replacing the whole system instead but if you are content with it otherwise then personally I'd get the cheapest AGP card you can find that is AGP 2.0 compatible and has DVI or HDMI output... but preferably with a large low RPM fan or passive fanless heatsink instead of having a tiny high RPM (louder and shorter lived) fan.
Lastly I don't know the state of CAD applications today but it is possible some are optimized for GPU acceleration, that picking a Geforce…
I wouldn't trade mt GMD-FW900 for any of that crap! Yes it uses allot of power powerful things always do.
I'm thinking I'll sit it out with what I have.
An LCD would get me 320 more across (1920-1600) but I give up 120 lines (1200-1080). Is that right?
It doesn't seem worth spending $0.01.
When I can no longer put up with what I have I'll start watching for motherboards, CPUs, memory, video, and monitors.
Upgrading to me is a real drag. It interferes with all the other things I have to do. It takes weeks getting everything back smooth like I want it. Then, just when I think I have it, I open an old program and find I have a whole lot of .ini crap to get it like I want it.
Thanks for all the great information.
Pete
I don't think of it in terms of more vertical pixels on a CRT because a 19" CRT can't really support that many pixels, I mean it will blur them together which is great for viewing photos but not so good when you need to discriminate individual pixels or anything else with precision.
The LCD has more screen space and the greater horizontal resolution allows far more easily working with multiple windows tiled side by side. I didn't appreciate how much I would benefit from this until I started regularly using a monitor > 1280x resolution (I'd had monitors that could go higher but as mentioned previously on a CRT I never used them with refresh rates below 80Hz whenever possible).
It is true that upgrading can be a hassle, but you'll have to do it anyway eventually... computer parts don't last forever. What I always do is keep using one system while I'm building the new one, with them networked and mapping shared volumes it becomes easier to copy things to the new system. If you instead wait for the old system to fail the process is more hurried and aggravating.
Interesting. So the spec. that the CRT can do 1200 lines isn't really true? I thought the shadow mask would be that fine. It isn't?
And I can't notice any flicker at 60 Hz refresh. Is this an effect of the persistance of the phosper verses an LCD?
Have I been fooling myself all these years by looking at a smeared screen displaying a lot poorer resolution than the board is putting out?
I don't think so because, for example, the characters I am typing are quite crisp and smaller than newspaper font. Actually, with my 63 year old eyes, any smaller font would be unreadable, not because of the screen but because of Presbyopia.
The electronics can indeed distinguish 1200 lines, but the gun and the coating on the tube cause those lines to blur together. For example if one line has a blue pixel and the next line a yellow one under it, the top pixel of the two won't be entirely blue and the bottom one won't be entirely yellow, you will get a third color where they overlap.
Yes.
Depends on how you define poor, but yes CRTs tend to do best at the middle of their possible resolution range, the max they can do is pushing the limits of degrading the picture too much, in my opinion. I feel the same way about running an LCD at a resolution other than its native resolution though the latter is a mathematical blurring instead.
If you like the way it looks that is all that matters. LCDs aren't perfect either, their picture looks grainy because the resolutions aren't high enough yet per the screen sizes used. Some people like one type and some the other... I was only mentioning the reasons why I prefer LCD.
They probably look so crisp because you have a high contrast difference between the letters and the background. Take the following image for example, it is 1600x1200, tiled medium blue and bla
Wow, what an image. I downloaded it and viewed it with a number of different image viewers and studied how they handled the image at various zoom levels. I settled on Windows Picture and Fax viewer(WPFV). Then I studied the screen (after verifying that it was set to 1600x1200) with a magnifying glass and changed zoom levels. I also estimated how much each zoom level actually zoomed by comparing the horizontal and vertical scroll bar length verses how far they could scroll. For example, if a scroll bar represented 1/2 the screen then I assume the image was twice as wide as the screen at this zoom level. Although the actual ratios were more like 2.4 or 5
My observations:
WPFV=Actual size. The image fills the full screen except for a title bar at the top and tool bar and scroll bar at the bottom. The vertical scroll bar fills almost the whole expanse. I'm pretty sure all that is happening is WPFV is cropping the vertical size to fit in the title bar, tool bar, and scroll bar on the screen. Similar situation for the horizontal dimension. The scroll bar fills almost the full width except for a small amount so the vertical scroll bar can be displayed. Thus, the video board is putting out one pixel for each pixel in your image. All I see is a blue screen as you predicted.
Hit Zoom(Z=1) button once.
Horizontal scroll bar= 5/6 of the screen width,
Vertical scroll bar=3/4 of the screen height,
Blue screen
Hit Zoom(Z=2) Again,
Horizontal scroll bar= 2/3 of the screen width,
Vertical scroll bar=2/3 of the screen height,
My mind might be "seeing" a cross hatch pattern of large "boxes", like maybe 100 across and 75 down.
Hit Zoom(Z=3) Again,
Horizontal scroll bar= a little more than 1/2 of the screen width,
Vertical scroll bar=a little more than 1/2 of the screen height,
With a magnifying glass I can see small blue and black dots but I am sure they are larger than one pixel.
Hit Zoom(Z=4) Again,
My conclusions:
I don't now what the He!! to conclude. But I am sure my CRT is not showing every pixel of the 1600x1200. Because the dots finally become distinct when the scroll bar shows 40%, does that mean that 0.4x1600=640 (and 0.4x1200=480) falls right on the dots of the CRT? Does it mean that for the 640x480 image, an image dot spans 1x1 or 2x2 dots on the phosper?
Ponder, ponder.
You could get every last dollar worth out of that monitor then decide later, meaning the decision will be made for you since there aren't any reasonably priced (if any) CRT monitors left except used ones ready to die of old age too.
Dave,
Now that I am somewhat enlightened by you, I think I will just keep dragging my feet. I can't convince myself that an LCD is going to give me an image that is superior enough over what I have to be worth the trouble.
I built my computer desk to accomidate me, including the position and angle of the CRT. Modifications to the desk could be required. Then a new video board (in a close to outdated computer).
I have more important things to do with my life than mess with this.
But your information and time spent is greatly appreciated by me. I'll try to do the same for someone else on a topic that I am expert with.
Thanks So Much,
Pete