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Where Can You Find Cheap DVI Video Cards?
iansmith wonders: "I have a new Gateway computer hooked to a flat screen monitor. The problem is the video out is only VGA which does not look as sharp as a DVI output. To help with this, and also to let me run dual displays, I want to add a video card to the machine. In the past I would just grab a standard VGA card for $20, plug it in and go, not needing fancy 3D graphics. I do not want to spend $300 for a gaming video card... does anybody make a video card with DVI out that is not a souped up 3D powerhouse, with a price tag to match? Even worse, all new machines seem to be PCI-Express and so that makes it even less likely I'll find something affordable. I can't even use an old 3D card from home. What would you all suggest I do?"
I like the BFG GeForce 6200 Turbo Cache cards, for example the http://www.bfgtech.com/6200TC.html -- I bought the 64MB Model recently for a customer and it was under CND$39. The car has both DVI and VGA Output.
These are the good old days you'll be telling your children about. Make them worthwhile.
Newegg.
/whisper/ Thanks for the candy!
Yes, but it only has a single DVI out. The submitter is looking for dual dvi. I did a quick search and came up with this: http://www.pricegrabber.com/search_attrib.php/page _id=5/popup6%5B%5D=10:594/popup2%5B%5D=1:596
There's a XFX GeForce for about $133, which isn't bad really, and that's not a bad card at all. I was playing CS:S with a 6800GT OC from BFG until just recently.
- Go to www.newegg.com
- Click on Video Cards
- Click on Advanced Search
- Set DVI to "1"
- Click.
- ???
- Profit!
Your dream $20 video card is actually $25 or $30, depending on if you want AGP or PCI.That's a shame, I'd recommend my Radeon 9250 which was dirt cheap, fanless and even has a pretty clear VGA output, but it's AGP.
What's keeping you from doing that today ? There's plenty of cheap graphics cards out there (they may all say that they're "3D" cards, but the cheap versions are way too slow in this area to be useful). You don't even need to get the latest generation of cheap-ass cards, since the ones from two generations ago may already have been available in PCIe/PEG flavors.
ATI X300/X1300, Geforce 6200/7300GS, whatever is cheapest.
Sounds like you have a case of improper LCD calibration. The auto calibration often will not properly calibrate your display on a normal desktop screen. What you should do is bring up a full screen of alternating black and white pixels and then run the auto calibration. If you do that, you'll have a display just as sharp as DVI. I do this for my gaming machine, since I use the two inputs on my monitor as a poor-man's video switch. :)
I was playing CS:S with a 6800GT OC from BFG until just recently.
I just couldn't help but think about the blank look that would be on my mom's face if she had to translate that sentence into English.
Of course, she thinks that I'm a total computer guru because I know how to copy and paste.
Wait. Copy and paste?
1. Ronco's Combination Electric Nose-Picker/Salad Shooter.
2. Ask Granny.
Don't tell me to get a life. I'm a gamer; I have LOTS of lives!
But if I copy and paste, that uses up both of my Ctrl keys. How will I open documents with Ctrl and the capital O key? Will I have to use my clicker for that again?
Note: I -love- my GeForce 6600GT
... using an nVidia graphics card?
Tom Forsyth has posted about the lack of quality in nVidia cards this back in 2006
Title: VGA was good enough for my grandfather
I keep having this stupid conversation with people. It goes a little something like this:
Them: I need to get a new card - one with dual-DVI. Any ideas?
Me: You really need dual DVI?
Them: Yeah, VGA's shit.
Me: VGA's actually pretty good you know - are you running at some sort of crazy res?
Them: Yeah - 1600x1200 - it's a blurry mess.
Me: That's not crazy at all. It's well within VGA's capabilities.
Them: No, analogue is crap for anything like that. You have to go digital. Especially if you're reading text.
Me: Dude, at home I run an Iiyama 21-inch CRT at 1600x1200 at 85Hz on a VGA cable. I can write code all day with black text on white backgrounds. At work I run my second Samsung 213T off a VGA cable as well, and that's the screen I use for email - black on white again. They're both crystal-sharp.
Them: Rubbish. I just tried it myself - it's an unreadable blurry mess at even 60Hz.
Me: Are you by any chance
Them: Sure, but what's that go to do with it? Have you got some ninja bastard card?
Me: An elderly and perfectly standard Radeon 9700.
Them: I've got a 7800 GT - it should kick the shit out of that.
Me: Yes, at shuffling pixels. But it's got an nVidia RAMDAC. Which is a large steaming pile of poo.
Seriously - what the hell is up with nVidia and their RAMDACs? They've been shit right from day one in the NV1, they were shit when I worked at 3Dlabs and the $50 Permedia2 had an infinitely superior display quality to their top-end GeForce2s, and they've continued that grand tradition right up to current cards. That was acceptable when a RivaTNT cost $50, but now they're asking $1000 for an SLI rig. My boss was trying to get two monitors hooked up to a fancy nVidia card that only had one DVI port on it, and whichever monitor he plugged into the VGA port was ghosting like crazy. Swap the card out for a cheap no-frills Radeon X300 and hey - lovely picture on both.
Now you're going to think I'm an ATI fanboi. And I am, because I like elegant orthogonal hardware. But I'm not syaing ATI RAMDACs are great - it's just that they don't suck. Matrox, 3Dlabs and Intel all have decent RAMDACs. Even the S3 and PowerVR zombies have better RAMDACs. Beaten by S3! That's absurd.
For example, a colleague had a high-spec "desktop replacement" laptop with an nVidia chipset of some sort that he could never get to drive his cheap CRT with half-readable text. Naturally he blamed the monitor. He's recently replaced it with a new Dell 700m, and it drives the CRT wonderfully. This is a $5 Intel graphics chip in a laptop! It's totally worthless as a 3D card, but even it does orders of magnitude better than the nVidia cards at running a CRT.
The one time nVidia cards have decent RAMDACs is when it's by someone else. Some of their "multi media" cards with the fancy TV in/out stuff have a nice external RAMDAC made by someone else, and apparently (never tried them myself) they work just fine. I'm all for new tech, but we've all been bounced into switching to DVI has for such bogus reasons - monitor sizes just aren't growing that fast.
So if someone tells you that old steam-powered analogue VGA is totally obsolete because DVI quality is just sooooo much better, ask them if they've got an nVidia graphics card.