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Dell's Misleading Graphics Card Buying Advice
Barence writes "Dell's website includes a guide to graphics cards for PC novices which contains a dangerous chunk of misinformation. The monitor on the left, labelled as a PC that uses a 'standard graphics card,' is displaying a Windows desktop that's washed out and blurry. The seemingly identical Dell TFT on the right, powered by a 'high-end graphics card,' is showing the same desktop – but this time it's much sharper and more vivid. They're both outputting at the same resolution."
I want to agree. Though it's so prevalent I almost don't notice anymore.
They may have changed it now, but I had a good laugh at the AT&T uVerse bandwidth recommendations last time a family member was shopping. They'd recommend their very top tier plan if you like to watch HD movies and listen to music. I think Netflix recommends 5Mbps for HD. There was some bizarre strata of recommended services and plans for the rest, all of which were so decoupled from reality as to be worthless.
You know regular people everywhere actually use those kinds of recommendations when selecting packages, so it's pretty shady. And of course what they didn't mention anywhere were the upcoming data caps.
From the look of the two monitors on the 'example' page, it looks like they're showing 27 or 30 inch monitors. If that's true, then the comparison of the 'low end' Radeon 3450 at a max of 1920x1200 to a 3470 or higher with a max resolution of 2560x1600 (the native resolution of a 30 inch monitor) will look something close to the example photos.
Not labeling the examples with the types of cards used, resolutions, sizes, etc is close to unconscionable for a business computer comparison / assist site.
The funny thing is that even if that's true, then the lowest end baseline integrated intel graphics chip would match the high end in display resolution, and therefore, sharpness on any monitor Dell sells.
It's not just misleading, it's actually lying. The pictures are accompanied by the phrase "Images shown are for demonstrative purposes only". But they're not demonstrative of anything like the difference between a high-end and low-end graphics card.
The fact that it's for business users does not in any way excuse Dell for flat-out lying to customers.
"A week in the lab saves an hour in the library"
1920x1080 over an SVGA port with a low quality cable looks absolutely horrible,
The problem is almost always caused by the sync on the monitor being slightly out of phase with the clock on the graphics card. Back in ye olde days of TFT monitors, before DVI (I had one--I was an early adopter), the auto adjustment was not especially good and you had to tweak the phase slightly using the on-screen controls to get a pin-sharp image. With even really cheap monitors these days, the analog sync is exceptionally good compared to what it was. Almost all crappiness can be fixed by pressing the auto-adjust button.
I regularly use a TFT monitor driven with an analog cable at 1920x1200, and it's one of those modern, thin super cheap looking VGA cables. It looks great.
BTW, VGA is pretty forgiving on short cables. The frequencies aren't that high and any even moderately passable co-ax will do fine, and cheap modern coax is manufacturered to an astonishingly high spec.
And yes, I am a pixel nazi, like the visual equivalent of golden ears. I work in image processing, so I am very sensitive to things like ringing, JPEG artefacts, mismatched resolutions, phase errors, dithering, etc.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
... using words like "misleading" and "unfair." It's fraud, plain and simple.
Apart from that test below the image saying: "Image for illustrative purposes only". Legally that probably gets them off the hook on the fraud charges.
Also under our retarded british legal system you have probably now libelled them and they can sue you for millions of pounds in lost revenue.
I dont read