Which monitor to go with 88000 GTX (and DVI questions)?

[Mark228]

Hi I'm wondering which monitor is a good choice with the GeForce 8800 GTX with a budget of up to £250ish? I bought my build yesterday but see now the monitor I bought (Belinea 22") has no DVI input so am going to be changing it. Now I don't understand DVI too well but I see the GeForce card supports it ( "Dual dual-link DVI supports two 2560 x 1600 resolution displays - HDCP Enabled!!") and it seems the best way to connect the gfx and monitor and is it best to have DVI for future (what is DVI used for basically - I'm a n00b go easy on me)? So a monitor without DVI input is no use to me if I'm buying this card right?

Monitors I'm looking at on OcUK are:

V7 L22WD 22" Widescreen LCD Monitor

Samsung SM-205BW 20" Widescreen LCD Monitor

Dell E207WFP 20" Widescreen LCD Monitor

Or if these are good I might be prepared to wait for these to come in stock (20 or 22") :

Samsung SM-206BW 20" Widescreen LCD Monitor

I've seen it mentioned (on here somewhere) that a 20" is going to be sharper than a 22" because they have the same amount of pixels so in a 20" the pixels are more compact, is this true? What are the pros and cons of 20" v 22" please? I'll be using it for games and general surfing etc.

Thanks in advance for any advice, I've already had great advice on my build from here so far.

 

[james.miller]

it would be cheaper to use one of the two dvi>vga converters you get with the card..... i've got a monitor and a sony hdtv connected to my 8800gtx, both using dvi>vga converters

 

[Arthur]

I have the 8800gtx running on the belinea and it looks awesome, no blurriness or anything sharp as a tack, it's just as good as the v7 or the other 22"'s for the same price on the market, dark colours look strange on it though but i think that's just due to it being a tn film panel and nothing to do with dvi or vga.

 

[Mark228]

it would be cheaper to use one of the two dvi>vga converters you get with the card..... i've got a monitor and a sony hdtv connected to my 8800gtx, both using dvi>vga converters

Hi sorry not responded sooner, so the GTX (and GTS?) come with the converters then???? Is that as good as having a DVI input on the actual monitor?

 

[Ronaldo]

get a monitor with DVi input its better then using converter.

When using converter, the image is converted from digital to analogue.
The dual link thing is, if you have a HD monitor and that supports high res you can use a dualink DVi cable.
Most monitors use normal Dvi cables and don’t support HD res unless you buy HD monitor

 

[fobose]

The dual link thing is, if you have a HD monitor and that supports high res you can use a dualink DVi cable.
Most monitors use normal Dvi cables and don’t support HD res unless you buy HD monitor

DVI Dual Link can display a resolution of up to 2048x1536, DVI Single Link can display a resolution of up to 1920x1080 (notice 1080 is a HD resolution, aswell as 720) so DVI Single link cables support HD resolutions..

Dual Link DVI just means the pins have double the power of transmission which gives better signal quality.

<edit> Regarding the OP; getting a monitor with DVI is usually better because it gives you a VGA connection aswell, so you can plug something like a xbox 360 in to it. Some people will argue that DVI is noticable better quality than VGA but others will say they can see no difference. Personally I prefer a monitor with a DVI input.

 

[james.miller]

Hi sorry not responded sooner, so the GTX (and GTS?) come with the converters then???? Is that as good as having a DVI input on the actual monitor?

they come with two convertors, and there's no problems with mine. running at 1080p with a 10ft vga lead is about on its limits though, there is a small amount of noise visible on test images, but other than that its top stuff.