An often asked question. My contention has been that a quality VGA card was nearly equal to DVI. I recently tested that idea on my Dell 1905s and Nvidia Quadro NVS 280... which as you know has a dual output dongle which with the proper cable can be either VGA or DVI. I have both cables, hence the test. 1. A drawback to DVI is that you always(?) lose some adjustments to the monitor. I don't know whether it's universally the same, but I lost Contrast, Autotune, and a few others. 2. I would rate the DVI and VGA display to be equal... even, *identical*. Much to my surprise, I couldn't tell any difference even with a magnifying glass. I know all VGA is not high quality. The one example where I've heard the most complaints is in ATI cards with both DVI and VGA output. Many times the VGA is significantly less sharp than the DVI. I suspect that's because ATI is really in the gaming market... not multi-monitor workstation display... and reluctantly added a cheap but lesser quality VGA capability to their cards for marketing. However, not all ATI VGA is poor. I also use 2 ATI Xpert128 singlehead VGA cards with my NVS 280, and the quality of display is equal. After the test, I removed the DVI in favor of VGA.
i have a "radeon x300 se 128 mb hypermemory" card. LOL. I'm clueless. Heres what I've noticed, maybe you can suggest something. I run a 2405 24in dell. I also have some POS 15in dell from who knows when. I use the dvi on the 24, and the vga on the 15. Everyone who has seen it has commented on the difference. Now i'd like to run another monitor on dvi, but I suppose I need another card. I was going to get the cheapest card possible, like 30 bucks with dvi. Now what is your opinion? Good idea/bad idea. You seem to suggest that buying a decent graphics card has an effect, more so then whether the output is vga/dvi.
i have 4 dell 2001 fp 20 inchers and 4 dell 1907 19 inchers. i bought the cheap $50 dual graphic cards from circuit city that have 1 dvi and 1 analog hookup and they work awesome and i see no difference between dvi and analog. get the dual video cards as they give you 2 monitors for the space of 1 card
my guess then is that the difference in quality I've noticed between the 24 and 15 inch is mainly in the monitor itself. This 15 in thing is just horrible. I'll just axe it and get a new monitor and just see if theres a difference between vga and dvi. i was going to get the dell 20's too, instead of something like benq/acer/viewsonic, just because they'd all be the same brand. not sure if that would even matter; has anyone ever noticed a difference?
Looks like your DVI-VGA difference is "classic ATI". Yes, you will need another card. Unfortunately, adding additional DVI capability is not so easy... there aren't many PCI DVI cards, but there are a few. (There are also a few PCIE x1 DVI cards, but they are expensive.) Your x300 is a low-end PCIE gaming card. Obviously that computer is not "important" to you for gaming or you'd have a different card. Do you use it for gaming at all or just "trading and general computing"? Addendum... Joey's comment below is good. Your 15" is lower resolution, but it still should be sharp. Get a bigger monitor and plug it into the VGA. If the display is still not sharp, get a different card.
the dell ultrasharp 19 inch 1907 is on sale for $247. i just bought 2 more for backups. i see little difference in the 20 and 19 inchers.. the 24 incher has 1920 resolution which is good. if you buy the dell get the 2001 fp not the widescreen 2005 or 2007. they had the 2001's on sale 2 months ago for $363. i've had many monitors and dells are the best i've seen and the cheapest
Just about #2, the cost of translating VGA signal into DVI signal even though is very small, it adds up when you have a lot of changes on the screen. Thus if you have a lot of moving objects across multiple windows, then if you move those windows, you will find the DVI ones leave a smaller trace of ghost image. Thats the only difference I have seen - obviously very important for gamers, but not likely for traders
I bought 4, Dell 1905s on reputation without having seen them. I found they were overly bright and allowed only minimal brightness adjustment. I gave one to my wife and put the other 3 on my trading rig to display charts only and with a black background. For this, they are just fine. However for my primary monitor, I have a Samsung.