Sorry EQ... I thought you meant the DVI 1.0 specs. I wasn't paying enough attention. It's astonishing to see a new card today which can't do at least 1600x1200 digitally over DVI. Martin
Matrox made a firmware upgrade on g450-mms quad card, if I understand correctly, and so g450-mms now supports 1600x1200 on reduced blankings. Don't know why matrox pages does not reflect that. Thanks.
It is all rather confusing, just as well I checked when I first started looking for a couple of high res DVI cards. I was pretty much sold on the Leadtek NVS280 Nvidia card, found out just in time that it didn't support high res DVI!!! So I ended up buying a couple from another manufacturer. So figure that one out, same Nvidia chipset, different specs!!! I wonder if it has to do with the actual hardware drivers used, i.e. Leadtek using inferior (cheaper) drivers that can't handle that bandwidth?
Could some informed person comment of the virtues of DVI as compared to VGA ? In front of me I have two identical Polyview 19" 1280x1024 flat panels. One is connected by DVI to one port of a Matrox G200 quad card. The other is connected by VGA to an Nvidia PCI MX4000 card. I can see absolutely no difference in display quality between the two screens. For practical purposes they are identical. Is DVI better at higher resolutions such as 1600x1200 ? If using VGA does display quality depend on the quality of the A/D converter in the monitor ? Are there other advantages to DVI such as longer cable runs ? Are the Polyviews just cheap and nasty screens ? (Actually they seem OK to me) Anything else ?
I cannot see much difference @1280x1024 between Analog and DVI. @1600x1200 However it is another story - I have found DVI to be superior at that resolution for LCDs. Of course, my opinion on Analog output being inferior at those resolutions was formed whilst I was using ATI sh*te (and had driver problems from ATI as well - never again - sticking with Matrox and Nvidia).
DVI is suppose to give a cleaner picture and it makes sense in theory because it avoids the digital (in the computer) to analog (video card output) back to digital (at the monitor) double conversion. However in practice I agree its hard to see a difference. The monitors I use must have pretty good A/D converters because I am using two Dell monitors side by side right now, one DVI, one analog and I can't tell the difference in picture quality at all. These are 19", maybe someone who has used larger LCD monitors (21"+) could comment on DVI vs analog quality.
Here are the specs for the Matrox product line-up (2nd page): http://www.matrox.com/mga/corp/products/pdf/lineup.pdf Cheers, TRADERguy
I can see a difference (digital vs analog) particularly with text. I have 19" digital Samsungs running off my Matrox G200MMS quad card, and newer 19" analog/digital Samsungs running off my analog G450 dual card. All monitors are next to each other. The analog text is not as clear as in the digitals, imo. In fact, that's what brought me to this thread - researching the P650 (AGP) to replace my G450. So I think digital is better.
can I do this? Use a multi-montor DVI video card capable of 1600x1280 resolution on 17" 1280x1024 or 19" 1280x1024 monitors and achieve 1600x1200 resoultions? my logical conclusion is no, however, its worthy of inquiry as the upside to this seemingly innocent technical question unlocks untold savings in using more common monitors at higher densities... PM me on this directly please