Both. Monitors do degrade over time and there are brand/model differences. If your video card has both VGA and DVI ports, it's likely the text display will be less clear on the VGA. If you want the display to look similar on both/all monitors, they should be the same brand and model.... and powered from the same video card model, if more than one card.
Without seeing the actual situation it's hard to tell. But I think the text display should be crisp on both monitors when all things work properly. I have an experience that: I installed a brand new SamSung SyncMaster 2243SWX monitor, which has a resolution of 1920 x blah. When I first used it, the chart displays and text displays were very blurry. I used Windows Display Property thing to look at it... somehow it showed that monitor could only go up to 1680 x blah. I reloaded the EVGA driver software. Used the utility program that came with EVGA to make sure EGVA sees the right card and resolutions. A couple of reboots. After that... Voila! Windows display property sees the max resolution was 1920 x blah. Selected that... afterwards, charts and text displayed perfectly. Maybe worth trying. (Not sure what video card you have). Could it be that your video card's max resolutions do not match with the monitors' resolutions? If problem still the same, then I will suspect the video card itself. The best is to have other video cards or other computers to swap parts to play around to isolate the problem.
Thanks for those replies. Blew off the eBay dude b/c it was low profile. Thanks SC. Found another for 19 shipped NVS 280 with cable and CD. Refurbished but they're all used to some degree. Will try those suggestions about playing with settings...thanks. Will the NVS 280 enable portrait view?
You have gotten some good advice. FYI, I have a five year old computer running XP not XP pro. I was having trouble playing Netflix streaming. I determined my problem was that the drivers for my two 280 quadro cards could not be upgraded enough. I bought a couple of Nvidia 6200 fanless cards. A new one which was PCI and one off Ebay which was AGP. The new card was a EVGA and I have no idea what he used card was. I upgraded the drivers using NVIDIA's website which is NOT brand specific to my knowledge. As far as Quotetracker goes, I can tell no difference in the cards, but I am getting much, much better video streaming from sources such as Netflix.
Thanks for the input, Ticket. That shouldn't be a problem 'cause I'll only be using this PC for charting. At least if I do have any issues, I know it could be the new card, though.