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Fugu 2002-11-30 18:28
My current computer has two 19" Trinitron monitors. I'm going to build a new machine, keeping those monitors and adding a third LCD one, 18" or so. (Using another CRT is out -- I know from experience with the current setup that it would heat the room up too much.) I use 2D almost exclusively.
I was thinking of using a Matrox Parhelia AGP video card. The problem (aside from it seeming overpriced) is that when a Parhelia is used to drive three monitors, they all have to be at the same resolution. At the LCD display's native resolution of 1280 x 1024, the other two displays will be unreadable without massive headaches, so I'll have to use a lower, non-native resolution. But it's my understanding that LCD displays get blurry when run at non-native resolutions, so that doesn't seem like a great idea. (If anyone knows of a good LCD display for which this isn't much of a problem, or knows of a site that ranks monitors by this criterion, please let me know.)
My other option, of course, is to run the LCD from a PCI card. But I will be using several HDD's in the future, and I'm worried about saturating the PCI bus. So the question is, how do I go about estimating how much bandwidth various PCI video cards will use? This doesn't seem to be something that is much worried about -- I see PCI cards for driving *four* displays out there -- but I'd hate to risk slowing things down if I don't have to.
Any advice gratefully appreciated.
- Dave
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Rich 2002-12-01 08:48
I ran into the same problem when looking for an LCD to use as a second display. 1280 x 1024 is too small for these old eyes.
I bought and returned three LCDs before I found one I was happy with.
I wound up with the Viewsonic VX900. It's a 19" display with 1280 x 1024 native resolution, but I found that it looks just as good at 1024 x 768 after a little tweaking. I love it.
You may also want to look at some of the Planar monitors. They have a new 20" model that looks nice. I think it's the Planar PL201M.
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fugu 2002-12-21 09:30
Sorry to take so long in responding.
Thanks for telling me about the Viewsonic model. It looks like you're not the only one who thinks so highly of it. I looked at the reviews on Newegg, and everyone was so positive about the monitor that it was almost as if the reviews were written by the company itself.
I have to admit that I hadn't properly done my homework. It turns out that with some fiddling with refresh rates and whatnot, and taking some time to get used to it, the Trinitrons are usable at the higher resolution. Further, after checking out LCD displays at some computer stores, and noticing how much crisper the text is, now I'm wondering whether I should go with an even higher resolution 20" third LCD. In which case I really wouldn't be able to make full use of the Parhelia (couldn't run all three displays at that resolution). I'd pretty much have to go with an added PCI card.
Thanks,
Tom
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