TFT Monitor and GFX Card help

[gingerj]

Well my CRT monitor died last week, and me and my dad were weighting up the optinos of buying another one and my mum wanted something more slim line etc... So i was like OK we'll have a look and i wasn't expecting my gfx card to do such a poor job with this monitor. Everything looks stretched and blurred, and i'm really disappointed because like i know my dad is gonna come home and go so lets see where my 155 quid has gone and i'll be like here it is, and its bollocks i'm really shocked myself.

I knew that most of these LCD/TFT things dont like anything lower than 24bit colour, but when reading the listings for this thing i was like ok i know my voodoo 3 16mb dont go past 1152x864 and my colour is only 16bit, but seriously i'm so disappointed.

So heres what i'm gonna ask, is there any hardware experts out there that can recommend a GFX card for me for under ?90, that will make the picture alot better i'm guessing 32bit colour and 1280x960 min. It'll have to be an AGP card because i'm not going to upgrade my motherboard/cpu for at least another year or so. I do not play PC games, so i'm not bothered about these cards with huge fans on em'. I'm running a p3 600 CPU. I was thinking about buying this http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=121484 .

Cheers in advanced

[mid]

That should be fine. To be honest, any 32Mb or larger card will do you fine if you don't plan on playing anything on it, but the 9550 will give you enough power to do most things.

Personally, I'm just rather disappointed I can't find any 6600 cards in AGP right now, as the PCI-E ones are a bargain for the performance you get.

[recipher]

Bear in mind that TFTs are only good in one resolution. If you've not got it correct, then it'll look blurry.

I'm not sure it'll be the gfx card.

[gingerj]

erm i do have a blurry picture.... i would of thought it was teh fact that my card doesn't support the recommended resolution nor does it support a good colour bit.

[Tom Salter]

TFT's can only display one resolution, and the resolution that your graphics card can display is determined by the amount of memory on board. Anything 64Mb or higher will do 1280 * 1024 * 24.

The blurry picture is a case of the monitor having to "fill in" the pixels where it doesn't know the exact color value. So it interpolates between the nearest pixels it know's the colour value. Hence the blurriness.

Hope that helps.

[gingerj]

Yeah it does, so am i on the right track? That my gfx card is just not powerful enough to deliver the stats that the tft's need. i mean 16 bit colour on a tft just aint right, and my res is slack and below the 1280, so i need a new gfx card i suppose. which leads is my current choice the best for support and price.

[Tom Salter]

Yeah, that's right. You just need a graphics card with more memory - tbh you can get something a lot cheaper than the R9550, maybe a R9200? Your CPU ain't up to games, so there's nothing to benefit with the R9550.

[gingerj]

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ProductInfo.asp?WebProductID=69909

What you think i should downsize for this? I suppose since its 128mb opposed to my 16mb and it's got tv out it'll do fine for my internet browsing, music listening and occasional dvd watching. as long as it supports 32bit colour and will go past my resolution it'll amek the picture quality alot better and something more like what i was expecting.

[Tom Salter]

Yeah, that's great tbh. It'll make it look a lot better in higher res and nicer colours.