Improving display quality without DVI
14 Aug 2005The graphics card in my desktop only has a D-Sub/VGA connector, so for the minute at least I’m stuck using that with my CMV Polyview V372 LCD monitor. This means some quality issues have come up, mostly when there’s chunks of fine, alternating, colours (similar to in the gamma chart illustrated here) or even just large solid areas (sync lines become visible occasionally).
I’ve moved my computer upstairs for today in order to get chunks of work done away from noise, etc., and only took monitor, keyboard, mouse and computer up: nothing else. This obviously makes cable management far easier. Seemed like the opportune time to procrastinate benchmark improvements in quality.
Okay, so I didn’t really benchmark. I just observed that it looked better when coils of cable (I had a largish coil on the DC-side of the display’s transformer sitting right under it that I hadn’t undone yet), particularly power cable, were kept away from the VGA run (and, if they must cross, making those crossings perpendicular). I was convinced I needed to buy a DVI-capable graphics card to get better quality, but this has stepped things up remarkably. One more purchase that can be put off for a while longer!
Having said that, though, buying a new card would probably give me not only marginally better quality by DVI, but also improved colour definition: this TNT2 M64 was never the most wonderful when it came to rich 2D quality.