DVI Vs Analog

[Jenius]

I'm on a budget of £500 about $750-$850 dollars i think, I've been after a good LCD monitor for a while and have seen a few that take my interest however the only thing that is stopping me is analog vs DVI. I'm a big gamer but not hardcore so my Graphics card is a year old and doesn't have DVI support so i'm stuck with a analog one after reading countless reviews i came across one that i really liked the Iilyama AS4332UTG , of the countless reviews i've read none of these say if the review is based on DVI or Analog.
Is there a real difference in image quality such as ghosting and blurring if you use DVI as opposed to Analog or isn't there a difference.

http://www4.tomshardware.com/display/20021211/lcd-03.html
That is the review that made me clearly think about getting this monitor.

Cheers in advance.

 

[niz]

About 1 year ago, I bought an An Eizo L675 (cost about $3000 ). Its an 18" LCD with both analog and DVI inputs, and is still among the best flat panels available in terms of image quality and response time. The analog quality is truly excellent, but when switching between analog and DVI, its very obvious that DVI is still a massive improvement in picture quality.

The big downside, especially for gamers, is that because of a totally stupid limitation of the DVI standard, DVI only supports a maximum refresh rate of 60Hz!!! I really couldn't beleive how [-peep-] short-sighted the designers of DVI had been when I realised this.

Another point for gamers is that even an average CRT still has a far quicker pixel response time than the best LCD. Perhaps because of this, they thought that DVI support for more than 60Hz would be redundant.

I've found by experience whilst playing UT, even though it looks pin-sharp and dead sexy, you just can't be seriously competetive with the DVI limitation of 60Hz. Since "upgrading" from a CRT to flat panel/DVI, I've had to get used to regularly getting fragged before I've even seen the other guy.

The choice comes down to this: If you want a crystal sharp beautiful image (great for work and watching DVD) use DVI without a doubt. But... if you need a good gaming machine (i.e. higher than 60Hz framerate) then you're almost certainly better off using the analog signal, or even better sticking with a good CRT.

Another downside with DVI: You still need both analog and digital signals to your monitor anyway because most DVI-enabled video cards only have either DVI or analog output enabled, not both at the same time. They power up with the analog output enabled by default, then only switch over to a digital output when the Windows display driver tells the video card to. This means you only get DVI quality under windows.

To complicate matters further, you need to take extra care when buying a DVI-enabled video card to make sure that its DVI connector carries both analog and digital signals (as it should according to the DVI standard).

Most cards (my Hercules Geforce 3 for example) stupidly don't have the analog output also connected to the analog signal pins on the DVI connector. I therefore have to have 2 monitor leads connected to my monitor. One in order to be able to see both the PC bootup and bios screens (from the analog signal on the 15 pin D connector) and the other from the DVI connector to be able to see Windows. Thankfully my monitor has 2 input channels that automatically sense and switch. Most monitors only provide one input though...

All this makes me wonder what the designers were thinking...

 

[flamethrower205]

For many LCD's, DVI vs analog doesn't make much of a difference. In fact, many will not notice it and difference in image quality is apparent in few lcd's. Thus, this isn't a concern. Go with what you think it best and don't worry about analog or digital, they 're not very important.
BTW, NiZ, your lcd has a 50ms response time- that definetly is not near to what is offered today, nor is it close to ideal for gaming. Think about it, 50 ms means you support up to 20 fps, but then when we factor in slower grey shift time, forget it, it's much slower. That's perhaps why you're getting fragged more often. also, seeing as how the human eye can generally only perceive 60-70 fps, if dvi had that limit it wouldn't make a difference at all.

"If everything seems under control, you're just not going fast enough."
- Mario Andretti

 

[El_Kabong]

While I've never compared vga/DVI on a small display, I've run them side-by-side on the 20" panels I have on my desktop, with the same machine. With the VGA, there's always a little fuzziness to the display. (yes, I know about "native resolution", and my card is set to 1600x1200, which is what my panels are)

With DVI, I find smaller font sizes much more tolerable. My work often leaves me running a dozen TTY windows on one display, and various applications on the other. With DVI, I can comfortably fit more information on the same screen.

LCD's are not going to give you the same color accuracy that a good-quality CRT will. My $500 NEC CRT has better color definition than my $1500 flat panels. And while desktop panels seem to have a wider viewing angle than laptop panels, they're still not quite as good from more than 20 degrees or so off center.

As for the supposed "lag" in LCD's... maybe I just can't see it. Even with Quake, running on an ATI 9700, I just can't find fault with it.