Quality of VGA out

I would like to use my new laptop with an external 21" CRT monitor with resolution 1280x1024/100Hz and I would like to have a sharp display.

I would like to ask about a quality of VGA outputs on notebooks compared to PCs? Namely i950 and ATI X1600.

Any experience about this? Can I say all notebooks with i950 will have the same quality of VGA out (i.e. the quality is given only by the video card producer)?

Thanks,
Petr

 

the same as using the standard lcd, except running the possibility of better due to higher refresh rates. Thats if the external has a higher refresh. Essentially your using the lappy as a desktop at that point.

 

The video quality should be uniform across the board, so that's not something to worry about. Yes, the GMA950 can handle dual monitors, however, you might want to think about getting a dedicated card because it won't use up your system RAM like the integrated card will. Videos and stuff running on both the monitors will probably be better if you have the dedicated card as well.

Are you doing to be doing any 3D work? The X1600 is certainly overkill for anything but newer 3D games. A low-end card like the Go7200/Go7300 or Radeon X1300 would be perfect.

As a side note, you won't find a laptop with integrated graphics that has a DVI port - that is an extremely rare port to find on any laptop for some reason.

 

Well, I have tried GMA900 and some older mobile Ati9xxx and the result was not very impressive in 1280x1024/100Hz.

The GMA900 output was pretty nice, however at 100Hz it was a bit fuzzy, even at 90Hz, the sharpness was worse than on my PC video card.

Concerning the mobile ATI 9xxx, the quality was terrible. Even at 1280x1024/90Hz, the image was so out of focus, so it was unusable.

I compared it to ma ATI9xxx in a clasic PC, which has a perfect analog output (sharp text etc.).

 

why dont you try some nvidias... you seem to be sticking with ati... i know for a fact that my dad has a similar monitor in his work (its a desktop but he has 2 monitors...about the same as yours) and he has a 256mb geforce (dont know the exact number i dont go there often lol) but it works like a charm... So i would think that you would need around an old 128 geforce to work with a monitor like that...

try one of the many 128mb geforces.

 

I was referring to noteboks with the same video card - as in, if two notebooks have the GMA950 or X1600, the video quality should be the same.

 

with a intel integrated vs. an x1600 doing average things and watching movies youll never tell the difference(minus the fact that your video is eating into your system reasources). Its when you get into gaming and more 3d stuff where it will matter. setting a gma950 at 1200x800 on dual monitors surfing the web or general mulittasking wont be much different then if I were to do it on my x1600.

 

Another question: if my notebook display is 1280x800, will I be able to run an external CRT monitor at 1280x1024? I mean, I open the notebook and see 1280x800, I close it (or switch to the external monitor output) and I will see 1280x1024 without any additional settings between switching these two monitors?

 

You should be able to. I run two monitors - my laptop's WSXGA+ is secondary, and my DVI SXGA monitor is primary.