by danpaul88 » February 27th, 2009, 4:23 pm
HDMI is for TV's, the PC equivilent is the DVI connection, which is actually just a single link HDMI cable with a different plug on the end.
Also, you mentioned a 75hz refresh rate earlier, but with LCD screens the way they refresh is completely different. In my opinion 60hz should be more than sufficient, unless you have a good reason to want it higher. If you can, try out an LCD monitor (at work or a friends house etc) at 60hz and see if you notice the refresh, I suspect you won't be able too.
The reason for this is simple: A CRT refreshes by basically scanning an image onto the screen, while an LCD just updates the whole screen at once, so there is no flickering involved. One thing you *can* get is tearing, which is caused by disabling vertical sync. What happens is the monitor refresh rate and the graphics card draw rate become de-syncronised and the graphics card draws a half-rendered frame onto the monitor, resulting in half of the old image and half of the new one. Turning vertical sync on clamps the graphics card frame rate to the monitor frame rate and fixes this. Personally I have never actually experienced tearing, but some people do. I think it's to do with how sensitive your eyes are.
As far as PiP is concerned, I don't know of any monitors that have it, but I know they do exist. Look around and see what you can get. If your wanting to simply put a second PC screen onto the monitor, you might find there are software packages to do it instead of buying specialist hardware.
Also... why not buy two monitors to replace the two you have? That's what I did, and partly why I choose the T220 and T220HD, since they are effectively the same monitor and have a uniform look, but one has the added TV functionality I wanted, rather than paying extra for both when I only needed it on one of them. Two 22'' monitors for just short of £400 is a pretty good deal, although I think they have gone up in price a bit since I got mine.
HDMI is for TV's, the PC equivilent is the DVI connection, which is actually just a single link HDMI cable with a different plug on the end.
Also, you mentioned a 75hz refresh rate earlier, but with LCD screens the way they refresh is completely different. In my opinion 60hz should be more than sufficient, unless you have a good reason to want it higher. If you can, try out an LCD monitor (at work or a friends house etc) at 60hz and see if you notice the refresh, I suspect you won't be able too.
The reason for this is simple: A CRT refreshes by basically scanning an image onto the screen, while an LCD just updates the whole screen at once, so there is no flickering involved. One thing you *can* get is tearing, which is caused by disabling vertical sync. What happens is the monitor refresh rate and the graphics card draw rate become de-syncronised and the graphics card draws a half-rendered frame onto the monitor, resulting in half of the old image and half of the new one. Turning vertical sync on clamps the graphics card frame rate to the monitor frame rate and fixes this. Personally I have never actually experienced tearing, but some people do. I think it's to do with how sensitive your eyes are.
As far as PiP is concerned, I don't know of any monitors that have it, but I know they do exist. Look around and see what you can get. If your wanting to simply put a second PC screen onto the monitor, you might find there are software packages to do it instead of buying specialist hardware.
Also... why not buy two monitors to replace the two you have? That's what I did, and partly why I choose the T220 and T220HD, since they are effectively the same monitor and have a uniform look, but one has the added TV functionality I wanted, rather than paying extra for both when I only needed it on one of them. Two 22'' monitors for just short of £400 is a pretty good deal, although I think they have gone up in price a bit since I got mine.