Just got this giant new Sceptre X22 LCD monitor from Costco, hooked it up to my AGP Geforce2 card (old, I know) with an analog cable and I have trouble! The video card will give me a 1600x1028 resolution but the clarity is no good - fonts have jaggies, etc. The native resolution is 1680x1050 but that's not a choice for me in the WinXP display properties. I was afraid of this - I need a new video card but what should I look for? Should all newer Nvidia offerings work OK or are there specific features/specs I should look for? Would a digital cable connection improve things? I'm not a gamer, I just want great color and very sharp graphics.
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New 22" LCD versus old Geforce2 video
- Thread starter Dupuytren
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Nelviticus
Programmer
The GeForce 2 is a very old card and it's possible that it's simply not capable of producing 1680x1050 - widescreen monitors didn't exist when the GeForce 2 came out, certainly not in the consumer sector anyway.
However you could buy a card that's ton's better than your existing one for peanuts. Get yourself a low-end 6- or 7-series GeForce AGP card and it'll be able to drive your monitor easily. One important thing to check though - what version of AGP does your motherboard have? The voltage specification for AGP changed at some point and your motherboard might not support the voltages required for AGP 3 (which I think is the current version). Your manual should tell you, if not look it up on line or post your mobo's specs here and someone should be able to tell you.
A digital connection is definitely better than analog, although modern cards are still very good with analog. Pretty much all modern ones will have a digital (aka DVI) output.
Nelviticus
However you could buy a card that's ton's better than your existing one for peanuts. Get yourself a low-end 6- or 7-series GeForce AGP card and it'll be able to drive your monitor easily. One important thing to check though - what version of AGP does your motherboard have? The voltage specification for AGP changed at some point and your motherboard might not support the voltages required for AGP 3 (which I think is the current version). Your manual should tell you, if not look it up on line or post your mobo's specs here and someone should be able to tell you.
A digital connection is definitely better than analog, although modern cards are still very good with analog. Pretty much all modern ones will have a digital (aka DVI) output.
Nelviticus
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Nelviticus
Programmer
I have a manual for my old FX5600 at home. It lists the specs for a few other FX GPUs so I'll check whether the 5200 is in there and post back.
Nelviticus
Nelviticus
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Success over the weekend and many lessons learned! I looked up AGP compatibility in a couple of techie forums and learned lots about backward compatibility, AGP board pin configurations and what 4X/8X really means. Then I went to my local Fry's and read all the boxes. I found an EVGA 256mb e-GeForce FX6200 video card on a VERY good sale ($49 after rebate!) and the box said "AGP 2.0 or higher" which was the key. The AGP pin configuration was the same as mine (there are two different configs) and it worked with my motherboard! Apparently there are many specs of MB versus AGP and it might not have worked, it was a gamble. The highest resolution possible with this video card (1680x1050) is exactly what my 22" LCD needed so now I'm happy. Got Verizon FIOS connection on Friday too - WOW!
Nelviticus
Programmer
According to my manual a 128MB FX5200 supports up to 2048 x 1536 in 32-bit @ 60Hz so it would easily have been able to drive that monitor. An FX6200 is even better though!
All the various flavours of AGP are actually very compatible. The only major incompatibility is that AGP 2x and earlier used 3.3V and AGP 4x and later used 1.5V, but that change happened a loooong time ago so if your motherboard has a 4x slot then any current AGP card will work. If you put an AGP 8x card in it will just work at 4x speed.
If you want more info than you could ever possibly need on AGP then check out Wikipedia:
Anyway, it's all academic now isn't it?
Nelviticus
All the various flavours of AGP are actually very compatible. The only major incompatibility is that AGP 2x and earlier used 3.3V and AGP 4x and later used 1.5V, but that change happened a loooong time ago so if your motherboard has a 4x slot then any current AGP card will work. If you put an AGP 8x card in it will just work at 4x speed.
If you want more info than you could ever possibly need on AGP then check out Wikipedia:
Anyway, it's all academic now isn't it?
Nelviticus
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