8O :? :x :?:

I just bought a 20" Apple Cinema Display (the newer aluminum model) to use with my PC. Like many widescreen LCD panels now on the market, it's native resolution is 1680 x 1050 and has an standard DVI link, so this is hardly an Apple/PC incompatibility issue ... but where are the cards that support it ???

My own Sapphire video card supports 1600 x 1024 and many other resolutions beyond that, in widescreen formats, but not 1680 x 1050, so I went looking for a card that did. I called BFG Technologies. The tech rep with whom I spoke looked up all the info he could and told me that all the cards in their lineup only support resolutions up to 1600 x 1024 for the DVI link. He said that if I wanted to use the analog D-Sub VGA connector I would have more flexibility and should be able to match the native res of the display. Even if I wanted to go that route, just one problem, no one makes a VGA-to-DVI adapter, only the opposite exists, a DVI-to-VGA dongle. Suspecting that I would get the same answer at every manufacturer, I called Apple's support. I was directed here:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301066

I looked at the PNY Technologies lineup and same as BFG and Sappire, maximum resolution for DVI is 1600 x 1200. what the hell is going on??? What cards are powering all these 1680 x 1050 20" widescreen displays? I am exhausted and perplexed by this discrepancy. Does anyone out there have a display like this that is able to run it at *native* resolution? If so, please let me in on this industry secret! I'll be most appreciative!

y dont you just plug in your monitor and give it a shot..

Oh I intend to as soon as it arrives, believe me! I just know what LCDs look like when they are not run at their native res, and it's crap. If I'm lucky and it somehow looks native, fantastic. I'm rarely that lucky however, so the search continues...

All Radeons since at least the 8500 support 1680x1050. All current Nvidia cards also support it. Intel GMA supports it. It will be automatically detected by the video card. You will be pleased.

http://www.pricegrabber.com/rating [...] /id_type=M

First things first, this silly title makes me laugh for someone who uses 'tech' in their name.

They do, the prolem is it won't plug and play recognize them and as such you need to 'help the drivers' recognize that they need to add the resolution, and the best way without using something like powerstip is to find moded .inf files. Use google. Or else just use a 3rd part app like powerstip.

Actually they do make them I use one every day. However it still wont help you because it's for the analogue part of DVI, since that's all there is to send, and that don't work for you.

St00pid Apple can't even get THAT right, it Quadro, NOT Quatro!

Also nV cards aren't the only ones that have Dual-Link DVI in fact there are more ATi cards with dual-link than nV cards, and Matrox also has dual-link cards as does S3. But nice of Apple to direct you to overpriced workstation cards as a solution instead of cheaper home/gaming solutions.

A $crew it just return it and get the better Dell 20" anyways!

You're not looking hard enough.

I've seen people's rigs with them hooked up to Radeon 9600s and 9800s , and I just noticed a review with it attached to an X800.

Depending on what you're doing with the monitor and what Sapphire you own you may not need a new card, otherwise I'd suggest Any of the ATi 1K lneup (X1300-1900), or from nV the GF7600 or GF7900.

Thanks everyone!

Now here's the tricky part ... At least for now, I need a card that supports 1680 x 1050 in a 32-bit PCI version. I'm currently using my single PCIe x16 slot for a high-bandwidth 8-lane Areca RAID 5 controller.

Why not upgrade to a different board you ask? Well I have a dual Opteron system, and I'd like to keep it that way. I currently have an Asus K8N-DL mobo. It's standard ATX formfactor so most of the real estate is consumed by the dual 940-pin sockets and only has a single PCIe x16 slot. I'm holding off on upgrading the mobo until AMD's next-gen Opteron platform with Socket F (1207 pins) hits the market. I'm hoping iWill or Tyan then emerges with an Extended ATX mobo with dual Socket F, SLI and another PCIe slot with at least 8 lanes. AMD has had Socket F slated for release in the first half of 2006, hopefully my wait won't be long, but until then, I need a PCI video card supporting 1680 x 1050 B-)

Areca ARC-1210 - high-performance RAID 5 SATA ll Disk Array host bus adapter
Asus K8N-DL - Dual-Opteron motherboard with NUMA (Non-Uniform Memory Access)
Socket F explanation on Wikipedia
Socket F (1207-pin) AMD Opteron 800 Roadmaps

Then there's only one, if you want upgradability (ieDual Link) Matrox;

http://www.matrox.com/mga/workstat [...] 256pci.cfm

For just now gaming, then go with either of the following a GF6200PCI or GF7300PCI, not sure if the Radeon 9200 would support it, but it might, but not a great solution.

Seriously though if you're gaming, buy an xbox, because you're not going to do it with PCI, as for 2D Matrox is the best choice.

I don't like it when people call me that in person anymore (it is kinda silly), so now I just use it as a handle online ... only because I've never met anyone else whose tech knowledge actually is as broad as my own. The nickname was given to me a long time a go (10 years I think) because I seemed to everyone that I knew something about so many different types of technology. It started with a girl who used to call me the technology kid. B-)

Very nice card! Out of my range, and I wouldn't need the upgradablility so much.

Not interested in gaming at this time, (don't have time or money for it anyway). This is simply a power rig for OS virtualization and serious multitasking. Gaming wouldn't appeal to me unless it looked and felt really, really fantastic. I don't like to do anything half-assed. Maybe when I have the capacity for SLI I'll consider adding a pair of decent graphics cards and an Ageia PhysX card ...

Right now all I need is decent native 2D support for 1680 x 1050. I may have to wait until I have more PCIe slots then it seems ... and just deal with aliased 1600 x 1024 until a decent motherboard I can upgrade to is produced.

hmm, I've begun researching it, but could you give me the cliffnotes version? (I'm still trying to find the homepage)

Yes, those stoopid asses, you'd think if they're recommending $700+ hardware they'd get the name right!

In this case I'm not sure which end is considered male/female, but do you mean it has VGA pins to connect to the card and DVI pinholes (like on a card) for the display? j/c

(I figured as such, but that's what apple listed)

Welllll, that's Apple for ya I guess.

You mean the UltraSharp 2007FP I assume. I considered that, and the Viewsonic VX2025WM. I know the Dell has a better contrast ratio and added connectivity. I guess because the display I'm replacing is a 17" 1280 x 1024 Viewsonic VP171 with 400:1 contrast tatio which I'm very happy with (equal to the Cinema Display), I couldn't resist the slim aluminum construction, which will go well with the all-aluminum design of my rig I built, and the aluminum bench I'm designing to house it and all my other gear B-)

Oh I looked, and found, but not in PCI Interface (I forgot to mension that)

It's a laughable Radeon 7000 with 64MB (PN: 1024-9C02-00-SA) ... as I said before, not a gamer, I'm a poweruser ;-)

Well really for that, I'd said look towards the GF7 series PCI, they are rare as heck as is the GF6200 PCI, but they would likely fit the bill IMO. If you just need good 2D and no heavy 3D lifiting they'll do fine.

Google i your friends ;
http://www.entechtaiwan.com/util/ps.shtm

It's a very good tweak tool, and it's been around forever.

Exactly. Hmm, the page has been there since 2005, make me wonder how many people really look to their docs first?

j/c

Actually I have both an they're male-female I posted pics a while ago (the pics are on my laptop at home right now), The typically white ones are DVI to VGA to allow you to hook up a VGA monitor to DVI-I card (DVI-D won't have analogue female contacts to send info with nor the RAMDACs). The Blue VGA to DVI has all the DB-15 pins, and then all the DVI-I pins (I think it's single-link configuration only IIRC [don't want to bother unhooking my P260 right now]), however only the analogue holes have receiving female contacts for the analogue portion of the screen. I used to have a DVI-A cable for my workstation, but when we sswitched to dell we lost our AGP port and our SIS cards, and I had to get the VGA-DVI connector if I wanted to keep my 2 station switching capability (also handy with watching movies from laptop on 21" CRT instead of 17" LCD 8) ).

I understand, they are SSsssexy; but the reviews I've seen have favoured the DELLs, especially when working on PCs instead of MACs, surprisingly the colour fidelity favoured the DELL, maybe I shouldn't be too surprised cause while MAC-heads were yapping about the original CinemaHD's quality Iiyama was making a better LCD for photo/video editors. I know BenQ has some nice slim bezel ones, but haven'ts seen many reviews of quality for that model (just the big black ones).

Yeah that makes it infinitely harder, and it's understandable why you didn't find much. Truely your best bet at finding and using is the GF6200, unfortunately ATi does support the WS resolutions and Apple monitors better, but with Powerstip you should be fine. You can hack the .inf file for better nV support, or use regedit as well, just depends ojn how much fun you wanna have, especially if you might be dealing vith virtualization tools, not sure how well Powerstip will play with that.

It's a laughable Radeon 7000 with 64MB (PN: 1024-9C02-00-SA) ... as I said before, not a gamer, I'm a poweruser ;-)[/quote]

Yeah, but it's OK, it'll do the job for the most part (funny most new integrated is better though). However, just to poke fun at you, if you were a 'poweruser' you would've noticed the terrible 2D quality of the R7000 and yearned for the quality of the R8500LE-9200 for the awesomegra-pics (inside joke) the R7000 is ok, but really Matrox is the way to go. MatROX!

BTW, I wouldn't be surprised if the 8mb integrated ATi solution that usually comes on most Tyan boards isn't better than the R7000 but not by much, It's just too bad they don't put the X200 or GF6150 or even GMA 900/950 or future 965/3000 on server boards. Perfect fit IMO.

I couldn't find a GF7 PCI on a quick web search, but did (I think) find a GeForce 6200 PCI on eBay ... Is this what you mean?:

3D Fuzion Geforce 6200 128MB PCI

Yeah, Google even caught your mispelling...

but I wasn't looking for surge suppressors so I thought maybe it in fact had no "r" in it B-P

Do you mean in addition, or instead of using Powerstrip?
Do you think if I just use Powerstrip I shouldn't even need to change video cards?

haha, fair enough, but I never said I was super-impressed with the quality, I had other projects on my plate at the time and didn't have time to research what crappy PCI video card would be better than another crappy video card. My focus was on ditching my $50 PCIe video card for my $350 PCIe ARC-1210 and setting up the storage array ... then upgrading my home-brew water-cooling system with a Thermatron heat exchanger and an additional Eheim pump. It's nearly impossible to be a poweruser at everything all at once, but I try to get around to everything eventually B-)

Yeah like I said they are rare as heck, I've seen one other person link to one in the past and that was a while back in the Oblivion/ElderScrolls forum. The only one I found with a quick search was one a cnet which was falsely described as PCI but is in fact PCIe.

Yep.

Dang my feeble brain! Yes dyslexia (seriously) and keyboards are not my friends! D'oh!

Do you mean in addition, or instead of using Powerstrip?

That would be instead of. As in if you felt comfortable enough with the hacking you can just tweak it without 3rd part apps. Basically a trickier way but offers wider range of support.

Well it's worth a try. The R7000 is a very VERY weak card, but you probably wouldn't have a problem is it can truely support 16x12 already. I'm just worried about what are likely weak-A$$ TMDS on those cards.

Yes and in the battle of the PCI crap, Matrox always floats to the top.... umm.... wait that doesn't sound right, I want to praise them, gonna have to rephrase that later!

You see I think you're just not thinking big enough, TYAN make a nice Quad Opteron board with dual full 16X PEG slots, AND an 8X slot, now ther ya' go, Wunder-User, and with room for the glowing PCI fan!

Anywhoo, I personally thinnk the GF6200 would be a wise choice, but hey if you can save any money now to help you to your next build, sure why not try to get that R7000 working with PowerStrip (umm... yeah spelled it right this time), doesn't cost you anything to try when the monitor arrives, and worst case scenario if it doesn't work you just have to wait a few day for your new GF6200 to come in.

I've used a geforce ti4400 at 1680x1050 with the DVI connection. plug it in and go.

And that's the thing, it works for some, but not for others.

Heck they (nV) didn't even add support until last year (for any WS LCDs), and even now it seems pretty hit and miss.

Could easily swap to MSI's dual PCIe x8 board. Sell the other on ebay.

Bam. There are plenty FX cards that are PCI.

~Ibrahim~

P.S. Direct Link for the coolbits registry.