I need advice !

[nick25]

OK, I've been reading around for ages and am still not sure what to do. Here is my situation:

Budget is £1400

I want a LCD('s)

Will be building a whole new system (FX, SLI - nf4 etc) in January and I need the monitor sorted by the end of Jan (although due to January sales I may buy the monitor early Jan).

I don't currently have a tv (started uni in sept) and to save space I was planning on having a digital tv card in my pc - this would also act as a PVR.

Will be using computer for, as already stated, digital tv, watching DVD's, gaming, light photoshop use, office apps (word etc), internet browsing.

Intergrated speakers are not important as I'll be using audigy 2 ZS coupled with logitech Z-5500 5.1 speakers.

Would prefer to keep to DVI - so I'm guessing 2 monitors max (don't really want to buy a PCI graphics card)

Please can you give me opinions on what to do, I keep thinking im set on one particular monitor then i change my mind. Also what is watching digital tv like on a computer monitor - does it looks a bit funny if I were running 1920x1200 res for instance?

Thanks, Nick.

 

[dillingerdan]

OK, I've been reading around for ages and am still not sure what to do. Here is my situation:

Budget is £1400

I want a LCD('s)

Will be building a whole new system (FX, SLI - nf4 etc) in January and I need the monitor sorted by the end of Jan (although due to January sales I may buy the monitor early Jan).

I don't currently have a tv (started uni in sept) and to save space I was planning on having a digital tv card in my pc - this would also act as a PVR.

Will be using computer for, as already stated, digital tv, watching DVD's, gaming, light photoshop use, office apps (word etc), internet browsing.

Intergrated speakers are not important as I'll be using audigy 2 ZS coupled with logitech Z-5500 5.1 speakers.

Would prefer to keep to DVI - so I'm guessing 2 monitors max (don't really want to buy a PCI graphics card)

Please can you give me opinions on what to do, I keep thinking im set on one particular monitor then i change my mind. Also what is watching digital tv like on a computer monitor - does it looks a bit funny if I were running 1920x1200 res for instance?

Thanks, Nick.

You wouldn't need a PCI card for 4 Monitors if you have SLI, surely! I can't really help you with the monitor thing mate, but I can with the PVR/TV card. I have the Hauppauge WinTV PVR250 card which is superb, it has an MPEG/MPEG2 encoder/decoder on the board which takes all the load off the processor when recording which is ultra handy, for multi-tasking. I haven't had a problem with it except the CD I got with the card wouldn't load in my CD drive at all, to which I emailed Hauppauge and they sent me a new disc through the post within a few days.

I don't know if it has actually been discontinued as it was hard enough trying to find like 8 months ago when I got it, Aria.co.uk and savastore.com both stocked it if I remember, but it is top notch and a quality product, that I could not recommend more. I hope this helps mate.

 

[nick25]

Thanks for the heads up about the TV card. What res do you watch TV at?

About more than 2 monitors with SLI - I want to connect them via DVI not VGA and I think there are just 1 DVI and 1 VGA per card.

I'm thinking perhaps two 20" DELL 2005FPW widescreen LCD's

 

[dillingerdan]

Thanks for the heads up about the TV card. What res do you watch TV at?

About more than 2 monitors with SLI - I want to connect them via DVI not VGA and I think there are just 1 DVI and 1 VGA per card.

I'm thinking perhaps two 20" DELL 2005FPW widescreen LCD's

It's an odd res of 760*480 or something like that, all the Hauppauge software uses the same default res, which I think is the highest, still looks great Full-screen on my 1600x1200 CRT desktop though. And again, SLI'd 6800U's should have 4 DVI ports as 6800U AGP cards mostly had 2 DVI, unless you going for GTs? I wish I had enough money for 2x 20" TFT's, but then until my 19" CRT iiyama dies, or I get lots of money I won't upgrade, it's a great monitor and I like it for now.

 

[nick25]

Does anyone know whether you can plug in LCD TV's via DVI into the PC and get digital tv from the digital TV PCI card as well as recording to the HD. Also would I be able to have the sound coming out of my pc speakers which are via a audigy 2ZS card instead of the TV as my pc speakers would be better quality. I'm thinking about a toshiba 27" LCD TV and then have a 20" Dell as the main computer monitor.

I worry that the high res of a normal computer monitor won't suit DVD's and TV.

 

[Psykotik]

You may want to confirm, but I think that there's a problem regarding multiple monitor support with SLI cards.......

 

[nick25]

Really? Do PCIe 6800u's have two DVI ports or just one? If two I could plug the two monitors into the same graphics card.