Monitor Compatability: Make Sure Your Flat Screen Works
When shopping for a new flat screen monitor, there are a few things that you need to look out for. If you aren’t upgrading your PC or video card with your monitor purchase, then you need to make sure that you buy a monitor compatible with your current video card. What does this mean? To start, you need to check the input options that your graphics card has. Depending on the age of your card, you may or may not have both VGA and DVI inputs. While a large percent of monitors come with a VGA connector, this isn’t a rule, and there are those that don’t have this port. Therefore, if your video card doesn’t have a DVI input, then you need to make sure that the monitor you are purchasing has a VGA connector, or you’ll find yourself in a world of trouble when you unpack your new monitor only to find it unusable.
You should also be on the lookout for the display ratio of the new monitor that you are purchasing. As we mentioned in one of our earlier posts, flat screen monitors perform at their best when used at their native resolution (you can use other resolutions should you choose to, but you won’t get the same quality as the native one). However, if your video card doesn’t support the monitor’s native resolution, then you may have a problem. While you may be able to live without using it, you might be faced with a slightly bigger problem: complete lack of picture. If your card doesn’t support the monitor’s native resolution, then you may be straight out of luck with using that monitor with that card. Therefore, we strongly recommend when buying a new monitor that you make sure the display ration is compatible with your current video card, unless you plan on upgrading that as well.
If you do need to buy a monitor where your video card doesn’t support the native resolution, then there are a few things you can look at to try and determine whether or not it will work. Basically, it will be dependent upon two things: the age of your video card, and the resolution of the monitor. The older your card and the bigger the resolution, the less chance you have of it actually working. So if your card is relatively new and the monitor isn’t huge, then you should be okay, but you still won’t get maximum performance. Bottom line, you should try and select a monitor that is completely compatible with your current computer.