About Me

I ramble about a number of things - but travel experiences, movies and music feature prominently. See my label cloud for a better idea. All comnments and opinions on this blog are my own, and do not in any way reflect the opinions/position of my employer (past/current/future).

02 March 2013

Cables matter ...

My Samsung T240 LCD monitor died a couple of weeks ago - not sure why; but it just did. They just don't seem to make it like they used to - my 10 year old Gigabyte LCD still works fine! South Africa doesn't have a lot of choices on LCD monitors - especially in the high resolution space. After all, I saw large 27" monitors with just a 1920x108 resolution. 

After going through a number of manufacturer websites, I established that only Dell seemed to sell high resolution (ie bigger than 1920x1080) monitors; but their 24" models in South Africa are 3 years old, but their 27" monitors are LED and a bit pricey. I eventually decided on the 27" U2713HM, which only took a day to arrive instead of the advertised 2 - 3 weeks!

Connecting up the monitor with my old Samsung DVI-D cable however, I did not get the full resolution - any resolution over 1920x1080 was just snowed out - very disconcerting after spending so much for a high resolution monitor. It was not the graphics card, as the VGA cable could output a higher resolution (though not the maximum); and the graphics card advertised full resolution. So I changed over to the identical looking Dell cable, and it worked - crystal clear picture at the highest resolution of 2560x1440! 

I had always been suspicious of the claims that some cables - especially AV cables - are better than others. It seems that, at least for DVI-D cables, there is something different!

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