I have a computer with on board graphics which has been connected to a 17" CRT. I want to move it to another desk where I have other monitors so in order to save space and weight I bought a HANNS-G 20" LCD. It's a wide screen with max res of 1600x900 which is where I'm running it. It's not terrible, but not as crisp as the monitor or my other 20" LCD's. I'm sure the problem is that I have it hooked up to an analog (D-sub) output, which is all my mobo has. All I use this for is browsing and spreadsheets, and TradeStation charts. I want to buy a graphics adapter with HDMI out which I think will improve the image quality and I'm trying to decide whether to get an internal one or an external one. So what are the pros and cons of internal vs external for my situation. The computer is Intel E5200 duo with 2GB of ram. Thanks in advance for your help.
Internal offers a much wider selection than external options, not to mention relatively less for what you want to do. I picked up a Radeon 3450 with an HDMI output for under $50 in town, and if you look online it should be cheaper. If you had a laptop, an external graphics solution would be what you'd have to look at. You'll need to check your PC's specs to know what expansion slots you have, but as long as you have a free x16 PCIe slot to use, any of these will do just fine.
Thanks for the recommendations. Since I made the posts I've had a change to look more closely at the differences between my old montors with the DVI input from a graphics card and the new monitor running analog from the mobo onboard video, and for almost everything I've looked, at I can barely see any difference. So, I'm just going to keep what I've got for now. Thanks, Tom
