I always thought it was something to do with my crappy monitor (Smasung Syncmaster 551s) that stopped me getting anything other than a 640X480 resolution out of my desktop (IBM NetVista). However, i recently upgraded the monitor to an flat panel and realised that it must actually be down to the PC itself.

How can I upgrade the PC to up the resolution? A friend suggested a video card (PCI) but I am unsure if this is right and / or which one to get.

Can anyone help???

cheers and have a happy new year

D

It's (most likely) as you say, not your monitor but either your graphics card or driver setup or something therein.

What OS do you use?
What Graphics card is installed?
Have you got the latest drivers for your card?

Happy New Year anyhow

I've had a look inside and it would appear to not have a graphics card at all - I'm assuming it is using some thing on the motherboard.

Looking through the setting, there is not graphics card listed.

I'm pretty convinced that I need to get a card and run the monitor off that - any reccomendations?

There is a 128MB Saphire card going on Amazon at the mo for £32 but I think this might be a bit too much for what I need - I'm not a gamer but do play dvd's through my machine...

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/...634305-7522817

cheers and happy new year to you also!!

D

That is a good general card.
I dont know the price as I'm in US $.

Important tho is that it is an AGP card, not a PCI card.
The AGP is preferable as long as you have an open AGP slot.
If not you will need to do with a PCI.

Here are some others from ATI

http://www.ati.com/products/multimedia.html


.

thanks guys - a mate of mine just handed me a spare 256MB AGP card - probably a little beefy for my needs but it will certainy do.

It is all working fine now - just a few issues reading this font with my ridiculous resolution now!!

Probably was your graphics card. To improve resolution you could have gone into Control Panel, then Display settings and reduce the colour from say true colour to 64bit or 256 coulours etc i.e. reducing the colour allows the resolution to be increased.