Perhaps the most important issue facing a gamer in the market for an LCD screen, is that of scaling. LCD's are built to display one resolution pixel-perfect, and every other resolution must be either shown in a small section of the screen, or scaled up to fit the screen. It is mathematically impossible for this scaling to be perfect, or even close to it. This means if your graphics card isn't quite up to the task, you cannot just lower the resolution without losing a lot of visual quality. To get the most out of 19" or larger display with the latest games, you will need a high end graphics card.

Some resolutions scale better than others, for example 800 x 600 looks fine on a 1600 x 1200 screen, as it is exactly half the size. This means it is not absolutely essential to have a fast graphics card to go with your big LCD if you are only a casual gamer, but if you take your fragging seriously, you must have a card to match the screen.

DVI - just another three letter acronym?

DVI, or digital video input as it stands for, has been around for a good many years now, but displays supporting it have been thin on the ground. Modern TFT monitors are entirely digital, so it doesn't make sense to convert a digital signal at the computer into analogue in the graphics card, and then back to digital in the monitor.

With a DVI connection, the data is transmitted in a lossless digital form. This means the image can be replicated on screen with pixel perfection, exactly the way the computer intended. There is also no signal degradation, so problems such as moiré patterns and colour bleeding should be entirely eliminated.

From a technical standpoint, the little blue D-SUB connector we have known and loved for over 20 years is obsolete and should have gone the way of the floppy disk long ago. Of course, something being technically better isn't enough to sway the mass market. When you use the supplied VGA cable with an LCD monitor, it can lock onto the analogue signal and will flawlessly convert the analogue signal back to digital, with no data corruption at all. Using a blind test, we could not tell the two apart.

With this in mind, DVI remains expensive and optional. Most graphics cards now have at least one DVI output, but many LCD monitors do not include a DVI input. Some displays have a DVI socket but expect you to buy the cable separately. DVI support is only found on the most expensive professional CRT monitors, which has helped prevent DVI replacing VGA as the industry standard.

Because of the expense and lack of tangible benefits, DVI should not be much of a priority for LCD buyers.

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