Got a brand new Dell 2005fwp 20" lcd and was wonder about the performance differnce between DVI and VGA cards?
Is it enough to justify the cost of replacing VGA with DVI?
Which is best card for DVI? (Tom'sHardware says ATI is most DVI complient card, but I heard linux like NVidia drivers the best)
Please Advise

Assuming you're just gonna put a converter on the end of the VGA, I don't believe that there's a big difference in frame rates. I think the difference comes in picture clarity, like the difference between HDTV and regular TV, you'll get a crisper picture. Not entirely sure on that, if someone else could back me up. As far as worth upgrading... it depends on how much difference the cards cost. If you're using Linux, and are going to be gaming, then like you said, NVidia is your best bet.

my LCD is hooked up to a vga port and its fine, I certainly wouldnt spend the money to upgrade to DVI

There is a huge difference between DVI and the old VGA ports. One main difference is that the edges of your screen are always perfectly lined up with the edge of the monitor. It never resizes, you dont need to resize it, and there is no need to auto adjust.

Very sharp, clear, better color, and better frame rates. The converter doens't count. You gotta have the real input to take advantage of this.

If you use linux, get a nvidia card. Don't even look at an ATI card.

DVI or vga has never seemed like a big deal to me, although if your card is old it might be worth upgrading anwyay. And if you bought a 20" lcd monitor, I think you might as well make it look as good as possible.

You should try and research your monitor. Some LCD's perform better with VGA inputs depending on what aspect you're looking for. It is true that you won't have to keep adjusting your monitor with a DVI interface, but there is a rather lengthy set-up process.

Basicly, you need to decide what you want to view on your monitor and weather the extra cost of DVI is worth it's benifits.

vga supports high resolutions >1600x1200, if that is an issue.

however, if you are veiwing higher resolutions than is native to the screen, you are just over rendering and cutting out some pixels anyway. I think.

yes, LCDs do best at their native resolution irregardless of the type of connection.

I did a bunch of research on LCDs a few weeks ago because my dad wanted me to pick one out for Christmas (I picked the Viewsonic VP201b because everyone said it was the best picture and least ghosting they'd seen on a 20" monitor), and it seemed every review from a reliable website gave the LCDs lower scores on analog (VGA) input than on digital (DVI) input. They commented that the picture quality is always better on DVI as well.

Personally, I'm big on making your display look as good as possible.. after all, it's what you look at the entire time you're using your computer.. regardless of what you've got under the hood. Anyway, I know I would get a new card for the DVI if I didn't have one already.

One thing to ask yourself about your LCD right now.. does it look freaking amazing right now with the VGA? If it doesn't, you want the DVI.. if it does, consider it anyway.

You don't really have to do much UPgrading to get DVI capability. I've got an old 64MB ATI Radeon card with DVI capability. I'm sure you can find a DVI solution for as cheap as $40.

I understand you probably would rather have a NEW card, but hey, something to think about if you're not going to be putting Doom 3 on this thing or something.

why would VGA support higher resolutions than the newer DVI connection?

my video card has dual VGA outputs, and it supports up to 2048xwhatever resolution, however my 17" flat glass monitor only supports up to 1600x1200, and that is the highest resolution that it will allow me to set. i used to play UT2004 at 1600x1200 and i can say the resolution was spectacular. i'm not saying it wont look better on an LCD... i'm just curious though, can DVI not display resolutions that high? i think that would be a make or break part of MY decision

As far as I know DVI and VGA should support the same resolutions. In fact, super ultra high resolution LCD panels are exclusivly DVI.

The only difference between a DVI and a VGA signal is that VGA is an analog while DVI is digital. There's a slight quality loss using VGA on a LCD monitor because it has to convert the analog backinto a digital signal.

The video signal generated by your video card starts out as a digital stream, which goes to a RAMDAC which converts it into an analog signal that CRT monitors can understand. When a LCD monitor recieves a analog signal, it converts it back into a digital signal that the panel understands how to display.

With DVI, the video card sends its signal in a digital format which goes straight to the LCD panel, bypassing the digital to analog to digital process. That gives DVI better quality, but the difference isn't huge. LCD monitors are really good at converting VGA signals nowadays.

My monitor also takes both but I try to use my DVI whenever possible because the VGA signal tends to produce diagonal scrolling lines in the image that are visible on large areas of a flat color (like this white text box) The DVI also keeps the image centered and it also provides much better color.

I would spend the cash to go to DVI otherwise the monitor is just going to bee converting it from anolog to digital and I think that we all know that almost nothing is a perfect conversion.