September 1998
More On Our Test Procedure
Our test platform was a Sony Vaio PCV-200 PC with a 233 MHz Pentium II processor and 23 MB SDRAM.
The monitors were connected to the PCV-200
with a splitter from Extron Technologies. The P/2 DA 6 Plus VGA splitter
let us view up to six monitors simultaneously. The splitter distributes
the video signal equally to the connected 15 pin D-sub monitor outputs.
The splitter was connected to an ImageAccel 4 PCI graphics board from
Cornerstone (San Jose, CA 800-562-2552) with a 64-bit engine and 8
MB of SGRAM memory. This board was released in May and sells for $250. It
supports resolutions up to 1,800 x 1,400 and refresh rates up to 92 Hz.
All of the monitors we tested were running at 1,600 x 1,200 at a 75 Hz
refresh rate.
The first step was setting up each display. Every monitor was put
through the Set Up Program within DisplayMate for a uniform set up
procedure. The program offers a series of images to fine-tune each
monitor using every available control.
Then we reviewed each monitor in the DisplayMate Video Obstacle Course
with our own Imaging Magazine test script, which generated our selection
of test screens. If a problem persisted, we isolated that monitor with a
direct connection to the PC (thereby eliminating the splitter as a
possible source of the problem). We would also try out the factory reset
(if available), which returns the monitor to its original default
settings. --Liz Levy
Main Article:
