Is GDI Rendering The Way Foward??

[lettuce]

(Didnt know if this was best suited to either the Software or Monitor/Video forum so have posted in both)

Am considering starting work on another cab (this will be my 3rd in the space of 4 years) and this time strongly thinking of going with either a PC LCD monitor or LCD TV! You may ask why id want to steer away form a traditional CTR arcade monitor or (in the case of my 2nd cab) a CTR TV using scart!?. Well here in the UK its damn hard to get a CTR multisync aracde monitor, with only really 2 companies, Hantarex & Pentranic, supplying us with anything that we can use in a MAME cab, there are others but are stupidly priced or not large enough, saying that Hantarex  just quoted me £415 odd for their 25" (rought $850 for you US forumites) Multisync monitor and they are running down their stock of CTR monitors now , which seems to be a trend happing all over? Also along with Scart TVs not being quite as versatile as a multisync arcade monitor, (though i will add that using the ArcadeVGA card the display results are the same as a Aracde monitor) some screen resoultions & refresh rates dont work to well on a TV, though the majority of them do, vertical games being cropped thus having to find a resolution that works (have found 352x288 seems to work best for me) add to this the lack of resolution you can get on a Frontend is also a compromisse.

Considering the above i think that i will use an LCD display of some type in my next cab alone with of course the ArcadeVGA card. I have been playing around with MameUI on my main pc which uses a Dell Ultrasharp 2407WFP 24in Widescreen Monitor and a Nvidia 8800 GT card, now obviously this isnt a ArcadeVGA card thus cant display the low resolutions and refesh rates as a ArcadeVGA so i wasnt too impressed with the results i was getting when using Direct Draw or Direct 3D options within mame. However when i selected GDI rendering option, the display was alot clearer and crisper that the other 2 rendering mode but still looked odd in the fact that the sprites on screen were very blocky, like no AA added at all ( i know u dont want any AA added to an arcade display but i hope you know what i mean), im guessing this was due to the screen res being in 1920x1200?

With the ArcadeVGA card now being compatable with Digital PC monitors, what sort of results can i expect from an LCD display and ArcadeVGA card, will i see proper aracde display, crisp and clear with no GFX processing over it, and is the GDI rendering mode the way to achive this on LCD displays?

[Minwah]

Also along with Scart TVs not being quite as versatile as a multisync arcade monitor, (though i will add that using the ArcadeVGA card the display results are the same as a Aracde monitor) some screen resoultions & refresh rates dont work to well on a TV, though the majority of them do, vertical games being cropped thus having to find a resolution that works (have found 352x288 seems to work best for me) add to this the lack of resolution you can get on a Frontend is also a compromisse.

If you can find the service mode code for the TV then you can adjust the size/position of the image, which should make more resolutions usable. Most FE's should be able to run at any available resolution.

IMHO this is much better than using an LCD display...