Technical question re: macbook pro -- need help googling..

[Wayne]

Hi guys,

Up until last night, I had the new macbook pro hooked up to an LG 20" monitor, ergo keyboard, and external mouse. Essentially, using it like a desktop system...

The problem is, the display on the monitor was "flickery", had horrible color depth, and was -- compared to the native display -- rather blurry.

I took the monitor back to Best Buy and returned it, because it was pretty much a low-end model, thinking perhaps the fact that it would only handle 1400 x 900 at 60Hz was the monitor's fault.

My intention was to come "home" (hotel), do research and find a more suitable monitor which could push both the appropriate (80-85) Hz, or the appropriate color depth to look even comparable to my old 20" iMac.

Once upon a time, I recall that you could research a monitor and it would give you a resolution that it could handle, as well as the refresh rates possible. That no longer appears to be the case, so now I'm wondering if the monitor wasn't really the problem.

The macbook pro has a GeForce 9400M chipset with 256MB. Whether shared or discrete, dunno, but I'm betting shared.

I tried all night to find info on what rates the little beast would push out the external mini DVI port and whether using a VGA or DVI cable made any difference, but could use some help if anyone knows where to find such info.

In the meantime, I've disconnected both keyboard and mouse and while I could use the extra screen real estate for graphics design and gaming, I seem to be just fine operating the laptop like an actual laptop..

Go figure.

 

[JoBBo]

Up until last night, I had the new macbook pro hooked up to an LG 20" monitor, ergo keyboard, and external mouse. Essentially, using it like a desktop system...

The problem is, the display on the monitor was "flickery", had horrible color depth, and was -- compared to the native display -- rather blurry.

Did you connect the monitor via a VGA or DVI adapter? If you used VGA, this could definitely explain blurriness and flickering.

I took the monitor back to Best Buy and returned it, because it was pretty much a low-end model, thinking perhaps the fact that it would only handle 1400 x 900 at 60Hz was the monitor's fault.

My intention was to come "home" (hotel), do research and find a more suitable monitor which could push both the appropriate (80-85) Hz, or the appropriate color depth to look even comparable to my old 20" iMac.

With regard to TFT monitors, 60 Hz is standard and there should be no flickering at all. (CRT monitors are a different story.) The reason why new LCD TVs sometimes have much higher Hertz rates is to avoid "juddering" when you are viewing action-packed scenes with rapid camera movements. For desktop computers, this should not matter much which explains why even extremely expensive high-end TFT monitors only run at refresh rates between 60 and 70Hz.

The macbook pro has a GeForce 9400M chipset with 256MB. Whether shared or discrete, dunno, but I'm betting shared.

I tried all night to find info on what rates the little beast would push out the external mini DVI port and whether using a VGA or DVI cable made any difference, but could use some help if anyone knows where to find such info.

You should always use DVI if possible.

In the meantime, I've disconnected both keyboard and mouse and while I could use the extra screen real estate for graphics design and gaming, I seem to be just fine operating the laptop like an actual laptop..

Go figure.

Using an external keyboard and mouse with a small 13 inch laptop display does sound somewhat unergonomical so I am sure it was the right decision.

 

[Glaucus]

I was under the impression that all LCD screens run at multiples of 60Hz. Either way, you'll never see a flicker from a 60Hz screen, the higher Hz screens (120Hz, 240Hz) are best suited, as stated above, to reduce some issues with panning shots and such (which btw can also be reduced by response time: my 60" Sony is 60Hz but with a 2.5ms response time has fluid motion similar to a 120Hz TV). LCD doesn't really have a refresh rate anyway, so the flicker we all experienced from those torturous (yet still lovable) 1084 monitors is long gone.

If you ever plan to watch film based movies (bluray or DVD) on a monitor, 120Hz or 240Hz is the way to go as movies are recorded in 24 frames her second, which does not divide nicely into 60, meaning some kind of mucking around is required to make a movie look good on such a display. This mucking around (3:2 pulldown) is pretty good but far from perfect (most noticeable as jerkiness when scrolling credits at the end of the movie). 120Hz is divisible by 30 AND 24, which means 3:2 pulldown is not required. So if you're shopping for a monitor and you plan to watch film based movies on it, it may be worth your while to pay a little extra for the 120Hz model.

Back to your situation. Check cables and if it still does it, your video card is cooked.