I can’t say enough good things about the Silicon Graphics 1600SW TFT display. Great in 1998, it’s great today; but like all SGI technology, it’s a bit weird (that’s not a bad thing). This isn’t a monitor you can just take home, plug in, and get to work. You have to understand it first. But it’s worth the effort, because even more than 10 years later, it doesn’t get any better than this.
For starters, the 1600SW has ultra-fast pixel refresh. Do you know that you usually have to worry about streaking and blurring, especially when you are playing video games, using a TFT screen? You won’t find it here. That’s what I mean by lfast pixel update.
But get this: they are still the only TFTs that will support a native 16:9 resolution. In case you don’t know what that means, producers/users can put two screens side by side full of work or projects without any problem. This also makes them much better than others for working with digital video. (I should note that one problem with this is that since this makes the native resolution 1600×1024 at 60Hz, anything else will look weird and wacky, and that may happen to you when you adapt the 1600SW to your machine ).
Now the 1600SW has a connector that is OpenLDI. When TFT was still in the development stage, everyone except SGI opted for the cheaper alternative: DVI. OpenLDI is more expensive, but superior. The ROI is much better than with DVI. In other words, you get what you pay for. There is usually a good reason why something is more expensive than an alternative to that something. I don’t think one should skimp on computer equipment, not even monitors.
However, this makes the connector and signal completely different, so you can’t connect it to a DVI card. Cards natively supported by the 1600SW are: 3D Labs Oxygen VX1-1600SW; Number Nine Revolution IV; and Formac ProFormance 3 (Mac card).
As for the machines that will natively support the monitor, there are three again, and they’re all made by SGI: SGI’s 320s; 540; and O2/O2+. In addition, they require a small adapter card about the size of a credit card to support the 1600SW. This card fits into the motherboard through a custom connector. An LVDS connector is provided for integrated graphics. These cards will also not work on any other machine.
So if you have a modern non-SGI machine, you can get an MLA (MultiLink Adapter) also made by SGI and get an LVDS output from a DVID or HD15 input. But there’s also the Pix Link adapter from PIX Solutions, which is a DVI to LVDS converter. My Pix Link has served me perfectly.
Then there is the PCI-based pass-through adapter card developed by the original lead engineer of the 1600SW development team, Dan Evanicky and Oscar Medina. The power here comes directly from the PCI bus. This is a convenient solution, too.
So while it’s not the simplest TFT to set up, the SGI 1600SW will give you a handsome return on your time and expense. You will thank yourself in the end.