Display problems with Apple Cinema display

[The Dave 3000]

I have a 23" apple cinema display connected to my PC running an ATI Radeon
9800 graphics card. The monitor works beautifully and is plugged into the
DVI port on the card. I am running the monitor at 1920x1200 resolution in
Windows and it looks fantastic. When checking the display properties in the
card I see that I can ramp the resolution all the way down to 640x480 - and
when set to this mode works just fine with the monitor.

Here is the problem...

At bootup, the Apple Cinema display will not display the Windows XP boot up
screen. Instead, it just goes through a phases of alternating dark screens
and the first image I see is the blue "welcome" screen inside Windows XP and
then the log in screen. Why this is a problem is because it appears I can't
see anything at a resolution lower than 640x480. The boot up screen and the
disk utility screens for windows (chkdsk /f) are set to 320x240 I believe.
That means if I run a chkdsk /f I cannot see any of the activity on that
screen at reboot. More importantly, when I updated to new video drivers it
left me with only a dark screen. I had to connect the PC up to a CRT manual
before I could get an image and set the settings back to a display setting
that would work with the apple cinema display.

3 questions:

1. Has anybody else experienced this and know of a work around?
2. Is this a limitation of the monitor or of my video card?
3. Does anybody know if Vista is going to also utilize low resolution
screens at boot up in 320x240 mode?

Thanks in advance for any help/info you can offer.

 

[mmedic123]

I have the same setup (Dell Dimension 8300 with RADEON 9800 non PRO)
and I am seriously considering to buy Apple Cinema 23" LCD monitor
within the next week. I wanted to see if you would be willing to share
your experience with the display. What is the monitor like? Is the
display just as good as when plugged into the Mac? What are the
downsides (besides the price) etc. Anything you are willing to share
and you think may be important.

I would very much appreciate the response.

Thanks!

 

[The Dave 3000]

The Apple 23" cinema display is absolutely stunning on the PC. It looks
better on the Mac using the aqua graphics interface built into OS X, but it
still looks very good on Windows XP. Apple uses some of the finest screens
available in their monitors, so you definitely get what you pay for with
this monitor. The only downsides are the problem that I listed in the
newsgroup. That being I have not been able to get the monitor to show a
display in resolutions below 640x480. Since the Windows boot screen (and
some diagnostic screens) run in 320x240, I am unable to see those on this
monitor. I am not sure whether it is a limitation of the graphics card or
the monitor. By the way, I have the ATI Radeon 9700 and not the 9800 as
mentioned in my post. The only other thing to know is that the monitor MUST
be plugged into a DVI port on the back of your graphics card. A VGA to DVI
adapter will NOT work. Apple has dropped the prices on their monitors so
you've picked a good time to pick one up. Enjoy.