Need 2 Port KVM

[Quitch]

I am in the market to buy a 2 port KVM. It would need to support a five button mouse, and excellent picture quality is a must, as well as support 85Hz refresh rate at 1600x1200 (anything above that doesn't matter).

I don't know much about KVM's really, and am a bit confused as to the difference between a 200Mhz and 400Mhz video bandwidth (help?). Being a gamer I am concerned about this.

If possible I'd want one that supports 5.1 speakers, but I feel that's probably rather unlikely.

Any product reccomendations or useful reviews you can point towards would be greatly appreciated.

The KVM will see gaming use, so I would be looking for no loss in responsiveness... I don't know how good they normally are, or what price range I would need to look in to get this.

Oh, and it needs to be available in the UK

 

[Captain Chickenpants]

Video bandwidth is the speed of the pixelclock and directly affects the resolutions that will be supported 200MHz simply means 200 million pixels per second (note that this is independant of bitdepth). A mode of 1600x1200@85Hz requires a video bandwidth of 230MHz. The mouse should not be a problem (I beleive!) as the KVM should pass the mouse signals through unmodified.

I think they are actually surprisingly expensive for what boils down to a big switch (well they do have other stuff in there I guess). I think Belkin have a range of switchboxes.


CC

 

[Dio]

I use a pair of really cheap unbranded KVM's, but they only support PS/2 type connections.

The video quality at high res / refresh isn't particularly good - sufficiently so that one of the machines plugs into the second monitor input instead of the kvm, although it still switches the keyboard - although using high quality video cables rather than the cheapo naff stuff they provide makes an order of magnitude difference.

 

[Quitch]

What would constitute a high quality video cable? What should I look out for?

 

[Dio]

If it's about 1cm diameter, and has two yarking great ferrite cores about 5cm from the D-sub plug (about 2-3cm in diameter, usually), it's usually a decent cable.

If it's about 5mm diameter along its length with no ferrite coupling it's crap.