DFP and DVI-I

[Goose21]

Hello, I have a Viewsonic VPD150 flat panel monitor and it uses a MDR-20 pin DFP connection with an ATI XpertLCD video card. Well, since this card only has 4 MB of video Ram, I thought that it would be a good time to upgrade my video card. I know I can make my monitor compatible with DVI by using an adapter but the only ones that I can find are DFP to DVI-D. Which I thought made sense because DFP is all digital and DVI-D is all digital. Anyway, Since most cards use DVI-I, is a DVI-D connector compatible with a DVI-I receptacle on the video card? I don't want to spend money for an adapter and video card and find out it won't work with my monitor. That would not be good. I'm thinking of getting a Geforce 3 Ti 500. My comp specs are 320 MB of Pc100 SDram, 750Mghz PIII, winXP Pro. Will my processor be a bottle neck? Also I saw that the new Geforce 4 cards require a 300 or higher Power Supply. I only have a 250 Watt. I know Power supplies are fairly cheap but I really don't want to get a new power supply just so I can get a Geforce 4. That is one of the reasons I was heading towards the Geforce3 ti500, it says that you only need a 250W. I know its not top of the line anymore but it sure as hell will be better then what I have now. Any information at all will be greatly appreciated. I've gone to a lot of websites trying to find out but they really don't say straight out whether or not it will work. My logic was that since DVI-I accepts analog and digital signals, that it would just use the 24 pins and not worry about the 5 pins used for analog. Please someone help me. Thanks

 

[Peter]

DVI-I is the universal output. They have both the analog and digital signal on. What you plug in there always is analog OR digital.

The DVI plug's physical design prevents you from plugging stuff together that won't work together. This is what the crosshair/blade thingie in the connector is for - DVI-D device plugs have a vertical blade, analog ones have a horizontal one. Graphics card outputs have matching receptacles - DVI-I output has a crosshair shaped one to take either.

regards, Peter