DVI Advantage?

[kingofbongo]

Hey anantechers,

I understand DVI is a digital video input and that usually results in a better image quality. Does the video card usually have to work excessively more (resulting in worse system performance) for non-dvi output?

Could somebody explain physically what is the difference between digital and analog? Is analog a serial output whereas digital is a parallel, it's a little confusing.

I'm debating if I should get a lcd monitor with dvi output or not.

 

[Lonyo]

DVI supposedly offers better signal quality resulting in a better picture on an LCD monitor.

Analogue is like a wavy line (look at a 8.wav file, its gt a "rough" curve to it, it's analogue, and has noise) whereas digital has on or off, so the signal is much cleaner (it lacks all the noise and stuff that goes inbetween the 2 states) and this can result in a cleaner, better quality signal.

Normally a card has a conversion type thing to convert between digital and analogue output, but neither performs worse than the other.

If you get an LCD, usually a DVI port will give the best image quality, but some DVI ports are not up to standard (ie: they ack the power to display some resolutions), so if th DVI port doesn;t work, plug in your LCD to the VGA port, it should be fine, but may have slightly worse piccie quality.

To give an example of digital/analogue, think tapes and CD's or Videos and DVD's.

Tapes have the awful hissing in the background because they are analogue (same with vinyl) whereas CD's are free from it, because they are digital and have a much cleaner signal.
The difference is less when it comes to monitors, so don't be scared about putting an LCD into a VGA port, but it's probably better to use the DVI as it's really what it's for.

 

[kingofbongo]

Thanks for the explanation. Much clearer now =)