LCD monitor plug question

[dfuze]

I was reading some reviews on Newegg (thinking about going dual 17" LCD) and people are saying to buy a seperate DVI cable. My current LCD (Samsung 712N) uses a DVI adapter to plug into my video card (7900GT). Would I get a better picture (not that I think it's bad now) if I got a pure DVI cable over the setup I have now?

 

[Slammy1]

VGA is less information, so conversion is a lossy venture. For example, you can downconvert a DVI signal to VGA quite easily with a simple adapter, going the other way requires some relatively expensive hardware.

 

[Golgatha]

The monitor only has 15pin VGA input. Therefore, what you have now is the best quality you'll get.

 

[jiffylube1024]

Originally posted by: dph1077
I was reading some reviews on Newegg (thinking about going dual 17" LCD) and people are saying to buy a seperate DVI cable. My current LCD (Samsung 712N) uses a DVI adapter to plug into my video card (7900GT). Would I get a better picture (not that I think it's bad now) if I got a pure DVI cable over the setup I have now?

No, you wouldn't get better picture because your monitor only supports VGA.

If you had a monitor with a DVI port (such as the Samsung 710T or countless others), then yes, having DVI would improve the picture quality.

Basically, DVI is a purely digital interface (it stands for [/b]"digital video interface"[/b]), while VGA is an analog connection. VGA approximates the (digital) signal it gets from the computer, whereas digital maps "perfectly" per pixel what the computer is processing.

Basically DVI allows for a clearer, sharper picture and better colour accuracy. Once you get an LCD monitor with DVI, you usually can't go back (you get used to the razor sharpness of text and image quality).

 

[Noema]

Originally posted by: jiffylube1024

Basically DVI allows for a clearer, sharper picture and better colour accuracy. Once you get an LCD monitor with DVI, you usually can't go back (you get used to the razor sharpness of text and image quality).

I agree. The difference is not exactly night and day, at least not in, say, a 17" LCD, but it's there.

I hadn't realized how good DVI looked until I showed a friend a website which included pictures comparing the theatrical, VHS, Laserdisc and DVD releases of Starwars. In my LCD, the difference was immense. There were details that were so obvious on the some releases that the contrast was astounding.

In his old VGA 17" CRT you could barely see the difference at all. It was just one muffled, blurry mess.

 

[xtknight]

I'd say it depends mainly on the quality of your graphics card's VGA output. Even with a 7800GT and VGA, text is slightly blurry though there's no difference in color contrast like there was with my 9500 PRO.