VGA vs. DVI

You guys are about to get me straightened out on my video card, but I have another question. My monitor has a VGA cable. The card I am getting has a VGA and a DVI. Is the DVI only if you are hooking up to a television? I will be OK if I use the VGA on my computer monitor as far as getting Aero graphics in Win 7, correct? Thanks,

No its not for hooking upto a tv. My 52" samsung has a vga input and hdmi for pc not dvi, if your monitor has a DVI input you should use it.

DVI is better than VGA for TFTs because they are digital and VGA is analog. A TFT displayes its picture digitally, pixel per pixel. Via DVI the panel gets data for each pixel, so the picture generated in the graphics card will match exact with the pixels on the panel itself.

Not so with VGA. First, the picture is generated digitally in the graphics card. Then it's converted to analog. In the TFT they will be converted again to digital (=> senseless twice conversion => quality loss), using the phase and the clock, and it'll be calculated which pixel should display what color. As the phase and clock can't be adjusted so precisely that a pixel of a picture generated by the graphics card will be displayed by the appropriate pixel on the panel. Means that the picture will be interpolated a little bit, which again means quality loss.

The electron cannons of the CRT need analog signals, that's why VGA is the best for CRTs and DVI would make no sense here.
For TFTs, DVI is the best.

Urbwolf said:

No its not for hooking upto a tv. My 52" samsung has a vga input and hdmi for pc not dvi, if your monitor has a DVI input you should use it.

DVI is better than VGA for TFTs because they are digital and VGA is analog. A TFT displayes its picture digitally, pixel per pixel. Via DVI the panel gets data for each pixel, so the picture generated in the graphics card will match exact with the pixels on the panel itself.

Not so with VGA. First, the picture is generated digitally in the graphics card. Then it's converted to analog. In the TFT they will be converted again to digital (=> senseless twice conversion => quality loss), using the phase and the clock, and it'll be calculated which pixel should display what color. As the phase and clock can't be adjusted so precisely that a pixel of a picture generated by the graphics card will be displayed by the appropriate pixel on the panel. Means that the picture will be interpolated a little bit, which again means quality loss.

The electron cannons of the CRT need analog signals, that's why VGA is the best for CRTs and DVI would make no sense here.
For TFTs, DVI is the best.

That answers my question. I will double check and see if I have a DVI outlet. Thanks,

Thanks Urbwolf -- Not only does my monitor have a DVI outlet, I even found the cable in its unopened package. I am good to go.

I have a Samsung LN32A650 as well as a Pioneer PRO-151FD.

In both cases when using ATI Radeon 4850 cards, I have very good picture / text quality using VGA, but much poorer picture/text quality with HDMI.

I have never been able to resolve this issue and have noticed numerous people with the same problem.

So beware . Try both

I used DVI-D to HDMI to plug PC to 40" Samsung LCD TV also DVI-VGA as I can switch over via Nvidia Control Panel (Display 1 is DVI-VGA and Display 2 is DVI-HDMI) when I boot up Win 7 then it wont show Win 7 own logo if using HDMI cos MS limited on display size so I may try out the DVI-I (digital and analog to HDMI) afterward and see if it work with various display size -- I would say DVI is better for LCD monitor which is much crystal than VGA - I usual switch over to DVI-HDMI 1.3 that make very good picture in 1920x1080 (good colour, bright and smooth)