DVI vs. VGA

[cjosowski]

Being a bit dense as Ive had my computer for nearly a year and have just realised that i have DVI on my graphics card and LCD.

I was wondering what the benifits were of changing over to using DVI as the connection to the monitor bearing in mind that I'll have to shell out £10 for a DVI cable when I already have a fully working VGA cable.

Is there any advantage that makes it worth the £10.

Thanks for any help.

[RamonGTP]

From my own observations, i've noticed that DVI gives a sharper picture than the standard VGA connection does.

[rsfnatik]

If your display supports both DVI and VGA connections you could give the DVI a shot. Depending on the display/card/cable used you may or may not noticed much of difference tho.

[cjosowski]

I have a Sharp LL-T17A3-B LCD flat panel and ATI Radeon 9000 with 128mb.

I'd heard that the quality is a lot better but frankly i dont see how this can be the case?

Any and all opinions appreciated...

[fishybawb]

DVI's better because your LCD outputs a digital signal instead of a CRT's analogue one. Running it through the VGA connector means the signal gets converted from digital to analogue to digital again AFAIK.

[cjosowski]

Originally posted by fishybawb
DVI's better...

I've read that a few times on various websites but does better actually mean anything noticeable. I.E. is it worth going out and spending the money on a DVI cable for the fact that it is digital only and better?

[fishybawb]

I doubt if you'd notice a serious improvement really, if cash is tight I wouldn't bother.

[cjosowski]

I thought as much.

Cheers...

[Carrion]

i've seen me mate use his DVI though his tv and **** and unless like you've got a plasma or rear projection tv.....stick with the vga mate

[zybch]

Because the DVI is digital, many cards have extra filter capacitors on the DVI side of things because it won't decrease the image quality on a DVI-DVI connection.
However, if you use a DVI-VGA adaptor many people will find that the output is fuzzier because of the caps.