VGA or DVI

[Robbob]

Hi Folks,

I am considering buying a new system but am a little confused.
Most systems seem to come with a graphics card with DVI out, yet equally most of these systems seem to come with VGA only LCD screens.
What is the point in having a DVI card and an Analogue screen?
I am not a game player, I just use my pc for standard stuff, surfing and a bit of photo editing. Is it worth upgrading to a DVI screen. What are the pros & cons please?

Rob

[jeffacake]

DVI definitely.
Why not use the technology if its available at no extra cost

[Ripper]

Your just future proofing yourself with a DVi connection - the manufacturers normally chuck in a DVI to analogue dongle anyway so you can continue to use yr analogue screen with your DVI output!

[wmsteele]

Generally I have found that I get a better quality picture with a DVI connection. Also as already said VGA ports on the latest graphic cards are disappearing in favour of DVI connections.

[Robbob]

I wonder why pc manufacturers supply analogue TFTs with their systems then, presumably to keep the cost down?

[abeacock]

VGA monitors are cheap than DVI.
DVI is better quality as it's digital all the way.
Most gfx card manufacturers provide DVI->VGA dongles with their cards so it's the cheaper option.

If your GFX card support DVI, get a DVI monitor.

[tigerboyce]

it will be best to have both card and screen the same type and DVI is better. Its likely that it wont really matter i was supplied with converter dongles with the Card

[Pob255]

I am not a game player, I just use my pc for standard stuff, surfing and a bit of photo editing. Is it worth upgrading to a DVI screen. What are the pros & cons please?

You're not going to notice any differnce at all.
The only real reasons for going to DVI are for slightly faster responce rates of DVI for highend gameing
True colour correction for professional level image work.
Up to 9 meter cable lengths for highres feed with 0% signel loss.

As people have said, most cards come with a dongle that converts the DVI to d-sub, which would be fine for your needs.
The other thing to note is that DVI is becomeing far more common on low end cheap monitors. (although a DVI cable is often not supplied with cheap monitors)

If you get a DVI cable make sure you get a DVI-I cable not a DVI-D or DVI-A Otherwise you may get feed problems.
Also go for Dual Link if possible.

http://www.datapro.net/techinfo/dvi_info.html

[03peacheym]

I had VGA switched to DVI Made a world of difference. Id go with DVI.

[Pob255]

It's normal for LCD monitors, whether you're using DVI or VGA input, to have some tens of milliseconds of "input lag", as they buffer the incoming data in their panel driver hardware. This doesn't make the image blur, but it does make LCDs that much slower than a pure analogue monitor to get an image onto the screen. This can affect audio/video sync in movie playback, and make games feel slightly more sluggish too, but not everybody can notice the difference. I'm pretty good at spotting, and being annoyed by, minor lip-sync problems in video; most people don't seem to notice errors below 100ms.

(I also guarantee you that most people will notice the difference a great deal more if they think they've got a "slow monitor" than if they actually have got one, but have never heard of input lag. And yes, in case you were wondering, 30ms of monitor input lag does make something of a nonsense of gamers' rabid attempts to scrape that last few milliseconds off their ping time with special routers and TCP/IP tweaks.)

Input lag ought to be slightly worse for "VGA" input, since the monitor has to turn the analogue VGA signal into digital before it can even start buffering it. VGA also cannot, theoretically speaking, be as accurate to the video card's orders as digital-all-the-way DVI. In practice, though, it's seldom easy to tell the difference even with two monitors next to each other showing the same content. Unless your VGA cable's lousy, it's next to impossible to tell the difference if you're switching between modes on the one screen, even at quite high resolutions.

Source http://www.dansdata.com/askdan00009.htm

I've run some tests on both my cheap 17" Edge10 and on a pricey 20.1" Viewsonic VP2030b
Both of these have both VGA and DVI inputs
Tested on an old Fx5200, Radeon 97000Pro and a geforce 6800

On the Edge10, visable differnce on 2d: None, no bluring, no differnce in colouring.
On the Viewsonic VP2030b, visable differnce on 2d: Slight, no bluring, Colours not quite the same tone.

[Mithrandir]

If you're not gaming then it doesn't matter which you use.
There is very little (if any) difference at all.

The quality of the cable matters more!