DVI or Analogue SVGA video?

[brucek]

My Sony monitor (flatscreen 18" with LCD display) offers both as input options, and my ATI Radeon 9800 Pro (128M) offers both as outputs. I've tried using both formats. The traditional SVGA offers much higher resolutions than the 1280*1024 that the DVI does, although I must say that I don't like the higher res as my toolbar disappears, until I get to 1600*1200, where I get an "out of scan" error on my monitor. I do note that the SVGA has much better contrast and color rendition (brighter colors) for a given setting of monitor controls, but appears to be a softer picture (still very acceptable though).What is the comparible pros and cons of these 2 modes? Is there any performance hit in either mode that is significant, and should either mode be a better quality?I have always used the DVI mode, but today thought I would try the SVGA mode.Thanks, Bruce.

[Guest Edwin]

Hi Bruce,With a 18" LCD, the native resolution should be 1280x1024. The higher resolutions that you are seeing with your SVGA connection are just simulated by the LCD (cramming more than one pixel's "information" into one pixel on the monitor), so the quality should be quite poor.And the quality is made all the poorer by the fundamental difference between DVI and SVGA (which is the crux of your question). With DVI, the video signal from your computer to the monitor is digital (1's and 0's) and hence, there is theoretically absolutely no signal degradation as the signal passes from your video card to the monitor. With SVGA, the signal is analog and so the signal could be degraded as it travels through the cable to your monitor. To put it simply, DVI is theoretically the better option.With most monitors, especially 18" and up, DVI should be noticeably better. However, individual monitors may exhibit the opposite behavior if the DVI implemention is poor. Besides, video quality is always quite subjective.To be practical, you should try 1280x1024 (your monitor's native resolution) on the DVI connection first. That *should* yield the best performance from your monitor. If you are unsatisfied, then experiment with the various combinations (different resolutions and DVI vs. SVGA).Hope this helps.Edwin

[brucek]

Hi Edwin,Thanks for the advice and quick response, much appreciated.I agree that DVI is a higher sharpness, although the "richer" color in SVGA surprized me. And so much of this is subjective, as you say.Thanks again,Bruce.