Disadvantages of switching from DVI to VGA adapter

[Kunal_R.One]

I am planning to buy a new Sapphire Radeon X1950Pro AGP graphic card. The problem is that I still use a CRT monitor which is of resolution 1280 X 1024. This monitor has a VGA connection while the Sapphire Radeon X1950Pro AGP graphic card has primary output as DVI port. I will be using secondary VGA port to get the output on my CRT monitor. I wanted to ask if there will be any loss of quality if I use VGA output for a high end graphic card, I mean the primary output is DVI and all the main resources will be focused on them.

[Badrinath]

DVI stands for Digital Video Interface which is best for controlling digital technology based displays like LCDs, LEDs and Plasma. It provides the high bandwidth on the display which is responsible for high quality of graphics and detailing. This high bandwidth provides function to convert the video data stream to an analog signal. This is used for clean movements to be displayed on the screen. It is not easy technically to transfer high resolution analog signals in VGA port across wires of any kind, distance and size. Color information keeps changing phase slightly time to time, luminance loses its reference and change in amplitude is noticed. So due to this achieving a high resolution is not possible. The circuits in the system required in processing of signals is expensive and inaccurate compared to processing and transmitting square waves which control bits in a digital video data stream. To reduce this cost and increase the quality, many display unit developers are going digital. The DVI-I connector's four holes are possible to be routed through the adaptor into the VGA pins of any older monitor's cables without conversion or noticeable distortion at all, it's just a jumper to match the VGA cable. Every time you convert a signal from digital (DVI) to analog (RGB) or vice versa you are going to get some signal loss. This will not be noticed by the naked eye as it happens so quickly. DVI-D which is all new graphic cards use nowadays, have a dual DVI connectors on my graphic card which allows me to have higher resolutions such as a 30" monitor resolution of 2560x1600 or higher. DVI I supports 1920x1200 as the maximum value.