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DVI-D and OS Support

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First post, by mattlacey

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I've got an NEC MultiSync EA912M that I purchased because it supports 15KHz VGA modes which is useful for Atari machines. I was also using it with my old PCs via a KVM, though I realised that was the source of my horrible video signal, VGA direct is super crisp at 1280x2024, and works well in Windows 98 and in BeOS R5 (where I can even run that res at 80Hz, above the specs in the manual).

Without the KVM though, it's a pain to switch, but since my current old PC has DVI (GeForce 2 GTS) and so does the monitor, I dug out a cable to try that out. BIOS shows fine, but neither Windows nor BeOS will run anything above 800x600 when using that cable - anything else and the monitor just says out of sync. I don't think I ever used DVI ports back in the day (straight from VGA to HDMI), I know there's different specs and some are analogue only, but based on the card's connected I assumed it'd be using digital. Is this likely just poor support from my card/ monitor, a dodgy cable (though I've tried two with the same results) or software? I assumed it was handled entirely by the card and transparent to the OS, but we know what the thing is with assumptions 😀

Reply 1 of 6, by Matth79

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DVI has single link and dual link, if there is a block of pins missing, that is single link - Though I thought single link could do more than 800x600

Reply 2 of 6, by mattlacey

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Ah, so I just dug deeper, found a post from 2002, and from there found a site via archive.org. Turns out my card never properly supported DVI!

It's quite an interesting read at any rate: https://web.archive.org/web/20020806180604/ht … 3d.com/dvi.html

I always ran this card via VGA when it was new, and occasionally on a TV via the s-video output. I guess I need to look into a VGA switch or better KVM that doesn't cause ghosting.

Reply 3 of 6, by Halofiber86

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I think I have had the situation that you have when I was linking the S3Virge card via the VGA to the flat Samsung 940N monitor. I have just upgraded the S3 from 2Mb to 4Mb and was trying to get some higher resolutions with some higher colour settings. However, the Samsung was unable to show that. I have resorted to purposely getting a 1600x1200 full-size CRT monitor, and then I've got my higher resolutions. I felt like the HSync-Vsync combinations given by the old card were mostly not supported by the new flatscreen monitor, whereas they were perfectly fine with the old CRT one (for which the S3Card was originally designed).

If that could be of any help in this case, I'm currently using a similar FX5200 card DVI output through a DVI->HDMI cable on my modern HP 27ea monitor.
Many resolutions are available in Windows 98 and Windows 2000. However, when I apply the certain high resolution that I assume should be totally available, the monitor seems to reject it, I think I remember it's giving me something like "out of sync" message. So I have some resolution options that do work and some that do not, not everything.

So I may humbly suggest you try all what's available in Desktop options one by one, like I did. Maybe you'll stumble upon something that can be acceptable.
However, I myself has failed to get anything hi-res from the 4x3 Samsung 940N.

Reply 4 of 6, by Kalle

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Interesting indeed. Back in the day I had a GeForce 2 GTS with DVI (the Hercules 3D Prophet II GTS 64 MB) and it worked fine with my Philips Brilliance 150P (15,1 LCD monitor) using DVI.
But I do remember having had out of sync messages by the monitor once in a while, not sure how it was fixed, I think I had to boot into safe mode or so. But in general, 1024x768 was fine.

Reply 6 of 6, by smtkr

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mattlacey wrote on 2025-06-16, 15:06:

Ah, so I just dug deeper, found a post from 2002, and from there found a site via archive.org. Turns out my card never properly supported DVI!

It's quite an interesting read at any rate: https://web.archive.org/web/20020806180604/ht … 3d.com/dvi.html

I always ran this card via VGA when it was new, and occasionally on a TV via the s-video output. I guess I need to look into a VGA switch or better KVM that doesn't cause ghosting.

My 3D Prophet II also doesn't function above 1024x768 with the DVI connector. Now, I already knew that early DVI implementations from the time were limited, but I wasn't sure about the cutoff. When I built my main retro machine, I intended to use the DVI connector with my 17" LCD (1280x1024 native), but soon found that the card couldn't properly drive the display at native resolution.

The thing that kind of sucks is that, prior to Geforce 4, nVidia board manufacturers were notorious for low quality analogue signals, so I was really hoping to use DVI to bypass that problem.

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