VOGONS


First post, by XTac

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Hey there,

I recently acquired a 4:3 Eizo LCD display, native resolution of 1600x1200. I have found out that analogue is actually superior to digital with that screen. Lower resolutions than native on full screen look much sharper and monitor allows you to adjust the image better, where as with digital low resolutions are blurry and pixelated. My "retro" computer has two graphic cards: HD 3850 AGP and Voodoo 3 PCI. Here is where my confusion starts - the monitor doesn't have VGA, only two DVI inputs. Voodoo 3 has VGA only - but VGA to DVI-A cables exist, and that seems to be the best option here. However, the HD 3850 doesn't have VGA either, so i need to make a analogue connection with DVI plugs at both ends. Unfortunately, cables with DVI-A at both ends are very rare if not impossible to find, i even doubt that they exist. DVI-I, which supports both digital and analogue could work, but i am unsure how will i be able to force analogue signal while pins for digital are present.

Do you have any recommendations for my situation here? I want both my cards to run on analogue signal. Do any of you have suggestions on some high quality VGA - DVI A cables that have the best image quality? Or maybe DVI-I is the better choice for the HD 3850? Thank you for all answers, i know that my question seems trivial but i never really used DVI. Everything would be so much more clear to me if there was one VGA port on the monitor.

Reply 1 of 6, by tpowell.ca

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The DVI-I connector has all the pins connected, thus if the card supports natively DVI-I, just put a DVI to VGA connector on the ATI HD 3850, and use the same type of cable as on the Voodoo 3 card to force the ATI in analog mode.

Just be aware that many monitors only have one true DVI-I connector, and the other is often a DVI-D; in which case a VGA KVM may be in order.

Voodoo VGA to VGA KVM #1
ATI HD 3850 DVI to VGA to VGA KVM #2

KVM VGA #out to DVI-A monitor.

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Reply 2 of 6, by oohms

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Those common DVI to VGA adaptors should work both ways - allowing you to use a vga cable between 2 DVI-I connectors

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Reply 3 of 6, by tpowell.ca

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oohms wrote:

Those common DVI to VGA adaptors should work both ways - allowing you to use a vga cable between 2 DVI-I connectors

I have never seen male VGA to female DVI connectors.
Only these:
dvi-to-vga.jpg

If they exist, and resonably priced, it could work.

  • Merlin: MS-4144, AMD5x86-160 32MB, 16GB CF, ZIP100, Orpheus, GUS, S3 VirgeGX 2MB
    Tesla: GA-6BXC, VIA C3 Ezra-T, 256MB, 120GB SATA, YMF744, GUSpnp, Quadro2
    Newton: K6XV3+/66, AMD K6-III+500, 256MB, 32GB SSD, AWE32, Voodoo3

Reply 4 of 6, by cyclone3d

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tpowell.ca wrote:
I have never seen male VGA to female DVI connectors. Only these: https://www.computerhope.com/issues/pictures/dvi-to-vga.jpg […]
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oohms wrote:

Those common DVI to VGA adaptors should work both ways - allowing you to use a vga cable between 2 DVI-I connectors

I have never seen male VGA to female DVI connectors.
Only these:
dvi-to-vga.jpg

If they exist, and resonably priced, it could work.

Standard VGA cables are male on both ends. Thus, if you use a VGA cable with an adapter like that at each end, you will have an analogue only DVI cable.

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Reply 6 of 6, by Azarien

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XTac wrote:

I have found out that analogue is actually superior to digital with that screen. Lower resolutions than native on full screen look much sharper and monitor allows you to adjust the image better, where as with digital low resolutions are blurry and pixelated.

This is most probably GPU scaling vs monitor scaling difference.
With GPU scaling, the graphics card does the scaling and always outputs signal in monitor's native resolution.
With monitor scaling the graphics card outputs whatever it is told to do and the monitor gets the real low-res signal.

The card and the monitor may have different scaling algorithms resulting in different look.
You should be able to toggle GPU scaling in your graphics card drivers settings.