GFX Card Connectors.

[Razorfish]

Right i know this might sould really stupid but, all my graphics cards have the standard white connector, looks like a d-type cannon but has the funny X in it, and theres the high density 15 way blue cannon. Whats the diffrence? and which sould i be using on my Samsung TFT TV?, as the connector is the blue high density cannon type. My cards have all come with adapters for changing the blue to white...so. sorry if its a stupid question. Thanks.

[Staz]

I am assuming that you are talking about the ports like in the photo below. The blue one on the left is a 15 pin analog concetor used for conceting to an analog monitor. The one in the middle is an S video cable for conceting to a TV. The white one on the right a 24 pin DVI connector for hooking up to a digital monitor. This last connector offten comes with an adapter to change it to the first blue one. This is so you can use dual monitors.

If your TV has the connector for it use the 24 pin DVI port. It will give you the best signal.

[Aedan]

As Staz points out, the white connector is a DVI-I connector. There's actually two forms of DVI connector, DVI-I and DVI-D. The DVI-I connection carries both digital and analog signals, which is why you can use a cheap adapter to convert from DVI-I to VGA - the VGA signal's already present! The DVI-D connector JUST carries digital information, and if you want to convert it to VGA, requires a box costing $$ to do so.

The DVI-I to VGA adapters that you get with graphics cards do nothing more than change the physical connector. There's no electronics inside, so the quality is the same as plugging the screen/monitor directly into the VGA port.

If your monitor is capable of handling digital input (with DVI), then this will give the best picture quality. Unfortunately, most LCDs don't come with a DVI port, as it's seen as an 'extra'.

[Daniel ~]

Dual monitors change my life! Give it a try, you'll never think of one monitor as adequate again! ":O}

[Razorfish]

Whats the quality of the s-video line??? i have this connector on my monitor, which incidently is a TFT television.

[Aedan]

S-Video will produce whatever resolution the TV standard is set to. For PAL TVs (UK for example) the resolution is 720x576 maximum. Most graphics cards will allow you to set it higher, but will then scale the image to fit the 720x576 resolution.

In the case of your TFT TV, it's either the resolution of the screen or 720x576, whichever is the lower of the two resolutions.