MAMEWorld Forums - The Loony Bin - Re: Got me a new NVIDIA graphics card today,

> My native monitor resolution is 1920x1200... vice the 1920x1080. Would that still
> benefit from HDMI over using DVI? All my video cards since just after I got this
> monitor (maybe 6 or 7 years ago?) have had HDMI but I never bothered with it. I
> detest monitors with built-in speakers so I thought DVI was enough (Assuming HDMI was
> either needed or at least less of a hassle to get audio to built-in speakers).

DVI is a strange beast. It supports three modes:

Analog
Single link digital
Dual link digital

Devices and cables can be made that support any of these combinations of modes:

Analog only
Single link digital only
Analog and single link digital
Single and dual link digital
Analog, and single and dual link digital

A device or cable that doesn't support one or more modes may have pins/holes missing to hint at what it supports, and possible prevent insertion of incorrect cables (this is usually only used to prevent analog cables being plugged into devices that support digital only). However, sometimes a cable has all the pins, but not all of them are wired, so you have to be careful. A cable with all the pins required for dual link digital may only be wired for single link digital. Dual link digital cables are usually far thicker, stiffer and pricier.

Analog mode is VGA-compatible. Single link digital mode supports up to 1600x1200 at 60Hz. It can support up to 1920x1200 at 60HZ with CVT-RB blanking. Dual link digital mode can pump twice the data rate of single link mode, so it can still only get about 3840x2400 at 30Hz, but it does pretty well at lower resolutions.

So if your video card and monitor are reasonably new (say less than five years old) and you aren't using a DVI cable that only supports analog, you'll be using single link digital mode at your monitor's native resolution and it'll all be good. If your gear is older, you may need dual link cables and all for digital to work.

And if you want to go for really high resolutions and don't want to be stuck at 30Hz, you really should be thinking about DisplayPort 1.2 (common enough in high-end video cards now) or HDMI 1.4 (doesn't seem to exist in real life yet).