DVI vs VGA

[tantris]

Just purchased the Dell 24 inch display for my homebuild PC running a Radeon x800 Pro AGP card. Both systems support both DVI and VGA cables. Which cable is better? What is the point of DVI? The documentation is very poor on this, as with most things. VGA works right now (computer still in the Windows XP install phase) but when I connect with the DVI cables I don't get anything.

Should I be using the DVI cables or the VGA cables?

What are the advantages of both?

How can I get the DVI cables to work and will they work with all programs?

Thanks,
Kevin

[sm8000]

If you connect by DVI (Digital Video Interface) then you need to hit a button on the front of the monitor that switches the "mode" or connection, it might even be in the OSD. DVI will work with everything.

[Peter M]

DVI sends digital image data, pixel by pixel. VGA sends an analog waveform that the logic inside the LCD screen needs to sample and digitize to guesstimate pixels from it.

Analog waveform is perfect for a CRT since that can go straight to beam intensity modulation; for a hardwired individual-pixels display like an LCD it's quite obviously more useful to send it discrete pixel data.

Use DVI.

[vikeor]

use DVI... there is no quality loss since DVI and the LCD are digital so no signal conversion is needed.