My motherboard has only a VGA port (I am not using a graphics card because my CPU has integrated graphics and am not a gamer) so I was wondering if I would be better off using a VGA monitor or an HDMI monitor and a VGA to HDMI adapter cable. Thanks.
52 Answers
Should I use just VGA or a VGA to HDMI adapter?
Just use VGA or spend the money for a VGA to HDMI copnvertor on a cheap graphics card.
Reason:
Plain VGA works as follows:
Digital information at the computer → digital to analog convertor → analog cable with quality loss → Monitor which gets the analog signal and for a modern LCD has to try to translate that back to digital information.
Signal loss in a cable is usually not bad. But for longer cables and/or higher resolution you want good quality cables.
Translating The last step "Monitor which gets the analog signal and for a modern LCD has to try to translate that back to digital information" is not relevant for old CRT screens, though in that time the CRT had to make some guesses in order to try to detect what the incoming signal meant. For a modern LCD (with digital logic inside) you want to supply a nice clean digital signal without needless losses from beginning to end. That means either DVI, or HDMI (which is DVI+sound), or DP.
Converting the signal halfway from VGA to HDMI can help if you have a bad VGA cable, if you have a long cable or if you use very high resolutions with a cable not designed for it. But GIGO applies.
Therefor I suggest starting with a digital output. If your PC does not have it and you want a nice sharp display then get a EUR 50 or similar card to HDMI or DP out and just use that.
On the other hand; if your display is satisfactory, do not bother. Keep the money and spent it otherwise. Only try to solve a problem if you have a problem.
Firstly be aware that conversion between HDMI and VGA requires an active converter and that means that the converter is directional. In my experiance while both types of converter do exist, converters for going from HDMI outputs to VGA inputs are much more common than converters for going from VGA outputs to HDMI inputs.
Many monitors have multiple inputs, my advice is to buy a monitor with both VGA and one or more digital inputs. If you are happy with the image quality then stick with it, if not then buy yourself a graphics card to drive it.
Personally I have found that on monitors VGA is fine up to 1920x1200 at least (I don't have personal experiance with monitors beyond that).
P.S. I would advise not buying a TV for use as a monitor unless you can try before you buy. I have found that unlike monitors TVs often give appalling image quality when fed over VGA.
