VGA or HDMI? Which is better?

[CrysisMcGee]

I have a westinghouse L2610NW 26 inch LCD monitor with hdmi and vga connections. My video card is a Geforce 8800 GTS. When I first got it years ago I started with a direct HDMI connection. But I noticed the monitor would max out at 1920x1080. So I used the VGA converter and I could get a slight increase to 1920x1200. This is on WIndows xp

This system is over 4 old years. I played all the top games when i got it. Oblivion, Dead Space, Fallout 3, Crysis, Dragon Age Origins, you name it. Of course I could only play crysis on medium but I was still able to max out the resolution. Everything looked beautiful and was always an incredibly solid image. I've watched High Def videos and movies on this sucker. Never noticed any difference between HD Televisions and my monitor. The only problem I ever came across was when the draw rate slowed I could see the lines forming on the screen. Other than that I've been very happy and never put a second thought into HDMI.

So here's my question. Is it really that much better to use an HDMI connection if it gives me a slightly smaller resolution?

I'm saving my money up for a new system. I Desperetley need it to play Max Payne 3, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Dead Space 2 and 3 to name a few. But I want to keep my monitor If I can because thats another 400 dollars I dont have to spend.

So if HDMI really is that much better, Then I will bother to Buy a new monitor with my system.

Any advice is appreciated. I'm goin to sleep here in a bit so don't feel bad if I dont respond for a while.

 

[Edguy]

I'd say 1920*1080 is plenty good resolution

 

[SnowyGamester]

You may already be able to output HDMI at 1920x1200 - it could just require you to go into advanced settings and select from all available resolutions or enter a custom resolution. That being said, I'd only do that if your monitor is 1920x1200 natively (though I'm assuming it is), otherwise you'll have scaling and stretching. But yeah, HDMI is miles better than VGA on account of it being practically insusceptible to interference on account of it being a digital signal, which is why you should never ever under any circumstance pay more than $10 for a HDMI cable unless it's more than a few metres long. Regardless I prefer DVI myself since HDMI is more designed for TV sets and is often somewhat restricted to a small set of standard resolutions whereas DVI will output almost anything.

If you do decide to upgrade your monitor there are 2560x1440 ones on the market already and mine at least is absolutely brilliant. You probably should avoid 1920x1200 or any non-16:9 resolution altogether though since everything is optimized for a 16:9 aspect ratio and you'll have far fewer issues getting things to output properly.

 

[CrysisMcGee]

Moved to Advice Forum. sorry havent been on here in a while. and thank you for your advice

Well thank you. When I bought my monitor I wanted size over pixels, and the native resolution is 1920x1200. Which is also the maximum. Also anything bigger and I'd have to tone down the graphics on my games.

Allright I got a pretty good idea. I'm gonna buy a new monitor with my new system, DVI should be standard at this point, and just use dual output. It will come in extremely handy because I've been wanting to watch something while playing a game, or use the internet. I hate regular tv because I have no patience for commercials.

 

[Lee2014]

Since hdmi came out I have been expecting it to be better than VGA because VGA is analogue and hdmi is digital. For me the most important thing is how well the text rendered on our display's.

I'm setting up my wife's computer. We both have ACER 32" monitors with 720p hdmi connections and VGA connections. They are 7 year old LCD monitors. We have two HP towers. One is this new windows 8.1 that I'm setting up now and one is my old 7 year old Vista. I also have a windows 7 HP laptop with a VGA and hdmi out. Vista has invida pure video with DVI and hdmi out. This windows 8.1 has Radeon with DVI and hdmi out. I have spent countless hours over the past several years trying to get these 3 computers to produce quality text over an hdmi cable. I understand that they should because hdmi is digital but they just do not and can not.

On the two towers I have the VGA adapter connected to the DVI out and the text is just remarkable on both towers. Just like printed text. When I go to other peoples house and look at the text on their screens I can immediately see that they are using hdmi because of the poor quality text. I was hoping that this problem would be fixed by now, It's 2014 already. I also have a MacBook Air. The Text on the MacBook air is good on the laptop but when I connect it to my monitor with hdmi it can't compare to the text on my towers VGA. My monitors are exactly the the same. People don't know what I'm talking about until I set them up side by side and show them the difference. The usual response is "wow" , "what a difference". Even my windows 7 laptop, the VGA out text is so far superior to the hdmi out text that it is not even comparable. I understand that this is hard to believe and should not even be true, but it is.

If you want to test this do it with two computers and monitors that are exactly the same side by side. One DVI with VGA adapter and one with hdmi. You will be amazed how much better the text is on VGA.

If you do a lot of reading, like I do, you will want to stick to VGA for now until the operating systems figure out how to display text properly over hdmi.