dvi to hdmi OR dvi to dvi?

Barcardi

I just got a new monitor with full 1080p, it only came with a dvi to dvi cable, should i just use that or pick up a hdmi to dvi cable tomorrow? I will be using my PC itself for sound, not the monitor.

ie is there any difference between the two?

edit: ALSO i would like if at all possible to use 2 screens, my old 1600x1200 dell 20" and this new HD monitor, is that possible if i have a graphics card with 2 dvi out? Or would i run into trouble going from 1080p to just the regular 1600x1200... or does that matter? How does duel monitor work?

Ego

They're electrically the same, so if you're using sound-out from your system don't bother with a new cable.

What video card do you have? If you have two display-outs on the back then chances are it supports multiple displays. You just go into your display properties (or screen resolution control panel, and catalyst/nvidia's own control panels generally also can turn on multiple displays) and after you've connected the cable to the second display, click the picture of the greyed out display, and 'extend desktop' onto that display. Then arrange the positions of the virtual displays to reflect where they are in real life.

Resolutions of multiple displays are totally independent, and there's no trouble using 1920x1080 on one display and 1600x1200 on the other.

Once your desktops are extended, you just move the mouse across the border of one screen to the other one, and can drag applications and icons the same way. Some games don't like having a second display enabled, and you may have to disable secondary displays when playing them.

Barcardi

i have a radeon 4850 HD, and yea it has 2 dvi on there

wunderbar

honestly, there's no point in getting an hdmi-dvi cable. it's the exact same signal, hdmi is just also capable of carrying audio.

just go with dvi

Ego

Yep, just pop the DVI there. Actually with 4850s (and all cards of that generation from ATI), if you do decide to use HDMI, don't use a DVI to HDMI cable, use the little adapter that ATI supplies that gives you an HDMI port from the DVI-out (and a plain HDMI cable.) Otherwise you won't get sound on your HDMI device (non-applicable to you.)

Since you have an ATI card, you can do all the multiple display stuff from catalyst, in the 'Display Manager' menu on the left.