VGA or DVI?

[Macnoviz]

Hello,

In a few weeks I have to take care of the projection for a series of evening activities. I'm coordinating with a professional PA firm to handle the audio and video.
I have always used a VGA connection for these sort of things because the projectors were either old or cheap or both. But this time I could use DVI if I bought the converter.

My question is: will DVI be better for this, and more importantly, does it make a difference from a performance perspective. I use a first generation, rev A Macbook with 2,0 GHz core duo and recently installed 2 GB Ram. I have had to switch to synchronous mode before because the video would stutter in my keynote if I used a dual screen mode. (that was with 1 GB of RAM).

Can anyone help me with these questions?

 

[RMo]

I have never head of a significant performance difference between using VGI vs. DVI output; I imagine that if there is a difference (in terms of the performance hit your comptuer may take), it is probably negligible. Therefore, I'd recommend that you'd go with whatever is easiest for you, which is probably VGA, since it sounds like the projector can handle it and you already have the adapater. Of course, in terms of picture quality, DVI may be better than VGA, but on a projector this probably doesn't matter too much.

In short, I'd just stick with VGA since you already have the adapter, there is probably no performance advantage to one over the other, and any differences in quality (VGA's digital-to-analog conversion may reduce visual quality, even if it's hardly noticeable by any but the most astute eye) are likely not significant.

Just my opinion, but I hope this helps!

 

[Freyqq]

Hello,

In a few weeks I have to take care of the projection for a series of evening activities. I'm coordinating with a professional PA firm to handle the audio and video.
I have always used a VGA connection for these sort of things because the projectors were either old or cheap or both. But this time I could use DVI if I bought the converter.

My question is: will DVI be better for this, and more importantly, does it make a difference from a performance perspective. I use a first generation, rev A Macbook with 2,0 GHz core duo and recently installed 2 GB Ram. I have had to switch to synchronous mode before because the video would stutter in my keynote if I used a dual screen mode. (that was with 1 GB of RAM).

Can anyone help me with these questions?

performance is identical b\c performance is handled by the video card

dvi is a higher quality connection, so the quality of the picture will be better at higher resolutions. Projectors showing a powerpoint won't really show much of a difference because they tend to be lower resolution than a monitor...every one i've ever used was 1024x768.

 

[RMo]

performance is identical b\c performance is handled by the video card

That was my first reaction, but then I realized that we are dealing with a MacBook, which has integrated graphics. Therefore, any work the "video card" is doing affects "normal" processing tasks, too.

But again, any discrepencies between VGI and DVI in terms of processing (or memory) requirements are almost surely too insignificant to worry about.

 

[Abstract]

That was my first reaction, but then I realized that we are dealing with a MacBook, which has integrated graphics. Therefore, any work the "video card" is doing affects "normal" processing tasks, too.

Doesn't matter though. Every MacBook can handle output to an external monitor with a much higher resolution than the one used with most projectors.

 

[tjcampbell]

DVI from my MBP looked far better than VGA from my MB. Far better.

 

[Jpoon]

DVI if the device taking the input can handle it. It's just straight up, a better connection.

Don't worry about performance, you won't notice the difference.