Bill wrote:
Paul wrote:

When you buy the monitor, don't forget to buy a cable.
Some cheapskates don't put cables in the box for you.
Maybe an HDMI and no DP. Or vice versa.
Since you brought it up: Is one of HDMI or DP better?

My "wild-guess" would be that DP is better since it appears
more-sophisticated. But that's not much to stand on...

DP has the edge on whizzy display size/rate.

I don't know if there is a significant difference
in cable drive on the two standards.

They tend not to spec max cable length either. I
don't know how the customer figures out what
cable is good enough.

The clock rate on the cable, is a function of resolution,
so a 1280x720 signal might go 50 feet, while an 8K
resolution might go 6 feet, on the same type of cable.
You'll see colored snow, if there is a bit error rate present.
If HDCP is running, I don't know if there is an error
multiplier effect there or not.

*******

One thing you should know, is that the video card
is kinda booby-trapped. I learned this the hard way.

You would think that the termination detection, would
make computer startup easy. Say a port has a cable and
a monitor connected. There are 100 ohm diff terminations
on each color gun. The transmitter (video card end) can
sense that a termination is present. There's no reflection
coming back, for one thing.

However, the video card firmware has other ideas. The
video card might look like this.

DVI-D
HDMI

miniDP --- Paul connects his monitor here
miniDP
miniDP
miniDP

Now the BIOS starts, and the damn screen is black.
This is what the video card is doing.

DVI-D
HDMI ----- Signal shoots out here :-/

miniDP --- Paul connects his monitor here
miniDP
miniDP
miniDP

What the video card is telling you is, "you
should have connected your monitor to HDMI, stupid".

And I thought that was pretty funny.

Now, I drew that faceplate like that on purpose.
Two connectors are "primary", and are part of the
"dual head" traditional video card design. The
four DP connectors (or miniDP) have a different
status. Yes, they're on the crossbar, yes, signal
can be routed to them, but the "dual head" part
of the picture is a bit overpowering at startup,
and the video card just loves to pamper those two.

That's why the DP gets the shaft.

I keep both DP to VGA and HDMI to VGA adapters
here, so I'm ready for this sort of thing. My
LCD monitors are ancient (and one is cheep). And
VGA is all they got.

By all means, pretend you have a choice and
everything works properly. But, you'll probably
be surprised like Paul was, when signal comes
out where it was not expected. Now that I keep
my monitor on HDMI (HDMI to VGA), no more problems.
It never jerks me around by putting the signal on
DP, when the cable is on HDMI.

Study your video card, and see if the faceplate is
making any hints about preferred ports. It never
occurred to me at the time. And a number of times,
the card managed to start and drive out on DP. But
then, when the screen goes black on you every once
in a while, it will eventually dawn on you, that
just maybe, the dual head notion wins, and the
card really doesn't want to start reliably on a
secondary port.

Paul