forgive me if this is in the wrong category, but

Here's my question. The woman is out of town for a few days, and I'm feeling like leaving the sufficient 22" lcd monitor behind, and dragging my box to the 42" plasma to play some games. Question being, when I hook up to the plasma, the highest resolution my sys wants to output is 1024x768. That's using a standard vga cable, as I don't have an HDMI cable laying around. Obviously, 1024x768 doesn't look great on the big display...but being a 1080i display, shouldn't it be capable than more than this. Is the prob in the output I'm sending from the computer, or to which input i'm sending it on the television. Not knowing squat about home theater setup, I'd rather not run across town for a cable not knowing whether or not it will make a difference.

btw, the system i'm running is as follows
q6600@3.6ghz
2gb ddr2 pc6400
8800gt oc'd a bit

thanks in advance for any help

It's the connection. VGA is an analog connection which isn't capable of the bandwidth needed for high resolutions. You could buy a HDMI cable but your local Big Box store is going to seriously overcharge you. I went to Circuit City looking for a cheap HDMI cable and the cheapest one they had was $45, I ended up buying one from Newegg for $15.

well you should be capable of better resolutions with that vga cable than just the 1024x768 that you are getting. what is the resolution of the plasma tv?

also maybe in display properites you have it set up so that it stays within some ratios, but it's pretty strange. i've always been able to choose any resolution i want as soon as i'm connected to tv. my 3870 has had little problem connecting to 42" lcd 1366 x 768p resolution via hdmi. one time i had to lower the resolution to the lowest one, cause i didn't see the native resolution of my tv. after i did that, i was able to see more options.

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Your video card has a DVI out, does your TV have a DVI in? If not you would need to buy a DVI to HDMI cable like this
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6812186012

Same thing happened to me, I tried connecting my PC and my laptop to a 1080p TV with VGA, got that **** 1024x768 resolution. I find it to be odd though, my friend uses a 32" 720p TV as a monitor sometimes for **** and giggles, he connects to it via vga. So, who knows.

I could get 1080P using VGA on my Xbox 360 before I sold it. Weird, try using control settings and set it like a TV instead and force the resolution and refresh time, make sure they are supported by TV so you don't bust it.