HD5850: DVI or HDMI?

[dstoop]

I currently have an ASUS VW226H 25.5" HD monitor. It's currently hooked up to my gaming PC through an old Radeon X1950XT via DVI and looks fantastic. However, the HD5850 lists all of these fancy features available through its built in HDMI port. Normally, I'd just hook my new rig with the HD5850 up through the HDMI port and that's that, but the catch is that i'd also like it to hook my XBOX360 up to it via HDMI, and the monitor only has one HDMI port.

So my question is, would it be worth it to invest in an HDMI switch to hook both up via the one available HDMI port, or would the XBOX on the HDMI and the PC on the DVI do exactly the same thing without losing anything on the PC end?

 

[buzznut]

That's a good question. My understanding is the only thing you'll lose is the HD audio over HDMI, but the speakers with most monitors are terrible so that wouldn't be an issue. The signal over DVI and HDMI is digital; I should think the performance degradation would be minimal. If it was a TV , that might be different I suppose..

Yeah I think the xbox through HDMI and PC through DVI is the best solution, I don't think the added expense of the switch would give you much.

 

[dstoop]

Thats what I figured. The sound will be going through my PC speakers either way, totally avoiding the monitor, so it's a non-issue. I just dont want to build a $1000 gaming PC and then lose out on some awesomeness because i'm using DVI instead of HDMI. I know HDMI 1.0 and DVI are literally an identical video signal, but there have been all sorts of advances in HDMI, and all sorts of features on the HD5850 that I dont even know if my monitor would support.

 

[jimmysmitty]

DVI is fully capable of producing better than a 1080P HD signal. I had my PC hooked up to my TV thats a 40" Samsung 1080P HDTV and when compared to even a stand alone Blu-Ray player, the quality my PC gave my Blu-Ray drive was better than the Blu-Ray player.

A dual link DVI is capable of 7.92Gbps bandwidth and a resolution of 2560x1600 @ 60Hz Prescan as well. HDMI 1.4 is capable of 10.2 Gbps bandwidth and currently the max is 1080P with some new standards comming out.

If anything, you should be watching for Light Peak since its a fiber based connection that will start at 10Gbps and grow to 100Gbps.