Quick question regarding DVI ports on new cards

[Sprinkles169]

So, I recently made a thread about getting a 7870 and having two separate DVI ports (single and dual link). This completely screwed me over considering I bought it for two VGA monitors. They are a few year old, max res 1280x1024 monitors and still work perfectly fine. I've noticed one dead pixel on my smaller secondary monitor which isn't even used for high end stuff.

Since I'm fed up with this crap and Powercolors techies giving me misleading info. I'm probably going to just return the card and spend some more for something better and two DVI's that I can stick a VGA converter on and have it simply work. I'd like to go for a 680, are the two DVI's on them the same or will I run into similar issues?

Edit: Out of curiosity...What if I did a crossfire of two 7870's? Is it possible to use the dual link dvi on both cards? I've never used crossfire so I'm not sure how it works.

Edit2: Still doing research. Apparently any 680 comes with a DVI-I and DVI-D. There are converters for both types, I have plenty of DVI-I to VGA. So, if I simply got a DVI-D to VGA if I went with 680 would this work out with my two 'dinosaur' VGA monitors?

 

[rolli59]

Why spend money on a high end card and run two old analog monitors? Why not upgrade monitor to one with higher resolution and digital input! HD7870 is a waste of money at 1280 x 1024 resolution!

 

[Sprinkles169]

Well that totally answered my question....not. I think that is also up for opinion, sir. It's not like I haven't gotten a big perf difference since upgrading from my 4870. I know my monitors are a little dated and I feel like an old man complaining about this. OH, I forgot to mention my 42'' tv that's using the HDMI port on the card. Which, I may or may not use for a gaming monitor at times. I am just comfortable with my setup. Which included my two VGA monitors for the longest time. Which, obviously I've had endless issues getting to work. Hence the confusing questions.

 

[rolli59]

The HD TV makes it a viable card! This is the only powercolor card I can find with two DVI connectors but according to the pictures they are both DVI-I one single link the other one dual link! http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814131466
On the other hand I can not tell from the pictures if the bothered putting the 4 analog pins in both!
You could always get a display port to VGA adapter.

 

[Sprinkles169]

That would be my card! No, I cannot use the single link. This is where all of my problems began here. I bought an active display port adapter here and what do ya know, it's dvi-D which my converters to VGA could not fit into. Now, from some random source on the net I came across I attempted removing the extra pins on a DVI-I adapter with no luck. Now, I realize that was an old DVI-A adapter, which is missing a lot of pins. So, I'm about to attempt this 'trick' again but I'm afraid of ruining all of my extra adapters. Why must this be so hard...

Edit: I think I see where I can fix this. I bought this adapter http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812200944 which leads to dvi-d which I can't use. I could get this one http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814998051 which leads to dvi-i. Thing is it is not a mini display port, but I have some other adapter that came with the card. So it could go from mini display port to the bigger (not sure what its called) active display port to dvi-i to vga? Would this even work?

 

[Franco Constantin]

I had the same problem but never mind I've fixed it now.