Display looks terrible, help please (pics)

[alexlol]

Pictures below.
My monitor only uses VGA so I've been using a VGA to DVI adapter for years with different cards over the past 4 years, in 1080p and with no problems. The monitor is a Samsung SyncMaster 2233.
Now I just sold my Radeon HD 7970 and got an r9 290. Turns out my VGA to DVI doesn't fit the female port on the 290 because it uses a different DVI so I bought a VGA to HDMI adapter but it now looks really bad. Those dots in the pictures are moving fast and it's annoying. The maximum resolution now is 720p, I can override the resolution in catalyst but looks even worse.

What am I doing wrong?
Am I being forced to get a monitor that has HDMI? Are VGA to HDMI adapters really bad or it's just the one I bought that sucks?
btw something interesting is that I've tried two different VGA cables that I borrowed and I'm 100% sure they work on other monitors, to see if this is a solution and when I plug them to my monitor it says "check signal cable", only my VGA cable works :/

^ The VGA to HDMI thingy I just bought looks like that. It doesn't appear to have a brand.

 

[Rationale]

To be honest, it's probably a mistake to use VGA at all. It adds a pretty ridiculous amount of blur compared to digital like HDMI or DVI. There's a reason not many cards ship with VGA ports anymore.

 

[Xyloriuphon]

To be honest, it's probably a mistake to use VGA at all. It adds a pretty ridiculous amount of blur compared to digital like HDMI or DVI. There's a reason not many cards ship with VGA ports anymore.

It looks like either the VGA to hdmi adapter is going haywire, or, your GPU is being funny, OR, you just need to use DVI (I recommend DVI, i used to have weird clock problems on my monitor, which made the picture "wavy", switching to dvi fixed it, and also boosted my FPS by like, 3-4...