DVI Port worth using?

Got me a new 17" LCD-TFT flat-panel monitor for X-Mas (a good one at that, I cant stand noticable motion-blurring/color-bleeding), and noticed the thing had a DVI port as well as the standard VGA serial port that I'm accustomed too.

Anyhow, was wondering if anyone here knows if there's any noticable difference in picture quality making the step up to DVI, and whether it is worth switching over to it or not...

Still new to the world of flat-panels here, and my god these things are pretty to look at, like my PSP screen, but without all the finger prints.
(been using CRT for too many years, the picture quality & contrast/brightness ratio on this thing compared to my old 15" CRT is enormous)

..DVI will bring you much more clear picture than VGA serial port...

Yes.

http://forum.pcmech.com/archive/index.php/t-60031.html

Only thing I've read about DVI prior to creating the thread was this site, I can see how it would be better given the digital->digital data transfer, just cant picture how much better it would be, as the current VGA cable does the job, I take it it's noticable in paint applications where colour precision is a must (can the human eye even pick out that level of precision...), along with fast-moving games that make lots of use of contrasting colours.

Anyhow, guess I'll be picking one up next time I head to the city, odds are my local PC store doesn't supply these.

It's noticable for everything you do. Unless your eyesight is totally screwed already, you should see a vastly crisper picture and you could find yourself staring at text, just to appreciate how clear it is ;)

I finally invested in a DVI cable recently and the picture quality improvement is definitely noticable. I'd never got back to VGA...

Understand that a dvi cable will improve the picture.
Also enable cleartype for text (optional).

Finally, run the flat panel at the correct resolution. Flat panels only support one native resolution and anything else is scaled to create a blurry and low quality effect.

So if you run your desktop at 1024x768 the image quality will suck. So, look in the manual for the monitor to see the native resolution. It will probably be 1280x1024.

i cant stand the cleartype, makes text look blurry.

I've seen dual screen setups with one screen hooked up over DVI and the other by VGA, and there's definitely a noticable difference.

DVI gives a much crisper picture, with VGA you often have some (very small) alignment problems, and minor ghosting. Not always very noticable, but enough to see a difference when you have them side-by-side.

If you have the choice, DVI's definitely the way to go.

Currently running it @ 1280x1024, which I take it is it's native as it's the highest the thing can go, and the pixels are uh, pixel perfect.

Still looks fine on anything lower though, this thing has a nifty button on it that auto-adjusts the image display to scale & line-up the pixels correctly on lower-resolutions, removing that ugly interpolation I've seen on cheaper models.



That might understand the wee flickering/ghosting I sometimes get when scrolling a page of text on this thing...

Never knew about ClearType here, did a look-up on it, sounds useful, as it may be easier on the eyes during long nights staring at the screen...

The auto-adjust is still best-effort guess-work. Since the signal is analog, one pixel can affect the representation of its neighbors: the color of one pixel can slightly change how the one next to it looks. Even more so if the red, green and blue layers don't quite line up right, which is pretty common on VGA as well. With DVI, everything *will* be pixel-perfect.