Why do we still use DVI-D and RGB?

[jonnyyyl]

I am aware that they are slowly being phased out. But why do motherboards like the asus z170 pro still support that, even though especially the supported resolution is exactly the same as the HDMI's and DP's. 

 

The plugs are quite large too, taking up a lot of the space by the back plate. Surely back plate design can be more efficient by adding a few more HDMIs/DPs in those spots?

 

[Curufinwe_wins]

1 minute ago, jonnyyyl said:

I am aware that they are slowly being phased out. But why do motherboards like the asus z170 pro still support that, even though especially the supported resolution is exactly the same as the HDMI's and DP's. 

 

The plugs are quite large too, taking up a lot of the space by the back plate. Surely back plate design can be more efficient by adding a few more HDMIs/DPs in those spots?

 

Because there are super select times where having an analogue output is useful and the people who occasionally use them bitch and moan 24/7 if someone takes them off. Same as PS2 ports even a few years ago (thank god they are finally being phased out.)

[Lays]

I'd prefer DVI over HDMI in all honesty, I really don't like HDMI as a connector at all tbh. DP & DVI are my go-to's.

[Glenwing]

4 minutes ago, jonnyyyl said:

I am aware that they are slowly being phased out. But why do motherboards like the asus z170 pro still support that, even though especially the supported resolution is exactly the same as the HDMI's and DP's. 

 

The plugs are quite large too, taking up a lot of the space by the back plate. Surely back plate design can be more efficient by adding a few more HDMIs/DPs in those spots?

 

For compatibility. If someone needs DVI, and there are plenty of old monitors with only VGA and DVI, then that person would skip over your board because it doesn't have something they need, and you will have lost sales.

 

Maybe monitors in the enthusiast / gamer crowd are somewhat newer and most of them have at least HDMI, we are not talking about high-end graphics cards (where DVI is indeed being phased out completely on AMD cards, and reduced from 2 ports to 1 port on recent NVIDIA cards), we are talking about motherboards. Integrated graphics. There are a LOT of monitors in the general public that only take VGA and/or DVI, and it's not like most low-end/mid-end boards use 100% of the space on the back anyway, it makes no difference if they free up more space. They have free space left over as it is.

[BlargKing]

I would guess because a good monitor will last 10 or so years, and 10 years ago DVI was a lot more common than HDMI, especially on monitors. I imagine there are plenty of people out there who still own monitors without HDMI or DP, so manufacturers keep DVI ports.

 

Yes you can use adapters, but a lot of people don't want to be bothered with that. Trust me, as a former Mac user, having a separate adapter for every conceivable display interface is a royal pain in the ass. 

[Curufinwe_wins]

Just now, CUDA_Cores said:

Hey, I still use a PS/2 keyboard!

Which is all fine and good, but I don't want every single motherboard to keep them and waste bom costs on that which could go to a usb port or two instead.

[ARikozuM]

Analog (analogue) signals are generally driverless and can be used when a video driver dies or stops responding. RGB b/c gamers... Just kidding. There isn't a lot of benefit from YCbCr unless your panel supports it as the norm. For example my triple monitors look the same when pro-calibrated whether on RGB or YCbCr since the panels don't see them as different.

 

Besides isn't DVI good for 1600@60?

[Curufinwe_wins]

4 minutes ago, ARikozuM said:

Analog (analogue) signals are generally driverless and can be used when a video driver dies or stops responding. RGB b/c gamers... Just kidding. There isn't a lot of benefit from YCbCr unless your panel supports it as the norm. For example my triple monitors look the same when pro-calibrated whether on RGB or YCbCr since the panels don't see them as different.

 

Besides isn't DVI good for 1600@60?

RGB is in reference to the VGA port. Many components in the 90s and early 2000s called them that (esp projectors).

[ARikozuM]

4 minutes ago, Curufinwe_wins said:

RGB is in reference to the VGA port. Many components in the 90s and early 2000s called them that (esp projectors).

I was poking fun at the new kids wanting "arr gee bee" on everything even their windowless case.

[Curufinwe_wins]

Just now, ARikozuM said:

I was poking fun at the new kids wanting "arr gee bee" on everything even their windowless case.

Sure, but then you started talking about RGB vs YCbCr which isn't the point of RGB in the context here... It's that he means VGA which was called RGB because the standards before it were incapable of displaying more than 16 colors at once, whereas VGA was the first widely used standard capable of true 6bit RGB (18 bit total).

[ARikozuM]

Just now, Curufinwe_wins said:

Sure, but then you started talking about RGB vs YCbCr which isn't the point of RGB in the context here... It's that he means VGA which was called RGB because the standards before it were incapable of displaying more than 16 colors at once, whereas VGA was the first widely used standard capable of true 6bit RGB (18 bit total).

Thanks for clearing that up then. I assumed that the OP meant DVI and RGB (as in the pixels).

[terrytek]

well i still use dvi-d and have no issues with it because my monitor doesn't even support hdmi  though i still have a ps2 keyboard that came with another computer, but i like it because it's got nice function keys for music and quick launch apps and stuff. i still use dvi very often in this house, but sooner or later i'll upgrade to hdmi or dp for better quality, though dvi-d seems to hold up quite nicely on 1600x900 downsampled to 1920x1080  (thank god i have a 16:9 monitor, even if its 5 or so years old).

[dfg666]

Because only plebs go HDMI.

 

144Hz DVI-D Master Race.

[vorticalbox]

1 hour ago, dfg666 said:

Because only plebs go HDMI.

 

144Hz DVI-D Master Race.

not true, I have display port and HDMI on my monitor and graphics I do not however have a display port cable but I do have a handful of HDMI thus why waste money getting a new cable?

 

pretty much anything with a screen comes with a HDMI cable. TV, surround sounds, Xbox, play station, sky box and so through.

[Canada EH]

I am using a Sub-D connector. Linus said in one of his videos that many people still use that kind of connector.

 

[kaiju_wars]

Because budget monitors still seem to only have a VGA and HDMI port?  Seriously, most monitors with an HDMI port are usually $150+, but all the 'budget' monitors have only VGA and DVI.

 

Plus I kinda need DVI as the back of my case doesn't like letting me stick an HDMI cord into my GPU (as HDMI connectors have shielding around them that's 5 miles thick).  So I have DVI to HDMI since they are the same.  Looks just as good at 1080p on my monitor.

[mariushm]

DVI connectors are royalty free, absolutely no cost. They also contain pins for analogue signals aka VGA (though newest series of cards Pascal and Polaris no longer have the digital to analogue circuitry to support the vga side of the connector).

 

They are old design, so factories had the time to work out the kinks in production and optimize their workflow to make the connectors cheap and in volume, and video card manufacturers got them cheap ordering them by the hundred of thousands or even millions, so they can be put on new models  because they're already in stock.

 

This is less critical but some DVi connectors are through-hole, meaning the pins are going through the PCB, which makes for a more secure connection, and the connector housing (plastic) is strong enough that you can just go through a reflow oven with it and solder it with the other components.  HDMI and Displayport connectors are often surface mount, and made of materials that may not handle high temperatures as easily, and being surface mount they can break off under vibrations or if user is dumb and wiggles connectors or pulls cables hard. The DVI connector is also wide enough to have screw holes, to screw the connector directly on the bracket to hold it even better in place, hdmi and displayport are often held in place just by the pcb.

So DVI would be better in industrial environments with vibrations or shocks, will also tolerate dust and other crap better.

 

You have to pay some money for the HDMI connector (licensing costs), it's extremely small, a cent or a few cents per card, but sometimes even that matters on some markets.

Displayport is also as far as I'm aware royalty free but the connector itself is more difficult to manufacture so it's probably a bit more expensive.

 

One downside of DVI connectors is the limited number of mating cycles (insert plug, remove plug), usually hovering at around 100. HDMI can last for up to around 5000 and Displayport connectors exist which are guaranteed up to 10k mating cycles.

 

[NumLock21]

Appreciate that the PC you have now, still carries a bit of its history with legacy connectors. Not everyone out there is going to throw away their working monitor, for the sake of a new connector.

[Donut417]

1 hour ago, NumLock21 said:

Appreciate that the PC you have now, still carries a bit of its history with legacy connectors. Not everyone out there is going to throw away their working monitor, for the sake of a new connector.

Exactly. At my college they have projectors in most rooms. They have a machine setup and a overhead. The only thing is if you want to hook a laptop up you needed VGA. So when I was in my Speech Course I had to use poster boards rather than spread sheets as my machine only used HDMI. Yeah I could have bought an adapter, but Id never use it past that point. In a few courses the machines that the professors were using didnt work. So the professor would have to use a laptop. No way the school was going to replace projectors. Most education institutions or business's have the if it works dont fix it mentality. 

[mariushm]

On 8/27/2016 at 5:29 AM, Curufinwe_wins said:

Which is all fine and good, but I don't want every single motherboard to keep them and waste bom costs on that which could go to a usb port or two instead.

Somewhat off topic, but PS/2 has benefits over USB ports, the major one being the USB uses polling. With usb, the usb controller asks a mouse or a keyboard several times a second "do you have something to tell me?" and the device says yes or no. By default, the polling rate is 125 Hz or 125 times a second and can be raised up to 1000 Hz with the downside of increased cpu usage.

 

PS/2 is different, the moment a key is pressed or the mouse is moved or buttons are pressed the chip on the motherboard receives this event and can immediately tell the cpu that something happened. Basically, while with usb you get mouse and keyboard events at best only once every 1000 ms / 1000 hz = 1 ms and by default once every 8 ms (1000ms/125 Hz so 8 ms, but you don't generally notice the delay because your monitor already refreshes only once every 16 ms or so for 60 Hz monitor) , with ps/2 you could get events in less than a millisecond which often helps if you're a competitive gamer that also uses monitors with up to 144 frames/s

 

ps/2 is also friendlier with kvm over ip and for other things,basically you can see the benefits and downsides here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PS/2_port

 

The chip that offers the ps/2 ports on a motherboard also has the circuitry for serial ports (useful for server motherboards), parallel port, infrared (IrDA), floppy disk controller (but nobody puts the connector anymore), fan speed controllers, tachometers, thermal sensors, hardware monitor (reads voltages from several places and makes them available to operating system), basically they're all in one chips. See just one of such chips here, go to page 19 to see what this tiny chip can support : http://www.rom.by/files/IT8718F-S.pdf or this one http://www.c-n-c.cz/download/file.php?id=51801 (page 19 and 23)

So basically most motherboards could still put the ps/2 connectors there because a chip that's needed for other things has support for these built in, so it's just a few cents extra for that connector.

 

[Curufinwe_wins]

2 minutes ago, mariushm said:

snip

I am well aware the benefit of PS/2 keyboards, but ps/2 mouse is literally always worse for productivity/games (it works differently and is just awful).

 

But no current "midrange" or better keyboard (1000hz keyboards were introduced almost a decade ago) uses anything less than 1000hz polling (outside of compatibility modes) so it isn't much of a difference at all. Either way both ps/2 keyboards and usb ones are primarily limited by the keyboards debounce latency (for double taps particularly), which while a thing on Model M keyboards, is not specified, and Cherry switches is 5ms. 

 

The cpu utilization increase on a modern processor is less than negligible (I mean think about it... 1000hz trivial input means nothing to a processor with a clock speed 4 millions times higher than that.)

 

I didn't know the controller chip was the same that did all the other random legacy stuff, so thats good to know. 

 

 

[Carlos1010]

15 hours ago, Curufinwe_wins said:

 

But no current "midrange" or better keyboard (1000hz keyboards were introduced almost a decade ago) uses anything less than 1000hz polling (outside of compatibility modes) so it isn't much of a difference at all. Either way both ps/2 keyboards and usb ones are primarily limited by the keyboards debounce latency (for double taps particularly), which while a thing on Model M keyboards, is not specified, and Cherry switches is 5ms

Well, most USB keyboards and mice have more features then PS/2 ones like lighting and extra buttons. In my opnion PS/2 keyboards are more rare to find and they also have less features then USB ones. 

[JefferyD90]

On ‎8‎/‎26‎/‎2016 at 10:17 PM, jonnyyyl said:

I am aware that they are slowly being phased out. But why do motherboards like the asus z170 pro still support that, even though especially the supported resolution is exactly the same as the HDMI's and DP's. 

 

The plugs are quite large too, taking up a lot of the space by the back plate. Surely back plate design can be more efficient by adding a few more HDMIs/DPs in those spots?

 

Because DVI Master Race!