The future of DVI

[Draydince]

I recently got an Acer GN246HL, but something was brought to my attention in a different thread:

What's everyone's speculation on the lifespan of DVI in the future?

There's been talk for a while about DVI going the way of VGA, and I'm a bit concerned with having this monitor and it potentially not having compatibility with future graphics cards. Some cards don't even have DVI today.

It's supposed to arrive today, would it be a good idea to return it and get something with a little more future compatibility in mind, like something with Display Port? My biggest reason for getting this specific monitor was 144hz, but equally important - I got it for $180, quite a bit cheaper than most other cheap 144hz monitors.

I know people will say "buy what you need now" and I get that, but if using it now means being potentially locked out of the not so distant future, that's definitely something to think about.

[3rrant]

13 minutes ago, Draydince said:

cut

It will probably eventually be completely replaced by HDMI and DP for sure, but it's hard to imagine that happening "soon" (<5 years). I think you're good to go for a while, and since the price is fair you shouldn't really bother.

 

When 4K will became mainstream, it will probably end. We are really far away from that.

[samcool55]

DVi still has a place. It's the only connector that can carry both analog and digital signals, no royalities need to be paid to use it and it doesn't require a handshake.

 

It might go away but tbh i don't know. It will take at least 5 years, likely more, 10 seems more reasonable.

[Ashley MLP Fangirl]

you could use adaptors anyway

[mariushm]

DVI is pretty dead.  DisplayPort and HDMI are both much better.

 

As a connector, DVI looks nice but it's not as reliable as the others, the contacts just can't handle abuse as much as the other connectors and don't mate better than the other connectors.  It's also not as good as the others for high bandwidth due to the contacts being spread so much (width forces you to untwist pairs of signal wires inside the connector which can degrade signal quality and so on)

DVI even as dual link is stuck to less than 4K while DisplayPort with latest tweaks and features (real time visually lossless compression, better color spaces etc) can do more than 8k 60fps at 10bit color, there's lots of bandwidth in it.

 

[Draydince]

Just now, firelighter487 said:

you could use adaptors anyway

Is there any quality loss in that? A long time ago when HDMI first started coming around, I remember my monitor at the time looked noticably worse using DVI-D to HDMI, but I'm assuming that's probably not as much an issue today

[Ashley MLP Fangirl]

Just now, Draydince said:

Is there any quality loss in that? A long time ago when HDMI first started coming around, I remember my monitor at the time looked noticably worse using DVI-D to HDMI, but I'm assuming that's probably not as much an issue today

i don't know, i have never used one. i use either old hardware, or low end stuff and everything i've had so far has had dvi.

Edited October 3, 2017 by firelighter487
fixed some typo's

[mariushm]

The adapters that convert DVI to HDMI are lossless, they basically just rearrange the wires between connectors. DisplayPort and HDMI are also fairly similar inside and there's cheap adapters that can convert displayport to hdmi

So you can basically chain adapters to have displayport -> hdmi -> dvi , it will / should work. It's unlikely you'll get DisplayPort to DVI since the market for something like this would be kinda small, and DVI is pretty old already.

 

There are also active adapters which convert DisplayPort to HDMI 2.0 (which allows 4K at 60Hz) and these have an actual processor inside to re-pack the data to the hdmi 2.0 standard - these are/were used for some time since lots of video cards only had HDMI 1.4 connectors and those can only do up to 4K at 30 Hz and people wanting to play games on 4K tv's bought these adapters to take the 4K 60fps output from DisplayPort and shove HDMI 2.0 in the back of their TVs

These active adapters/converters would also work, but the HDMI 2.0 signal may be a bit different and your monitor may not process it if you put a HDMI - DVI adapter between it and the hdmi 2.0 connector.

 

You may have hassles with HDCP (drm , encryption) that's in HDMI and DisplayPort, for 4K content they use some newer encryption ... if your video card always uses the newer encryption even at lower resolutions like 1080p , your monitor may be unable to decrypt what the video card sends.

Video cards should be smart about it though, and just either not encrypt or use something compatible with 1080p or similar resolutions.

 

 

[Glenwing]

5 hours ago, Draydince said:

I recently got an Acer GN246HL, but something was brought to my attention in a different thread:

What's everyone's speculation on the lifespan of DVI in the future?

There's been talk for a while about DVI going the way of VGA, and I'm a bit concerned with having this monitor and it potentially not having compatibility with future graphics cards. Some cards don't even have DVI today.

It's supposed to arrive today, would it be a good idea to return it and get something with a little more future compatibility in mind, like something with Display Port? My biggest reason for getting this specific monitor was 144hz, but equally important - I got it for $180, quite a bit cheaper than most other cheap 144hz monitors.

I know people will say "buy what you need now" and I get that, but if using it now means being potentially locked out of the not so distant future, that's definitely something to think about.

GTX 680 (2012) and 780 (2013) reference cards had 2 DVI ports, GTX 980 (2014) and 1080 (2016) reference cards have 1 DVI port. GTX 1080 Ti (2017) reference has 0 DVI ports, only 3rd party designs carry them.

 

Radeon 290X (2013) and 390X (2014) reference had 2 DVI ports, R9 Fury X (2015) reference had 0 DVI ports. RX 480/580 and Vega reference cards also have 0 DVI ports.

 

It will take some generations for it to trickle down to the lower end cards, legacy interfaces tend to stay longer on those since its less expected that users will have a modern display. DVI is already starting to be discontinued on high end reference cards as of 2016/2017 though, only non-reference cards have them, so that will take a few years to disappear too. You're probably safe for at least 3–4 years, but your options for high-end cards that still have DVI ports will grow thinner and thinner each year as more manufacturers discontinue it.

4 hours ago, firelighter487 said:

you could use adaptors anyway

 

4 hours ago, Draydince said:

Is there any quality loss in that? A long time ago when HDMI first started coming around, I remember my monitor at the time looked noticably worse using DVI-D to HDMI, but I'm assuming that's probably not as much an issue today

You can use cheap adapters to Single-Link DVI, but not to Dual-Link DVI. The GN246HL is a 144 Hz monitor, which requires Dual-Link for full refresh rate. Single-Link DVI will be limited to 60 Hz. If that's all you're looking for, the monitor's HDMI port can be used for that, so there's nothing to worry about. If you want 144 Hz on that monitor though, you need an actual Dual-Link DVI port (or a $100 DisplayPort to DL-DVI converter).

[xsimplyjosh]

6 hours ago, Draydince said:

I recently got an Acer GN246HL, but something was brought to my attention in a different thread:

What's everyone's speculation on the lifespan of DVI in the future?

There's been talk for a while about DVI going the way of VGA, and I'm a bit concerned with having this monitor and it potentially not having compatibility with future graphics cards. Some cards don't even have DVI today.

It's supposed to arrive today, would it be a good idea to return it and get something with a little more future compatibility in mind, like something with Display Port? My biggest reason for getting this specific monitor was 144hz, but equally important - I got it for $180, quite a bit cheaper than most other cheap 144hz monitors.

I know people will say "buy what you need now" and I get that, but if using it now means being potentially locked out of the not so distant future, that's definitely something to think about.

Swear I've been using HDMI on my 7870 and DP on my 1080Ti so frequently. DVI-D kept giving me problems in terms of connectivity with my card so I stuck to the gold standard [HDMI] back in the days.

 

Future of DVI will be phased out eventually... like it or not, as long as you don't change your resolution often, you;ll be fine. But I believe the adoption for more streamlined connectors will be a focus for most companies, due to the ease of connectivity and it eventually will be the de-facto standard of cable connectivity.

[mariushm]

For me, the HDMI gives me more problems.  I have 2 24" monitors and both have only HDMI and DVI (and vga)  and my RX 470 has one dvi, one hdmi and displayport.

No matter which monitor is connected to hdmi, it randomly turns off and back on maybe once every 30 minutes to an hour or i get 1 frame glitches (a few lines of garbage somewhere on the screen) - I suspect the card loses connection and reconnects right away, or HDCP encryption fails for some reason.

It's more often when the card actually idles (runs cpu and memory at low frequencies to save power). Probably the cable is bad and the signal is too weak and connection resets, or the HDMI connector on the card is bad but I don't care.  The DVI works fine and i'm too lazy to buy a better hdmi cable.

 

DVI was used for a long time because they didn't have to pay for royalties, so instead of paying for 2 hdmi connectors on the card, they only paid for 1 hdmi and the dvi was free.

DVI also had the analogue pins so that was also an excuse to remove the bulky vga connector on some cards and make room for hdmi and/or displayport on low profile cards or even regular 1 slot cards - anyone that wanted vga could use a cheap 1-3$ dvi to vga adapter often bundled in the retail case of the card.

 

Now that modern cards no longer offer analogue output, cards put DVI-D connector but a lot of users still try to use DVI-I cables which won't go in the connectors (because connectors don't have the holes for the analogue pins)

Also the connector itself is big so it blocks the airflow to the reference cooler (the blower style cooler) or even regular coolers.

And last, I suspect they got rid of it because it's simply too weak, can only do 2560 x something, when the cards can do hdmi 2.0 and 4K through hdmi or displayport.

 

[Draydince]

Thanks for all the input. Are there any equally priced cheap 144hz monitors with display port? I got it on sale for $180 and since I haven't opened it yet I can still get a full refund. There was an AOC G2460PF one I was also considering but on amazon, after taxes, it ends up being $210 so I don't know if it would be worth the extra $30 over what I have now. I'm certainly open to comparibly priced suggestions.

[Mira Yurizaki]

I'm still waiting for VGA to die.

 

I still see modern, sometimes high-end computers have it.

[Draydince]

23 hours ago, mariushm said:

The adapters that convert DVI to HDMI are lossless, they basically just rearrange the wires between connectors. DisplayPort and HDMI are also fairly similar inside and there's cheap adapters that can convert displayport to hdmi

So you can basically chain adapters to have displayport -> hdmi -> dvi , it will / should work. It's unlikely you'll get DisplayPort to DVI since the market for something like this would be kinda small, and DVI is pretty old already.

 

There are also active adapters which convert DisplayPort to HDMI 2.0 (which allows 4K at 60Hz) and these have an actual processor inside to re-pack the data to the hdmi 2.0 standard - these are/were used for some time since lots of video cards only had HDMI 1.4 connectors and those can only do up to 4K at 30 Hz and people wanting to play games on 4K tv's bought these adapters to take the 4K 60fps output from DisplayPort and shove HDMI 2.0 in the back of their TVs

These active adapters/converters would also work, but the HDMI 2.0 signal may be a bit different and your monitor may not process it if you put a HDMI - DVI adapter between it and the hdmi 2.0 connector.

 

You may have hassles with HDCP (drm , encryption) that's in HDMI and DisplayPort, for 4K content they use some newer encryption ... if your video card always uses the newer encryption even at lower resolutions like 1080p , your monitor may be unable to decrypt what the video card sends.

Video cards should be smart about it though, and just either not encrypt or use something compatible with 1080p or similar resolutions.

 

 

I've read somewhere that this monitor doesn't support over 60hz with HDMI