Widescreen Gaming Forum

Killing off DVI I think is really stupid. Killing it off for DisplayPort (when that finally takes off properly) isn't necessarily a bad idea, despite the fact that I'd prefer my connections to be screwed in, so they don't run the risk of the cable falling out at an inopportune moment.

Ugh, I didn't know DisplayPort looked like a Firewire port... :(
I'd definitely like to screw in the connections; HDMI and even USB makes me paranoid sometimes.

Yup. I'm rarely concerned about USB, but I frequently get twitchy about a couple of the devices I have that use 4-pin Firewire.

Comparison of DVI/VGA/DisplayPort...

I don't mind they trying to improve the horizontal footprint of the connector, it would help some situations where that real-estate is limited, like ultra-portable laptops or even desktop video cards (I hate proprietary dongles). What I do mind however is the way they've gone about it. I have never, ever had a usb connector unplug itself on the pull of cable/device attached to it. I have on my hdmi cables. To the point where I loop the cable around whatever it's plugged in so there's 0 chance of it pulling itself out.

If usb wasn't so cpu heavy and generally unstable, especially if you involve hubs. I'd vote for all connectors to become the same. One type of connector, no more insufficient ports or mistaken ports problems.

All DisplayPort needed to remove the possibility of spontaneous-cable-unplugging was a little clip-device, like Ethernet cables, or like the data/charging cable of my Sandisk Sansa MP3 player.

No, no, no, -not- like ethernet cables, those flimsy plastic tabs always end up breaking.

Why can't they lose the (censored) plastic and make it metal. Heck bonus for the eco-trend, aluminum recycles 100%!

Years ago I played around with some measuring electronics related things (I forget what). They had cable connectors made (or at least seamed to be) entirely of metals. They were the 3 connect points half turn screw in connect kind of things. No worries about breaking em when you plugged or unplugged em. I know there might be some bandwidth differences and all but the design aspect of it could be adapted to formats like hdmi, displayport, ethernet and just about any other. There are smaller, similar ones on some cables I use at school on the oscilloscopes but those aren't as industrial/solid.

Sigh, guess this goes into the same bin as 'why put a cheap metal heatsink on there, lets put a cheaper plastic whiny fan instead'.

No, no, no, -not- like ethernet cables, those flimsy plastic tabs always end up breaking.

Ah? I've never had an ethernet cable tab-clip-thing break on me. Anyhow, it was just an example of one way of doing it. Must be lucky. ;) But this enthusiasm for flimsy plastic connectors is not a good thing. ;)

Sign, guess this goes into the same bin as 'why put a cheap metal heatsink on there, lets put a cheaper plastic whiny fan instead'.

Hehe. Yep. :)

Maybe I was just unlucky or I'm sooooooo strong ;) In any case, I've had many of those plastic connectors break out of the random plug/unplug, and probably a few others when they hook on another cable (even those supposed to be 'snagless'). In any case. Metal trumps plastic in my book, if anything it looks nicer.

Speaking of ethernet, anyone have a clue why gigabit connections barely go faster then regular 100mbit and often drop to sub-10mbit speeds? I've tried all combinations I could think of between my vista+xp desktop, vista laptop and linux nas and the only combo that works is vista to vista. Anything else and I get 10mbytes/s or less, often under 3.

I don't know what causes that Gigabit-not-fast, thing, but I was reading a few threads on it myself today. One guy blamed it on Vista and it not liking to communicate with things other than itself. I dunno whether I believe that or not. Does it do the slow trick on XP-Linux connection too?

Those supposedly "snagless" ethernet cables are a PITA. I hate them. They get more caught than the non-snagless ones.

Anyway, I unplug my gaming rig from the router/modem when I don't want it to be online (call me paranoid... but when it comes to the internet, IMO, the only way to be completely secure is not to have the connection there in the first place) and that cable has been plugged/unplugged anything from once a day to multiple times a day for the last two years, and doesn't show any sign of wearing out. So I'll go with me being lucky, or you being unlucky or too strong. ;) 8)

Yeah, all connections are slow, including xp to linux nas.

What annoys me is that even if other combos are slower then vista-vista, my nas is slowest of all. And I bought it to make a video server too.

Vista's reported slow bugs and all seem to be centered around samba and mine happens on shares/ftp/http/whatever so I don't think it's related.
And counter to whats been reported about vista, at least for me, SP1 hasn't improved or crippled anything so far.

I've ruled out bad cables:tried many, including new cat6, and card chipsets: not a single one is identical, have like 5 different total.

As for unplugging, I prefer to use the dual network cards with one for net, one for lan. Disabling the net one when I don't need to be online, which is fairly often actually.

I'm looking at Sunday absolute earliest I can get you any sort of result from my experimenting. I was hoping that it was gonna be tomorrow, but I've just been informed by family that I'm expected to attend a get together on Saturday. *sigh*

So were you able to test it out on Sunday?
If yes, what Brand, type, and model?

Hey. Yeah. Got some testing done.

Graphics card: Sapphire Atomic 3870.

DVI (to Dell 2405) 1920x1080 works fine - confirming that GPU does it without issues.

HDTV: Samsung LE40M87BDX (40" LCD-TV, 1080p) has no DVI. Therefore VGA and HDMI tested only.

VGA from GPU works fine with included adaptor. HDMI from GPU works fine with included adaptor. 1920x1080 in both cases, 60Hz. No overscan.

Clean Windows XP (32-bit) SP2 install, just necessary drivers and Crysis (w/ 1.2 patch). It's not even been online, as I've been too damned busy to play around with my home network.

I was impressed with how much cleaned Crysis looked when run on high, even though the framerate was a little low for my tastes. On a mix of medium/high it ran fine.

...

I'm sorry, I really don't know what to say, I just plugged it in and it worked without me having to do anything at all.

Thanks for the help. I just have no idea why it wont play 1080p fullscreen when EVERYTHIGN else will. Electronics!

Yeah, sorry about that. :(

So, I decided to play the game yesterday because I havn't played in a while. I loaded the game up, realised the graphics were looking much better than last time so I checked the resolution. 1080p!!!!
The game defaulted to 1080p without me doing anything! I won't question it, I will just be grateful.

I just recently set up a Vista drive to play some DX10 games. Loaded up Crysis and wow. This game runs like crap. I couldn't get over 30fps with my system at 1440x900 with AA disabled.

It's weird because I got almost the same fps at 1920x1200 with AA at 4x. I have to redo my Vista drive and get SP1 installed (currently having Windows Update problems) so i will see how it goes from there. This game has left a bad taste in my mouth, but it seems typical of a game coming from EA.

I'll go back to playing Assassin's Creed collecting flags until Vista is ready.

So, I decided to play the game yesterday because I havn't played in a while. I loaded the game up, realised the graphics were looking much better than last time so I checked the resolution. 1080p!!!!
The game defaulted to 1080p without me doing anything! I won't question it, I will just be grateful.

Very interesting...

Installed anything, updated drivers or...?

Very interesting...

Installed anything, updated drivers or...?

No game or driver updates.
The only thing at all that I can think of is maybe I havn't tried the game since I installed Vista SP1.
That's the only hardware or software change in the last 3 months.