What You Need to Know About DisplayPort Male to VGA/SVGA D-Sub Female AV Cables
A DisplayPort male to VGA female audio/visual cable is designed to convert the analog signal of VGA into a digital signal of DisplayPort. This allows you to connect a VGA-only monitor or projector to a DisplayPort video card output in your desktop or laptop computer. You can use it to display video games, presentations, or other basic computer applications.
What is the difference between DisplayPort and VGA?DisplayPort, which was first introduced around 2006, is a digital interface standard that enables the transmission of high levels of data bandwidth. More bandwidth equates to higher resolutions and higher refresh rates. With the release of version 1.4, DisplayPort can even support a video resolution of 7680 by 4320 pixels, also known as 8K resolution, at a refresh rate of 60 hertz. See the manufacturer site for details.
VGA, which stands for video graphics array, is an analog interface standard. VGA can display high-definition resolutions, but the quality of the signal may start to degrade beyond a certain threshold. As high-resolution computers of 1080p or more became common, the VGA standard began to be replaced with digital outputs.
There are four versions of DisplayPort and essentially a single VGA standard. Each one may differ in the following ways:
- Resolution: This describes the number of pixels that are displayed at once. All monitors have a maximum possible resolution.
- Refresh rate: This describes the number of times the image is refreshed every second. Most monitors have a refresh rate of 30 or 60 hertz. However, high-end monitors may have a rate of 120 or even 240 hertz.
- Video encoding: This describes how the video is processed. As video bandwidth grows larger and larger, some manufacturers use various methods to reduce the size of the video. One method is to compress the video, meaning that data redundancies in the video are identified and eliminated. Another method is called chroma subsampling. This essentially eliminates certain color information that may not be noticeable by the human eye.
If you have a VGA legacy device, then this cable will allow you to connect it to a DisplayPort output via a connector and a VGA adapter without requiring you to replace your hardware. You simply plug the VGA cord into the female D-sub connection of the adapter and latch it into place, and then the other end can be plugged into the DisplayPort connection in your computer device. The cable will automatically convert the analog signal into a digital format.
Does the monitor being VGA or SVGA matter?All VGA standards use the same 15-pin D-sub interface, so in practice, there is not much difference between VGA and SVGA. When it was first introduced, VGA originally referred to a specific resolution of 640 by 480 pixels. It was superseded by SVGA, which stands for super video graphics array, although the term was never formally defined. SVGA was sometimes used to describe a resolution of 800 by 600 pixels or, more vaguely, any display standard beyond regular VGA. Other standards, including XGA and XGA, were also devised. However, the attempt to describe each new VGA display standard was eventually abandoned. The term VGA is now commonly used to describe all standards that have the same 15-pin D-sub interface.