EggXpert.com

I was looking at Video cards(specifically EVGA 9600gt 512mb 256 bit) by Nvidia and realized that there are HDTV cables.  So my question is connecting to a 720p 26in HDTV which connection is clearer? 

HDTV Composite cable to HDTV
or
DVI to HDMI??

Thanks to all who respond!!

If you get a 9600gt card that comes with a dvi to hdmi adapter along with a s/pdif cable that should be the best as it would then carry both sound and video in the 1 hdmi cable.  Unlike the ATI 3870 or 3850 cards which have built in sound you would have to run the s/pdif cable from the sound card (or if you use the mb sound from it) to the 9600 card. 

I cannot say for sure how well the 9600gt cards do this as I have not used one but I can say that the 3870's do quite well at this. 

Really helpful sjr, thanks for the input but one quick question:

How do you run a sound s/pdif cable to a video card?

Thanks again

If you are talking about using the single composite video cable coming from the video cable which would be the connector with the yellow jack off of the mini-din adapter, then no this is not the optimal connector to use as composite video only supports up to 240i video.  240i means 240 lines of vertical resolution interlaced.  Interlaced means per frame only every other vertical line is displayed.  Using DVI to HDMI has not only the advantage of being straight digital (vice composite being analog) but DVI has the ability to support up to 1080P of video resolution.

I'm not sure what sjr is talking about with the audio.  He's implying that the 9600GT can accept a digital audio feed and combine it into the video output signal.  One, I don't think the card can do this.  And two even though you're adapting from the DVI ports to an HDMI cable, you can't put audio through the HDMI calbe despite the HDMI cable and interface being able to support audio.  This is because the originating interface is DVI which does not support any audio.  I could also go on about whether it's even an advantage to have audio running along with video in an HDMI stream.

For the EVGA models you are correct however there are several 9600gt cards that do this:  9600gt's with HDMI  The cards on that list you can do sound and video out on HDMI.  Those cards do have a audio in pin for the s/pdif cable.  The info on them is not easy to find as I am thinking not many people actually buy the cards for this.  This is what I was able to find describing it:

HDMI with Audio Integration Solution

The NVIDIA® GeForce® 9 Series graphics card supports HDMI with audio integration solution. With a DVI-to-HDMI adapter and an extra signal cord through the bracket, audio source from sound card(S/PDIF) can be integrated into HDMI interface by simply plugging the cord into the pinhead located on graphics card. Only 1 single HDMI cable is required while streaming audio/video data to flat-panel display devices, such as Plasma/LCD TVs, or projector.

 

I can see this happening on boards with an HDMI interface natively.  But I don't see how audio can be pushed out a DVI port when the DVI standard does not have any provisions for audio at all.  So unless there's a non-standard implementation of the DVI port going on here, I would have to say the excerpt about using a DVI to HDMI adapter to carry video/audio over a single cable is still incorrect.

In regards to the 9600's I cannot say for sure how well they work doing this as I do not have a 9600 but I do have a ATI 3870 (which do not use the s/pdif cable as they have sound built into them) and it works very well to run the dvi to hdmi adapter and then use a hdmi cable to whatever you are hooking it to.  I currently run to a hdmi switch then to the receiver and both sound and video go over it very well. 

This is the card I have:  ATI 3870  and yes I know it is no longer sold but the newer cards (ATI 3000 series) do this.  From what I can see the 9600 cards do this as well though you have to use the s/pdif cable to get the sound into the video card as opposed to the 3000 cards that have it built in.

So lets say I bought this card XFX 9600gt xxx alpha dog and ran it it dual SLI. Would I have to do anything special to achieve sound running through the HDMI, and if so specifically what would need to be plugged in where?

Sorry for the newbie question.