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Article Date: 04-23-2019
Types Of Video Connectors
Understanding various display connections will help you when deciding which PC is right for you, and which components you want to choose. Various motherboards and expansion cards include varying display capabilities. When choosing which system and which options are right for you, it is helpful to keep in mind what you might want to do with your computer system, not only now, but down the road.
- HDMI tends to be used primarily for television, but is also a fairly common feature on computer monitors. HDMI 1.4 is limited to 24-30fps with 4K video output, making mouse control and flicker rates less than optimal for some computer users.
- Display Port (DP) tends to be used with higher-end computer monitors. Display Port does not tend to be a feature on television monitors, if you are using your PC with a television.
- DVI-D is a very common computer monitor connector, but is more limited to lower resolutions (max 2560x1600).
- VGA connectors tend to only be used for basic monitor setups such as those used with servers, or as a means to connecting to older monitors.
- Thunderbolt can be used with specialty high-end monitors. It can be daisy chained to support other devices without cable clutter, and is also used for extreme throughput data transfer.
The following chart details the differences and similarities between different video display connector types, and lists all current and recent display connectors.
Video Connector Chart
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HDMI 2.0 |
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HDMI 1.4 |
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Display Port 1.4 |
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Display Port 1.3 |
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Display Port 1.2 |
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Thunderbolt 3 |
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Thunderbolt 2 |
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Thunderbolt |
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DVI-I
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S/PDIF |
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D-Sub Port (VGA) |
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