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StormILM
April 21st, 2014, 02:10
Okay,
I think I have seen this question posted here before but I want to get on record again with the Hardware Gurus in here. Last year I bought a new system with an i7 CPU @3.4ghz, 16gb memory and a AMD HD7770 GPU @ 2gb. The PC was shipped with a VGA cable and adapter identical to what I had used forever on previous systems. With this new system, I continued using the same connector cable/adapter and to be honest, it worked fine. This last December I bent and cracked one of the VGA adapter pins by accident and was forced to forage for a replacement cable. I ended up getting a no-name brand HDMI cable from Walmart for about $18 bucks and it worked okay but I immediately noticed a bit of a change in the performance. The video quality looked good but there was an obvious periodic bit of pausing/stuttering which I hadn't seen with the previous cable. This led me to believe that perhaps there is an issue with this HDMI cable being an early gen version what is not capable of flowing the GPU's full potential 2.0 cable capable specs (HDMI® (With 4K, 3D, x.v.Color™ and Deep Color) Maximum resolution: 4096x2160 @ 30 Hz 080p30 stereoscopic 3D (Packed Frame Format) Quad HD/4K/UHDTV video display support). I have set the card settings to the best refresh rate available(60hz) but to no avail on the pausing/stutters(which mostly shows itself with high end models/textures with high maneuverability capability). This being said, the question is: Will an early gen HDMI cable cause sluggish performance from my GPU to Monitor(essentially bottle-necking) and with these specs, should I go with the HDMI 2.0 cable or something else?

Chris Sykes
April 21st, 2014, 23:40
Not sure, guess its possibly but i know not to buy cheap HDMI cables, but there is no point buying the stupidly priced ones...

StormILM
April 22nd, 2014, 01:15
What I ended up doing was buying both a new HDMI cable(2.0) and a DVI-D cable off of Amazon. I triple checked the ratings/capability of each as well as customer ratings. I think the HDMI cable I have is certainly lower end(and it was certainly overpriced) and having solicited input from a couple of FSX users who've tried different HDMI and DVI-D cables, they said there was certainly a difference in FPS and refresh performance between current gen cables and older or cheaper iterations. Cost wise, I didn't pay that much for each cable and they come with a lifetime guarantee. So, once they come in, will be doing some comparison testing.

StormILM
April 24th, 2014, 12:23
(Bump).

Just concluded a series of tests with my new cables(both DVI-D and HDMI v2.0) and yes, the previous HDMI cable was lower grade(previous gen) and apparently choking my GPU to Monitor performance & refresh rate. So for reference, when any of you are upgrading for current system/ buying a new system/monitor, be sure you spec out your GPU to Monitor Cable to ensure you're getting the best spec cable to match your GPU & Monitor.