Noobish question about MOBO's and a question about DVI to HDMI

I just bought a new MOBO with HDMI out. Can I connect it to my HDTV with a PCI-e graphics card installed? Or do I have to remove te card in order for it to function?

Another question I had: If I use a DVI to HDMI out converter, do I lose quality of picture? Or does it stay the same b/c they are both digital signals.

Thanks for advice.

Doesn't your GPU have an HDMI or DVI connector?

It does, but thats why I asked about the conversion. My board has hdmi, the card has dvi.

It does, but thats why I asked about the conversion. My board has hdmi, the card has dvi.

mic81784

If you use the mobo's HDMI, it will use the on-board GPU, not your GPU, so it'll look worse.

It helps a lot if you tell us what mobo and what card.

The picture through DVI is exactly the same as that through HDMI, all else being equal. You should get an adapter like this one(maybe) and use the graphics card. Just be sure to get the right adapter for your flavor of DVI (There's like 5 or 6 different configurations.), and be sure you don't need a proprietary adapter from the card manufacturer to pass audio.The difference between DVI and HDMI is that DVI doesn't normally carry audio.

I bought this mobo:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131406and

and I already have "MSI N260GTX Twin Frozr OC GeForce GTX 260 896MB 448-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card" Sorry I can't find a link for it.

I just bought a new MOBO with HDMI out. Can I connect it to my HDTV with a PCI-e graphics card installed? Or do I have to remove te card in order for it to function?

Another question I had: If I use a DVI to HDMI out converter, do I lose quality of picture? Or does it stay the same b/c they are both digital signals.

Thanks for advice.

mic81784

Question 1: Yes, you can plug in your HDTV to your computer, but not to the onboard GPU connector when you have a PCI-e card installed. Besides, it'll perform worse anyway.

Question 2: No, you will not lose quality by using a DVI to HDMI adapter.

I bought this mobo:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131406and

and I already have "MSI N260GTX Twin Frozr OC GeForce GTX 260 896MB 448-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card" Sorry I can't find a link for it.

mic81784

Boy, they sure make it hard. Your card has DVI-I out. You need an adapter like this Belken F2E0182-DV DVI-I to HDMI Dual-Link Adapter to connect to an HDMI device. You can get sound through that, too, but only if you go inside your computer and physically connect a wire from your mobo to the GTX 260. The sound will only be SPDIF, the same as if you simply used the optical or coaxial out, so the only reason I can think of to do that would be if you only have the speakers in your TV for audio and your TV has no SPDIF input.

I've gotta say I'm souring on MSI. There is no user's manual for your card at their website, and I had to search pretty hard and get pretty lucky to find out what type of DVI you have. Their documentation is the pits. (The manual for my mobo is basically unreadable Chinglish.)