Are vga cables all that differnt?

[rackoon]

So I go to amazon to buy a vga cable to go from my arcade vga card to my dottronix monitor and find all these bad reviews about the lower priced vga cables.

Do I realy need to spend $30 bucks on a cable. I mean damn, half of them are like under ten buck butt they all have bad reviews. Im only going to use this for my arcade machine. Notheing but MAME. Butt I dont want to buy somthing that is going to make my monitor look bad when I fire this sucker up. I would be spending all day tring to fix a problem with my monitor that is really the result of a bad vga cable. How frustrating would that be.

Any opinions out there?

[Thenasty]

if you have an ArcadeVGA, I sell VGA breakout cable for $6.00 shipped to USA.

[ahofle]

Not sure about VGA, but recently I needed a firewire cable to hook my new camcorder to my computer.  I went to Staples and they wanted $30 for a little 6 ft cable.  Unbelievable!  I ended up with a cheap ebay cable for like $5 and it works perfectly fine.  It's probably worth trying the cheap one in my opinion and if you can see obvious visible interference then maybe look into a better one.  Unless your MAME cabinet is in the middle of a bunch of EMFs I can't imagine it would matter all that much.

[krick]

A lot of stores lose money on the big ticket items, then gouge you on things like cables and printer supplies to make up for it.  Best Buy is *seriously* guilty of this.  I have no idea how the sales people can sell a parallel printer cable that almost costs more than the printer and keep a straight face.

Case in point...

Dynex 6' IEEE 1284 Parallel Printer Cable Model: DX-C101801 - $27.99
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=7005536&type=product&id=1099392032518

Various generic IEEE 1284 Parallel Printer Cables - approximately $8 shipped
http://castle.pricewatch.com/s/search.asp?s=ieee+1284+cable

The IEEE 1284 spec defines how the cable has to be constructed so it's not like there's really any difference except maybe the color.


Oh, and I'm not going to even get into the whole "monster cable" scam.

[Matthew Anderson]

Now hold on a second. ..

I got a neoya x2 vga break out box to allow me to play my xbox on a computer monitor (in hi def no less) and I used one vga cable and it would not allow me to use my monitor. Turns out it was not using all 21 pins in its' cable, only like 15.

Just a word of warning my friend.

[NightGod]

There's people who claim to be able to tell the difference between high quality $200 cables and the off-the-net $20 ones.

I call these people freaks and promptly dismiss them-they're often the same ones who feel it's worth it to spend $20K on a sound system while they're living in a one-bedroom apartment with their two kids. (OK, OK, the guy I'm thinking of had a two bedroom place, but still).

[pointdablame]

Now hold on a second. ..

I got a neoya x2 vga break out box to allow me to play my xbox on a computer monitor (in hi def no less) and I used one vga cable and it would not allow me to use my monitor. Turns out it was not using all 21 pins in its' cable, only like 15.

Just a word of warning my friend.

VGA is a 15pin cable... if you have 21pins, you have the wrong type of cable.

A VGA cable wired and marked as a VGA cable should work with any computer/monitor.  There are standards set for these cables, so there shouldn't be any variance in cables that don't allow you to use one cable over another.

[krick]

VGA is a 15pin cable... if you have 21pins, you have the wrong type of cable.

A VGA cable wired and marked as a VGA cable should work with any computer/monitor.  There are standards set for these cables, so there shouldn't be any variance in cables that don't allow you to use one cable over another.

The only place where I think the actual construction of the cable will come into play are:

1) the cable is *handled* a lot and may become damaged if cheaply made

2) the cable is extremely long and paying extra for a heavily shielded cable may help with potential signal quality issues due to electrical interference.  However, keep in mind that there are specifications for the cables based on length so as long as they follow the specs, you should be fine.

[rackoon]

Thanks for the info guys. I only need about 5' and I see a double shielded on amazon for $6.00. Whats the worst that can happen. Ill just keep in mind that my monitor is screwy and I cant figure it out maybe its my cable but not very likely.

I would buy the one from Ultimarc but my wife cut off all my funding until she is back from maternity leave. But I still have one click ordering on Amazon, OH YEA.