DVI connector on ASRock Z77 Extreme 4 missing 4 holes?

[panamavibes]

I was trying to plug my D-Sub to DVI adapter (came with my GTX285 card) into the ASRock Z77 Extreme 4 I/O panel's DVI connector and it wouldn't go in.

When I looked closer into it it seems to be missing four holes! My DVI adapter lools like this:

x x x x x x x x x x
---
x x x x x x x x x x

But the DVI connector on the I/O panel looks like this:

x x x x x x x x
---
x x x x x x x x

As you can see my DVI connector has four pins, two above the flat connector pin, and two below but the DVI connector on the motherboard's I/O panel only has the flat connector pin (like a line) but no holes for the two pins above and below it.

[synack]

Your "DVI" connector is not a DVI connector.
it should only be at most 8 pins across for a dual-link dvi (6 pins for a single link). You show 10 pins across.

Some video cards come with a special custom breakout cable/connector, are you sure you are not mistaking what you have for one of those?
It could also be an EVC connector, but those are fairly rare.

here is a pic of some video connectors.

[synack]

Sorry I missed your description at the bottom that says those pins are above and below the wide pin.

Looks like your connector is analog and digital DVI (aka dvi-i), whereas the motherboard is digital (dvi-d) only.

[parsec]

synack is correct, your adapter supports the four analog output pins that can be used on a DVI output. Not all DVI outputs support the analog signal, including your board. Video cards often have two DVI outputs, one with and one without those four pins.

VGA is an analog video connection, and DVI is digital (DVI-D), or has both analog and digital (DVI-I). Your adapter is a passive adapter, it just connects the four analog video connections (if present) to a VGA cable. Your new board's DVI video output is DVI-D, digital only.

Just use the VGA output on your board. That adapter does not provide a better signal because it is connected to the DVI output, it does not send a digital signal to the monitor. Or get a DVI-D or HDMI cable, or does your monitor only have a VGA input?

[profJim]

DVI detailed information: Digital Visual Interface - Wikipedia

[panamavibes]

Indeed it is a DVI-I I had been using with my nVidia GTX285 which has two such connectors (no DSUB). So I connected it again to the GTX285. I also installed all the HD drivers.

I did install the Virtu MVP but I don't really see any performance improvements as the website claims that it virtualizes both the discrete and integrated cards to distribute the load. I think that was all talk and no real facts.

[parsec]

Virtu has not worked at all as good as it is supposed to. Users have reported many bugs, up to some games simply not working with it.

The main point of Virtu was to switch between the integrated and discrete graphics card, depending upon the load. To combine the two for added performance is no doubt very difficult, and I'm not surprised if it does not work.