Windows DNS forwarders

I would like to know the difference between the DNS Standard Forwarders and Root hint forwarders. they sound to me redundant.

The conditional forwarder makes sense to me...for instance , you are telling the client if you want to resolve this specific zone name I will send you (Forward) to this DNS (the one specified in conditional forwarders.

but Standard forwarders, seems the same to me as the Root Hints.....it is saying If you need to resolve a name space that I am not aware of I will send you to this DNS .... I guess Root Hint will take care of that without configuring standard forwarder.Please correct me if I am wrong.

Thanks