Dual display cards?

[P-Dub]

What I'm looking for is one video card that will support two displays. At the moment I'm only aware of the ATI VE, and the Matrox G450. What in the Nvida chips are available? I find a lot that have TV out, but that's not really important as this won't be a HTPC, though there may be a potential down the road.

I'm just thinking of making use of a spare 17" monitor. Plus I'd like to have a card that will help DVD playback, and so far I recall that the ATI VE is a pretty decent unit. Not too interested in gaming.

I'm thinking of mating this to my old Celeron 300A system OC'd to 450. Plus adding a DVD/CDRW combo drive and a SB 5.1 output card. I am toying with the idea of a new box, which would include these components as well.




Paul

There are three kinds of people in this world; those that can count, and those that can't.

[Andrew Pratt]

For what I've read if gaming isn't your bag and DVD quality is then the ATI's are where its at...esp for dual display. I think the new Nvidia chip can do dual display but I'm not sure how many cards there are with that functionality..at least I haven't seen to many.

[Bing Fung]

Paul don't you have a Matrox G400?

The ATI sounds like the ticket for you then. I have not seen the dual display of the ATI in action, however i hear nobody really holds a candle to Matrox's dual display.

You could also by a cheap PCI video card and let windows run the dual display for you in conjunction with the AGP card. If you are interested in that let me know and I'll dig up the particulars for you.




Bing

[Andrew Pratt]

bing if you add two video cards do they both have to support the same resolutions etc or can be set higher then the other? Reason I ask is I have an older generic video card that I could add to add a second monitor but it won't come close to keeping up with my geforce

[P-Dub]

Bing: I do, but that's in the box at work. I'm thinking for home use. I've only got the original TNT card on my home box so looking for an upgrade. I've been aware of the dual monitor support in Windoze and have access to a PCI card already. I just figured to save some space and get some DVD playback performance to run just one card. Now here's something, what if I get a dual display card, could I still add in my other PCI card? Have 3 monitors going? Hmm...

Andrew: If you run 2 different cards, I think you should be able to run them at different resolutions. Don't know for sure.




Paul

There are three kinds of people in this world; those that can count, and those that can't.

[Bing Fung]

Andrew, if I remember correctly, if your using the display as "extended desktop" where you can drag items from one monitor to the other, they have to be the same resolution. If however you set it up as 2 separate monitors, you can then run different resolutions.

Paul, that is one heck of an idea. Hell if you used an AGP Matrox and then a PCI Matrox, both dual heads, you could have 4 monitors




Bing

[P-Dub]

Paul, that is one heck of an idea. Hell if you used an AGP Matrox and then a PCI Matrox, both dual heads, you could have 4 monitors

Holy crap, I didn't even think of that!