Upgrading to two monitors - need new graphics card

[Zod]

dilbert said:

_Dobbo_ said: Pretty much any NVidia card will now have both a VGA and a DVI output. You can buy a DVI to VGA converter which will then allow you to run two monitors from one card. I wouldn't bet my life but something like this should do the job. YOu can see the two outputs on the card: This was after a 30 second search, probably there's cheaper stuff available. I'm not sure I'd assume that you can have different portions of the desktop coming out of each of the connections of a DVI/RGB video card. Aren't the DVI syncs timed with the RGB ones? Even if you could do this, you'd have to run at half the resolution to get twice the desktop space. You only get one frame buffer. I don't do it myself, but I think most people running two monitors have two video cards, no?

Nope, they have dual RAMDACs, so you can run full resolution on each monitor. My desktop is 3200x1200 (dual 1600x1200).


>> Edited by Zod on Thursday 10th March 16:36

[dilbert]

Whoever made the chipset, has obviously made it to .18 microns then! (Die space to spare)

>> Edited by dilbert on Thursday 10th March 16:39

[Zod]

dilbert said:

Whoever made the chipset, has obviously made it to .18 microns then! (Die space to spare) >> Edited by dilbert on Thursday 10th March 16:39

They're at 0.13 now and moving to 0.11 or even 0.09 soon.

[dilbert]

I doubt they'll be on 90 nm for a while Mr Zod! IBM are still struggling to get it just right for volume on the POWER architecture.

I was thinking about it though. What I now realise is that the DVI interface doesn't need a D/A on the video card end. The framestore memory can be the same or banked, I would have thought that the only extra thing necassary, over and above the standard RGB arrangement, is a separate gamma correction lookup/algo. I wouldn't have thought that's too expensive in terms of die area.

I saw your desktop on another thread Zod, and it got me thinking.

I've been looking at some of these high brightness, high aspect ratio single channel LCD monitors. What I was thinking was that if you made a special desk, you could put the display underneath and have a curved mirror above the desktop. I'm thinking collimation.

Can your video card put the whole of your desktop out on one channel, and then perform static distortion correction?

[simpo two]

agent006 said:

I've got a 32mb matrox millenium G400 dual head VGA. It's an AGP card and will happily run two monitors at 1600x1200 in whaterver colours you like. £30 from the wonderful ebay.

I found plenty of these and similar Matrox cards on eBay as you say. Looks good. I ran it past the guy who built my PC and he said they were 'crap for games'. Just wanted a second opinion - they can't be that bad surely?

Any benefit in AGP over PCI?

[_Dobbo_]

They are that bad - trust me you can't play a 3D game in a Matrox Gxxx Dual head card.

The cards don't have an up to date 3d chipset so basically can't do all the clever Direct3D stuff that current games all use.

If you want to be gaming, then you are back to needing a new(ish) 3D card like the first one I posted.

This will happily play games, and run your two monitors, but obviously costs a bit more.

[simpo two]

_Dobbo_ said:

They are that bad - trust me you can't play a 3D game in a Matrox Gxxx Dual head card. The cards don't have an up to date 3d chipset so basically can't do all the clever Direct3D stuff that current games all use.

Thanks Dobbo, it just shows you can't believe what you read (which is why I'm here!) The Matrox description says 'In addition to 2D, 3D, and DVD acceleration, it comes equipped for DualHead gaming, 3D Environment-Mapped Bump Mapping'. Which would have fooled me!

_Dobbo_ said:

If you want to be gaming, then you are back to needing a new(ish) 3D card like the first one I posted.

This one seems to be the same, but made by someone else... confusing ain't it? Is it the same thing?
www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/index.html?rb=5966905279&action=c2hvd19wcm9kdWN0X292ZXJ2aWV3&product_uid=85383

[_Dobbo_]

I think the Matrox was probably fine when it first came out, but it's a few years old now.

The ebuyer one is almost exactly the same thing as I posted - it's just a different branded version. And in the description:

ebuyer said:

NVIDIA®'s nView™ multi-display technology

This is the bit that matters - so you can defintately run two monitors on this.



>> Edited by _Dobbo_ on Friday 11th March 13:30