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Amauri71 2005-09-01 00:20
First of all, excuse me for my English as I am Brazilian and will have problems to clearly convey my doubts and problems.Before I even know about this Forum and site and relying only on Microsoft Help on Installing Additional Monitors I decided to go ahead and do it on my own and the result was a mess. Then I found this site and Forum and started to read everything I could related to my problems and finally here I am posting for the first time. I am not concerning about gaming, 3D or any sophisticated or heavy use of graphics. My interest in Multiple monitors (actualy only two) is strictly related to the possibility of while working on my reports using some word processing software on one video be able to pick data on a pdf file in other monitor or looking to my email or even searching the web for something related to my task.
I already had a Pine SiS 315E / 32MB /AGP 4X / VGA / Video card and I was happy with it. Then I bought a second card, a ATI Rage Mobility / 8MB / PCI Video card for my second monitor. I will not bother you all describing the problems I had and the desperate tentatives to solve them, because I already decided to buy another PCI video card and be back in business again. According to some basic rules I have learned in the past days searching this nice site I have got to the following conclusions:
Assuming any card can be used as primary I can stick to my current PINE Sis in my AGP slot;
Considering the statement found on page Home > Multi-Monitor Resources > Shopping Guide, “all cards listed here should work fine as secondary displays with (98/Me/2000/XP)”, my OS is XP;
Having in mind that in my country the most popular video card brand is ATI and I got myself a little disapointed with the level of information I found on their site, I decided not go with ATI anymore;
Finally, the question is: should I be OK buying a discontinued Matrox Millenium G200 PCI card for my secondary video? I mean, shopping ebay and going through sellers offering cheap used card with 16 or 32MB, single or dual head, as I already saw in the web.
Amauri Amaral
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Tantalus 2005-09-01 13:14
>>Finally, the question is: should I be OK buying a discontinued Matrox Millenium G200 PCI card for my secondary video?
matrox cards are excellent if you only need 2d performance. the older cards like the g200 and g400/450's have the benefit of having a very mature driver set from microsoft. if all you need is single output pci the g200 may be overkill. but i see that prices for used cards are quite reasonable so if you can find them cheap, more power to you.
if you're running xp, i would advise you to stick with the MS driver and skip downloading any newer version from matrox unless you develop problems.
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Amauri71 2005-09-24 00:16
Hi Tantalus! Sorry for taking so long to reply, but I had to wait some time to get my mail down here. Your advise was precious to me. I ordered a used Matrox Millenium G200 PCI 8MB SVGA Card G2+ on ebay (it cost me only US$9.99) and I´m in business now and very happy. Thank you very much for your help. I would take the opportunity to ask you or other people if I would have any kind of gain or improvement if I add an 8MB upgrade memory card to this old but good Matrox video card. I found this kind of upgrade on ebay for about US$5.00 and I´m wondering if would be worthtable.
Amauri Amaral
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Tantalus 2005-09-25 00:13
since that card is only driving 1 display, 8mb is more than sufficient for any resolution at the desired color pallette. imo, i don't think you need to bother w/additional memory.
fyi, i use an old matrox milleniun II card on many of my 3 display rigs and it also is an 8 mb card, never found it lacking in any way.
cheers.
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