water 2005-10-14 18:32
For instance Matrox's triple head is really:
analog/DVI/analog
Not:
DVI/DVI/DVI
I wasn't aware that 2 graphic cards could coexist in the same box. Thanks to the many examples posted here I think I'll shop around for:
AGP dualhead DVI/DVI card + PCI DVI card
(i currently have an old matrox g400 32mb dualhead running 2 Trinitrons. but I'm going to upgrade to 3 LCD's and use DVI instead of analog which means I'll have to upgrade the card too).
Anyone have brand/model suggestions?
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water 2005-10-14 18:34
i just reread my post. really incoherent. sorry.
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ECarlson 2005-10-15 02:23
No suggestions sounds fine. There are plenty of dual DVI AGP cards, and there are plenty of PCI cards with DVI and VGA, so you shouldn't have much problem finding cards.
If you were buying a new system, I would have recommended getting a motherboard with 2 X16 PCIe slots, so you could put in a pair of dual DVI PCIe cards, then you could go to 4 DVI monitors if you ever wanted to, and all would have full performance (unlike PCI).
You can get dual DVI PCI cards, but they are not as easy to find, and the choices are more limited, while dual DVI AGP and PCIe cards are plentiful.
- Eric, www.InvisibleRobot.com
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water 2005-10-15 05:34
Hey, this is embarrassing but I'd not heard of PCI Express until yesterday when I started my video card search.
My system is less than a year old and the motherboard is an Abit 1S7 which doesn't have PCI Express (had to check the manual to make sure). How recently did PCI Express slots appear on motherboards? If they were around a year ago then it seems my pre-purchase research wasn't thorough enough!
Looking at it now yes it would be nice to have 2 cards on PCI-e, but even had I known about PCI-e back then I don't think I would have jumped on it because my plan was to stick with AGP/dual crt's a few more years.
The cards I will get:
Matrox P750 AGP
Matrox Millennium G550 Low-profile PCI
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water 2005-10-15 05:42
and the monitors:
LG L1980Q 19" x 3
or maybe
LG L1980Q 19" x 2 + one trinitron
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water 2005-10-15 07:32
I changed my mind about getting the Matrox cards and will get a couple of Nvidia cards instead. Comparing the specs, the Nvidia cards exceed Matrox's and at cost less.
Even though the Matrox cards would suit my NLE (sony vegas), which doesn't use or need the 3d graphics power of the Nvidia's, I think the LCD's will be better off running from cards with 128mb ram instead of 64mb.
AGP
XFX GeForce 6600 GT / 128MB DDR3 / AGP 8X / Dual DVI / HDTV / Video Card
PCI
Chaintech GeForce FX 5200 / 128MB DDR / PCI / VGA / DVI / TV Out Video Card
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ECarlson 2005-10-15 13:02
I think there were some threads about using those 2 NVidia cards together. You should read those threads before making a purchase.
I don't think dual X16 PCIe motherboards were easy to find a year ago. PCIe was very new a year ago.
- Eric, www.InvisibleRobot.com
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water 2005-10-16 03:27
Too late, already ordered. Worst case, I'll just substitute the fx5200 with another non-nvidia pci card.
Thanks for the warning, now I won't be so shocked when/if it doesn't work!
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ECarlson 2005-10-16 08:46
They might work together, but you might need to read the threads to see if anything special has to be done.
You probably want to update your motherboard BIOS right now, before you start to make any other changes to your system.
I always make sure the BIOS is up to date before making hardware changes to a system, and before installing a new OS.
- Eric, www.InvisibleRobot.com
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water 2005-10-27 04:56
To update:
My nVidia cards arrived last night. Could not get 5200 and 6600 to work together AT ALL. Spent hours on the problem.
This morning I bought an ATI Radeon 9250 and installed it. Works flawlessly.
Now I have 3 monitors. Thinking about adding a 4th (2 LCD on the bottom, 2 CRT's on top).
Probably going to have to put the CRT's on a steel shelf supported by posts going all the way down to the floor. I'm sure I'll see lots of mounting solutions here.
Thanks again for that heads up about the nVidia problem!
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ECarlson 2005-10-28 15:32
Thanks for the update.
- Eric, www.InvisibleRobot.com
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