I am looking to go dual monitor setup *wheee*, I would like to know which video should I get.

Currently I have a VisionTek Ti200 (GF3), its decent not superior. Should I go AGP + PCI or AGP Dual VGA. Some suggested me that if my videocard is old, go get a dual vga video card but mine is still fairly new and it beats the Asus V9180 GF4 MX440.

So after some considerations, I might go get a PCI video card for my dual setup, I rear an ATI7000 review and they gave it a 1 due to so many problems. So theres the PINE TNT2 M32 for 56$, looking a fairly good secodnary (mainly 2D) for under 100.

 

Buy one of the new cards that support dual monitor. It will cost more but it will be less problem. One reason I can think of is the older card will not able to process video information as fast as the newer card (meaning you have to run a lower resolution on one monitor). This will also add over head to your CPU. The newer card video driver have dual monitor support build-in. Why try to re-invent the wheel when you can get plug and play. Just my point of view.

 

Your wrong, 2 Video Card = 2 GPU = 2 Brains

1 Video Card with Dual Monitor Support (Radeon, Nvidia) only has 1 chipset to drive two monitors thus the secondary will lack quality. Only professional cards like Matrox have different chipsets capable of handling multi-monitor setup.

 

Because you're not going to be playing games on both monitors at once (or at least I don't think).. you might as well go 1 PCI and 1 AGP.

Perhaps keep your VisionTek or whatever you're using right now... (is it PCI?).. if it's not... buy a cheapy PCI card that's of decent quality/speed.

ANd go with a nice new ATI AGP card. Perhaps the Radeon 9700 Pro...? Or you can wait for the Radeon 9800 Pro...

The new Radeon 9800 Pro will hold you over for a few years before you need upgrading.. but you need to spill out some serious amount of coin for that.

If you plan on upgrading every year... go with a cheaper AGP card.. perhaps the Radeon 9500... which is like $299 I think?

The Radeon 9700 is still around $499 right now... so it depends if you want to upgrade in the future.. and how far into the future

 

I dont want to spend 300$ on ATI, never liked them.

Heres what I'm going

VisionTek GF3 Ti200 (Primary) AGP
PNY GF4 MX420 (Secondary) PCI

Awesome.

 

The CPU overhead that I am talking about is your system CPU, not the GPU on the video card. The system CPU still have to process programming information first from main memory before it get send to the AGP bus, then to the video card. If you run it on two bus (AGP and PCI), the CPU will have to work more to feed data on both bus. If you have a 3GHZ P4 then you will be OK. As you said, it does not sound like you are going dual monitor 3-D gaming so what's wrong with using one card. I seriously don't think running dual monitor with these new cards will affect the visual quality since they are design to do it, unless you are runing 3-D games at high res.

 

ATI's 9700 and 9800 chipsets are blowing the **** out of the nVidia.

NV30 and NV35 haven't even come out yet and ATI's already releasing 9800... nVidia is going down the *******.

 

dudes I own a geforce2 and it still holding me back :P

 

I would like to run my games at the highest possible performance resolution. Anyways I went ahead and got the GF4 440, awesome Im using two monitors. Some getting used to, ugh I dont know what to do...

On The E771 (Worst Monitor), text is hard to read (this is with the GF4 440)

On the PT775 (Best Monitor owned), text is really easy to read on a 17" 1600x1200. But which one should be set for graphics and which one for 2D.

 

Picture of both my monitor


Picture with monitors and video card boxes


My old video card


My new video card


Screen saver


Screen saver w/ lights off