Dual head video cards?

[Terry]

Has anyone used a "dual head" video card for two monitors, and which one is it?

I do a lot of video editing, and could use the extra screen for that. I'm thinking a couple LCD's side by side.
http://www.evga.com/products/moreinf...4-AX&family=22

[jadnashua]

I haven't personally used that type of setup, but several people at work do. They say, once you do it, you won't want to go back to a single dislpay. One of my friends has three large plasma displays on his computer - he monitors numerous servers simultaneously...just depends on how much you want to spend.

[rshackleford]

I have been doing this with my laptop. Two monitors are great. I don't want to go back. I just have the standard issue shared graphics with my centrino. My setup works pretty good without the addition of a video card. I am not familar with the hardware you described.

[Scott]

I've been running dual monitors with the NVIDIA GeForce 6200 for several months. It's reasonably priced and powers my twin-19"-ers without any problems.

[tjbaudio]

I have had dual monitor since the days of Win98. I can´t go back! Now I run Linux with dual head. I know Win XP and I think 2K can do dual monitors with just 2 normal vid cards. Just add a new card and go. Although I would guess the cost of dual head cards has drooped. One other note If you have a built in vid card that shares system ram it may not be dual head compatible. In that case just get the dual head card and disable the internal one.

Tom B

[Dunbar Plumbing]

I was debating going with dual monitors and instead I've decided to go with a 30" Dell monitor.

It's getting good reviews and my current monitor is the box type 17" with 15" viewing screen.

This new flat screen "should" allow me to size the screen edge to edge no problems.........or open up numerous windows and tile them.

I'm just sick and tired of sizing my windows out and using the scroll bars.


I'm thinking this is a fix that will never break from there on out.

http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/p...9&sku=222-0863

[Cass]

I have never used a dual head video card.

I am building a dual core computer right now though. I'll let you know how well it works when I'm done.

[Dunbar Plumbing]

Well I didn't end up with the 30" screen, went with the smaller 24" Ultrasharp and bought a 20" flat screen for another computer. In total I spent $400 less than the one posted and got 2 monitors for two different computers.

[hotfloor]

You have the option of running two cards for two monitors (one AGP and one PCI or both PCI or both AGP) or using a dual monitor card.
Issues you will encounter will single dual monitor card... Memory will be divided between the monitors so heavy apps may show strain. If you have a newer motherboard, you may have two spc slots or two agp slots. If this is the case you can insert two cards and bridge them together to run as one card. That is my current setup and it screams in all aspects.

If you are doing just general daily things with your PC a single dual monitor card will serve you just fine.

[zimmee66]

I've been "dual-monitoring" since about 1988 and actually feel sort of lost and uncomfortable with a single screen.

Giant monitors are nifty but expensive, often have color issues, and are a single (pricey) point of failure, I find two monitors around 19-20" the ideal setup for most anything we need to do. Only a few projects require us to use our larger monitor setups rather than a dual setup. For day-to-day work, even 17-inch is workable for many uses, and its pretty cheap to buy 17" flat-panels these days.

For image or audio work its great to be able to have controls on one screen and working image/target file on the other. Another cool thing is running side-by-side revisions for comparison, running different application or OS versions side-by-side for testing, side-by-side comparison of page rendering in different browsers---You will find endless ways to use it!

Dual-display just isnt that expensive anymore. Unless you want to game, performance isn't even that much of an issue. The fairly affordable, low-end NVIDIA GeForce 6200 does the job for many of our staff.

I agree that using two sgood quality, seperate cards is usually the most effective route. You do pay a premium for dual head cards.

If you use windows you may want to consider a little software add-on called UltraMon, which expands some configuration options.

http://www.realtimesoft.com/ultramon/overview/

Mac and most Linux distros already have such tweaks built-in.

I'm curious to hear how it goes, I hope you'll update us!

[Terry]

I wound up getting dual 19" LCD for my work stations.
Data entry is much quicker now, and less paper printed out and wasted.
I'm using dual DVI cards with DVI montiors.
With the 19" I don't have to strain to see the text even on the 1280 by 1024 pixel setting.

The Lasik has been very good, but in bad light, I still use a very weak reading glass somtimes. With the 19"'s I don't need them.

I went with the Invidia chips, The 7600 GT KO on one and 7900 GT on the other.

That last link on UltraMon looks interesting.