SebJT Posted January 10, 2006 Report Share Posted January 10, 2006 Hi guys,I'm getting another TFT to match my current one, but my graphics card doesn't support two monitors so I'm going to need a new card.- I never play games, but maybe nice to have a card capable of doing so but not a neccesity.- I needs to be able to run extended desktop easily, i dont just want a clone monitor.- preferable around £50 but I'm open to suggestions.- I'm using a sumsung 19" TFT at 1280x1024 and i'd like to keep it at that so needs to be able to support two screens running at this spec.- I have also heard you can just buy a cheap PCI card and run it with my existing AGP card is this true?Thanks for any help,Seb Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Danny Posted January 10, 2006 Report Share Posted January 10, 2006 Are you running the tft's through vga or dvi?If your running them through dvi look on somewhere like ebuyer for a card with dual dvi outputs although these are usually the more expensive cards.If your just running them through vga then you can add in any old pci graphics card and use that to power the extra monitor Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SebJT Posted January 10, 2006 Author Report Share Posted January 10, 2006 (edited) Dual dvi looks quite expensive, I presume im running VGA as its not a brill gfx card. If a gfx card has VGA and DVI out is that enough to run two screens?Edit: My monitor says it has one analogue input i presum that means only VGA?Thanks,Seb Edited January 10, 2006 by SebJT Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hoot Posted January 10, 2006 Report Share Posted January 10, 2006 Nvidia Geforce 6200! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SebJT Posted January 10, 2006 Author Report Share Posted January 10, 2006 which one? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve-A Posted January 10, 2006 Report Share Posted January 10, 2006 Hi guys,- I have also heard you can just buy a cheap PCI card and run it with my existing AGP card is this true? Thats what I have done. I've got the AGP graphics card running my main monitor where most aplications open, then a cheap PCI card running my second monitor with the task bar, msn and icons type thing. When I'm using photo/music/video editors and similar I have the graphics heavy items in the main monitor and have all the tools and menus open in the secondery monitor. I dont think I'd ever wanna go back to video editing without two monitors. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nb88 Posted January 10, 2006 Report Share Posted January 10, 2006 (edited) Are you running the tft's through vga or dvi?If your running them through dvi look on somewhere like ebuyer for a card with dual dvi outputs although these are usually the more expensive cards.If your just running them through vga then you can add in any old pci graphics card and use that to power the extra monitor So you can just add in whatever pci gfx card you want and use different gfx for each screen? im thinking of going dual aswell... Edited January 10, 2006 by Nozmeister Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tomm Posted January 10, 2006 Report Share Posted January 10, 2006 So you can just add in whatever pci gfx card you want and use different gfx for each screen? im thinking of going dual aswell...PC cards aren't really available any more. They are NOT the same as PCI-Express by the way. You can just buy a cheap AGP card that has dual outputs - I had a Radeon 9200LE (About £25) and even that had dual outputs, I think one was DVI, one analogue. So instead of trying to find an old PCI card you may as well get a cheap AGP graphics Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tank_rider Posted January 10, 2006 Report Share Posted January 10, 2006 most modern graphics card that have both a vga and dvi out will run dual monitors.If you've got a £50 budget then you'll probably be best served by something like this "HIS Excalibur ATI Radeon 9550 128MB DDR TV-Out/DVI (AGP) - Retail (R9550-TDW128-C) (GX-009-HT)" from overclockers. Don't be fooled by the advertising jargon in the description. It's blatantly not "the world's fastest and most advanced graphics board" but is a reasonable graphics card that will handle dual monitors easily and should do a reasonable job when doing video editing etc. It's not going to be up to anything special games or CAD/CAE wise, but it will be ok for what you want.My only bit of advice would be don't go for the 6200 turbocache as it uses part of your system RAM as memory slowing the rest of your pc down. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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