Suggestions on suitable video cards for dual monitors

[Jackell]

Hey all,

my employer has commissioned me to retrofit our PCs to use a dual monitor setup, and I'm looking for your opinions on some decent PCI video cards, both regular and dualhead types. Cost is not a huge barrier, but the apps here are strictly 2D, and we don't necessarily want to pay for cool features that we will never use.

 

[cleeve]

Get any PCI card that says Radeon, Geforce, or Matrox.

Go matrox for the best dualhead functionality (from what I hear... Radeons and Geforces have fine dualhead functionality in my experience)

If you plan to upgrade these business machines to vista, get at least an X1300 or 6200.

 

[JMecc]

NVidia cards give you options that ATI ones don't for dual monitors, such as:

Right-click on a program in the bottom or top of the screen and pick to send it to another monitor

"Move to Next Display" button

Across both screens maximize button (separate from normal maximize)

Different backgrounds on each desktop

These are some little things that you'll be happy to have for the same price.
Jo

 

[halcyon]

Ditto on that, but given the choice I'd recommend nVidia or Matrox. Their drivers have been a tad bit better than ATI's, in my experience. Even old Matrox cards have very strong (spelled beautiful) analog output and rock-solid drivers. If you're considering Vista, at all, on these workstations go with nVidia or ATI.

ATI's drivers are fine if you forego the Catalyst CC and stick with the driver only, in my experience.

I've found that even cheap nVidia GeForce FX 5200's (weaker nVidia models) do just fine with Vista's Aero and they're vga dual-head as well as possessing extremely stable drivers that seem second-to-none. ...so they'd probably do just fine on those corporate desktops. We buy a lot of this model where I work for the same purpose you've described.

 

[celewign]

Get a GeForce 8800 GTX. I think that they have that feature.

No seriously. Listen to Cleeve. He knows stuff.
-cm