Best Dual Monitor Card – Which

Gary wrote:

Hi, I do not play games, only use two tft screens to edit my own photography. What is the best dual monitor graphics card at a reasonable price please.

Gary

If all you need is 2d, go for a Matrox Dualhead. Several models will serve your need just fine…
Alternatively, an ATI Radeon would do.
HTH
Pjotr

Gary wrote:

What is the best dual monitor graphics card at a reasonable price please.

It depends on your needs. If you need two color managed monitors, I wouldn’t buy a dual-headed graphic card. I would buy two independent graphic cards instead. Most dual-headed graphic cards share only one LUT between the two outputs which makes it quite difficult to color manage both monitors at the same time.

—
Regards
Madsen

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says…

Gary wrote:

Hi, I do not play games, only use two tft screens to edit my own photography. What is the best dual monitor graphics card at a reasonable price please.

Gary

If all you need is 2d, go for a Matrox Dualhead. Several models will serve your need just fine…
Alternatively, an ATI Radeon would do.
HTH
Pjotr

I will second this opinion. My Matrox Dual-head card has run two Hitachi 21" monitors in PS in Win2K and has wonderful support, i.e. drivers, etc., which was not always the case with this company. They seem focused, now, on products and support for the design community.

Hunt

In article , says…

Gary wrote:

What is the best dual monitor graphics card at a reasonable price please.

It depends on your needs. If you need two color managed monitors, I wouldn’t buy a dual-headed graphic card. I would buy two independent graphic cards instead. Most dual-headed graphic cards share only one LUT between the two outputs which makes it quite difficult to color manage both monitors at the same time.
—
Regards
Madsen

As the second monitor is most often used for palettes, color management has not been a problem on any of my second monitors. Also, I’m not aware of any mainboard with 2 AGP busses.

Hunt

Hunt wrote:

As the second monitor is most often used for palettes, color management has not been a problem on any of my second
monitors.

That was why I wrote "it depends on your needs". If the purpose of the second monitor is only to hold palettes then it probably doesn’t matter but we don’t know what Gary wants to do with the second monitor.

Also, I’m not aware of any mainboard with 2 AGP busses.

But most mainboards have one AGP and several PCI slots. Some have even one AGP, four or five PCI slots and one or two PCI Express slots to hold the next generation of graphic cards.

—
Regards
Madsen

Yah, but most don’t and frankly the choice of PCI video cards really blows. You are better of with a good dual head card. Besides I really see very little reason that one would need both monitors color calibrated. If you need to make sure color is correct just move the window over to the one that is. No big deal.

I also give my vote to the Matrox cards. I have the G550 and love it. I have also had the G450 (upgraded about 6 months ago) and loved it as well.

John

Hi, primarily, the second monitor holds my palettes. I currently use a pci for it but no matter waht I do, I end up with memory full problems when booting the pc as its drivers want to load a lot of software I dont need. If I remedy this, I get irq contention.

Gary
"John Doe" wrote in message

Yah, but most don’t and frankly the choice of PCI video cards really

blows.

You are better of with a good dual head card. Besides I really see very little reason that one would need both monitors color calibrated. If you need to make sure color is correct just move the window over to the one

that

is. No big deal.

I also give my vote to the Matrox cards. I have the G550 and love it. I

have

also had the G450 (upgraded about 6 months ago) and loved it as well.
John

John Doe wrote:

Yah, but most don’t and frankly the choice of PCI video cards really blows.

Matrox still makes PCI cards for instance. I’ll bet that you can’t feel the difference between a G450 AGP and a G450 PCI.

You are better of with a good dual head card.

That’s your opinion. 🙂

Besides I really see very little reason that one would need both monitors color calibrated. If you need to make sure color is correct just move the window over to the one that is. No big deal.

No it’s not a big deal if you don’t need it and to be honest I don’t miss it every day. I just think it would be nice if my secondary CRT was color managed too but the colors look awful because color managed programs use the profile from the shared LUT which contains the profile of the primary monitor (a 20" TFT). I’ve tried to adjust my way out of it but with no luck so far.

—
Regards
Madsen

Given the choice between an AGP or PCI video card, which is better and why?

John Doe wrote:

Yah, but most don’t and frankly the choice of PCI video cards really blows. You are better of with a good dual head card. Besides I really see very little reason that one would need both monitors color calibrated. If you need to make sure color is correct just move the window over to the one that is. No big deal.

I also give my vote to the Matrox cards. I have the G550 and love it. I have also had the G450 (upgraded about 6 months ago) and loved it as well.
John

"Gary" wrote in message

Hi, I do not play games, only use two tft screens to edit my own photography. What is the best dual monitor graphics card at a reasonable price please.

I just got a new PC for image editing and I swapped the Matrox G450 Dual Head out of my old PC into the new one. Works great! You can get G450s pretty cheap on eBay .

For me, the colour issue doesn’t matter as the second monitor is for pallettes and ancillary stuff. Apparently the G650 allows for different colour profiles for each attached monitor, if you need it.

Not sure about interfaces for TFT, but I’d expect some of the Matrox cards to handle it.
I’ve been very happy with Matrox anyway (Having the G450 and a G200 before that).

The only possible issue I guess is whether Matrox survive, as a company, and the availability of drivers. They seem to have given up on the 3D/gaming market, leaving nVidia and ATi to battle it out. If they survive in their own niche, all well and good. Probably doesn’t matter in a practical sense though, as you’d have drivers for anything you are running now, and by the time lack of new drivers became an issue we’d be talking about old kit needing replacement anyway.

John

Well, then Madsen I recommend you not buy on the cheap and get a better card that offers dual head support with two control chips. You knew full well what you were getting when you bought the card. That is assuming you did your homework. If having both monitors color calibrated is so important then you simply bought the wrong card. For 90% of us having both color calibrated is not required.

And, apparently my opinion is valid since the sale of dual head video cards far exceeds those of other video cards.

John

wrote:

Given the choice between an AGP or PCI video card, which is better and why?

For 2D work it is almost irrelevant.

Data transfer between computer main memory and the graphic adapter’s own memory is faster with AGP but that does not matter for 2D.

If you want to play games, AGP will help you a lot.

Michael

John Doe wrote:

Yah, but most don’t and frankly the choice of PCI video cards really blows. You are better of with a good dual head card. Besides I really see very little reason that one would need both monitors color calibrated. If you need to make sure color is correct just move the window over to the one that is. No big deal.
I also give my vote to the Matrox cards. I have the G550 and love it. I have also had the G450 (upgraded about 6 months ago) and loved it as well.

John

John Doe wrote:

Well, then Madsen I recommend you not buy on the cheap and get a better card that offers dual head support with two control chips.

I’d rather buy two independent cards, as I wrote earlier. Maybe a fast card to the AGP bus and some cheap card to run the secondary monitor on the PCI bus.

You knew full well what you were getting when you bought the card.

Actually no. I thought the card had support for it because that’s what the comparison chart at Matrox told me back then.

You can read more about that in this thread, if you wish: http://www.google.com/groups?&as_umsgid=EKj6c.34412$_w.5 67640@attbi_s53

If having both monitors color calibrated is so important then you simply bought the wrong card.

True.

For 90% of us having both color calibrated is not required.

I know but maybe Gary was among the last 10 % that required it. That’s the only reason why I mentioned it.

And, apparently my opinion is valid since the sale of dual head video cards far exceeds those of other video cards.

I have never said that your opinion isn’t valid but please let me have mine.

—
Regards
Madsen

I have no problems with your opinion. That is the beauty of the newsgroups. It allows people to ask a questions and get answers from my different angles which helps the person then decide what is right for them. Nothing worse than thinking you have it all worked out, then find out you missed something from some odd angle that never came to mind.

John

John Doe wrote:

I have no problems with your opinion. That is the beauty of the newsgroups.

I agree 🙂

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Regards
Madsen

wrote:

Given the choice between an AGP or PCI video card, which is better and why?

At this point in time it could be more worthwhile waiting for PCI-Express motherboards to appear and then buy two PCI-X cards.

Stuart

hi there
I use 2 17" flat screen monitors made by ( TIME – Computers ) and a matrox G450 dual head , 32mb video card
and iam very happy with it.

i dont know what i would do with out the two monitors now really really useful.

The only thing i havent managed to do is to open
two copies of adobe , one for each window
but thats nothing to do with the card or monitors.

hope the info helps.

de Paul