Dual vid cards

[flamethrower205]

I got myself 2 Samsung 214T's and want to run both through the DVI so as not to compromise image quality. I have a 6600GT which has only one DVI port, and was thinking of hooking in a PCI card (prolly something used and cheap). Now how exacly would this work; would the 6600GT still remain as the main controller card so that games run through it and the PCI card is auxillary? Could I use NVidia's NView to manage both displays?

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

Yes it should work fine on both counts.

The GF6600 would act as primary and games would usually black out your PCI screen unless they support spanning etc. You could change the boot sequence and assignment of the cards through the bios, and force recognition through a regedit, but unless you need to let M$ and nView manage the cards.

I did this with my old AIW PCI and the R9600P, and while I know that that's ATi and this is nV, M$ doesn't care to much unless you want to do something special, like spanning, etc.

For any special tweaking use UltrMon, but otherwise nView should be fine. You may have DVD playback issues, but that's the usual Macrovision, DRM crap everything has to deal with, in which case you need to adjust your overlay features. I forget what it looks like in nView.

Anywhoo, should work without major issue. The only major problems I've heard about is coming back from gaming sometimes the second montior may hang, and that's usually a driver glitch, but common.

 

[flamethrower205]

Thanks, now to choose which card to get for the PCI heh

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

Yeah your options are limited, I would be a little scared to mix a GF6 and FX card. Personally I'd say go with an MX or another GF6 card (likely very pricey though).

MX400/4000 style card should be enough for most sitations IMO.

 

[flamethrower205]

You think the video quality through the DVI on an MX4000 is good enough tho?

 

[flamethrower205]

I can get a G200 Matrox PCI realll cheap right now, but I'm wondering what the image quality on a 16MB dated video card will be like. Other option is also a G450 PCI....

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

You think the video quality through the DVI on an MX4000 is good enough tho?

Sure it'll be OK, it's a 165mhz TMDS like everything else (the RAMDAC is/are slow but not an issue for DVI), but of course if you look at THG and Extremetech's reviews, the quality of nV's TMDSs kinda sucks for large resolution;

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,3973,1370500,00.asp
http://www.tomshardware.com/2004/11/29/the_tft_connection/

No tests of the MX series itself, but the FX5200 results don't look promising, neither do most of the FXs. Sad that the R7500 (the one also with 400mhz RAMDACs) does better than the much higher end, and much new tech FX cards.

I can get a G200 Matrox PCI realll cheap right now, but I'm wondering what the image quality on a 16MB dated video card will be like. Other option is also a G450 PCI....

If it's for 2D you'll be fine, Matrox quality is bullet-proof IMO, the only thing you can still rely on. 16MB won't be an issue for 2D, so either would be fine.

I still prefer one brand to keep drivers friendly.

 

[flamethrower205]

Are there any converters out there for PCI-Express to PCI? Found a GF6200 TC for $40, but it's PCI Express.

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

You know it's been so long since I've looked at those (now we usually just think of MoBos of course) that I don't know what is out there anymore.

Either way I think an adapter would cost even more than a dual PCIe bord (SLi capable or not). Not worth the money IMO, other than as an artifact.