Hooking up 3 Monitors on One Card

[castleking]

My dad uses his computer for work, and is in need of an upgrade. His video is extremely weak, as he is using integrated graphics and a cheap dual head PCI graphics card. We're building a new machine for him this year, and were thinking about something along the lines of a 7600 for him. Problem is, he needs 3 monitors. Is there some sort of device I can use to either split an output or add an output?

 

[choirbass]

well... there are a few options that come to mind...

1) if hes not gaming specifically, and wants a quality 2D card, matrox is known for making excellent 2D cards... there are also the workstation cards that nvidia and ati/amd make... but the cards above arent at all intended for gaming

2) along the lines of matrox, theres also the TripleHeadToGo, if youre wanting to invest in a decent gaming card, and have it also simultaneously output to 3 monitors in spanned mode

3) you could always keep the existing pci card you have, and invest in a new agp/pcie gpu, and that will get you 3+ monitors, youll only be able to game with 2 monitors in most cases on the primary gpu, but, it will allow for 3 (or more) monitors to be used simultanously, even if only for general desktop usage

 

[castleking]

well... there are a few options that come to mind...

1) if hes not gaming specifically, and wants a quality 2D card, matrox is known for making excellent 2D cards... there are also the workstation cards that nvidia and ati/amd make... but the cards above arent at all intended for gaming

2) along the lines of matrox, theres also the TripleHeadToGo, if youre wanting to invest in a decent gaming card, and have it also simultaneously output to 3 monitors in spanned mode

3) you could always keep the existing pci card you have, and invest in a new agp/pcie gpu, and that will get you 3+ monitors, youll only be able to game with 2 monitors in most cases on the primary gpu, but, it will allow for 3 (or more) monitors to be used simultanously, even if only for general desktop usage

How are those matrox cards for doing things like running Vista. The main reason we want the graphics card is for running Vista well (his company wants him to try Vista out for the company).

 

[choirbass]

ohh, okay, in that case... since vista is more gpu dependant than previous windows OS with all visual settings enabled, i would look into something along the lines of a geforce 6200 pci card, and the 7600 that you mentioned... so youll be above the minimum requirements to run vista well on all monitors (so you can also have aero enabled anyhow), also so there arent any driver conflicts, such as between ati/nvidia gpus both being installed in the same system

there might not be gpu driver conflicts in vista (unlike in xp), but having 2 nearly identical cards will minimize the chances of that

as far as matrox... im really not sure, havent heard much, since matrox specializes in 2D graphics performance, and vista uses more of a 3D interface

edit: vista requirements - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsvista/aa905075.aspx you should take a look at that