One graphics card and 2 monitors

[DarkStar_GT]

My next piece of confusion ...

I would like to run 2 LCD monitors (1680 x 1050) from a single graphics card. I've looked at the manufacturers' websites for the cards available in the 3XS DAW configurations but have not yet found which ones are suitable. The manufacturers' websites were not too helpful - the cards have multiple connectors but I could not see much about running multiple monitors.

My main questions are:
-- which of the graphics boards will support 2 LCD monitors at 1680 x 1050?
-- how would I do connect them? (1 DVI connection and one VGA connection? Or 2 DVI connections?)
-- what are the limits on running 2 monitors from a single card (max resolution? data bandwidth?)

One manufacturer suggested (if I understood its documentation properly) that you could only connect a CRT monitor (not an LCD) to the VGA connector and that the LCD monitors had to be connected to the DVI connector (not to the VGA connector), possibly with a DVI:VGA adapter.

[PeteG@Scan]

All cards out there currently that I can think of will do 2 monitors at least with the newest ATI eyefinity (and I believe the next gen nvidia) capable of doing 3 at once.

Single link DVI and Dsub vga will both handle upto 1920 X 1200 without issue in none 3d modes (just working applications for instance) so you can indeed connect one via D-sub and one via dvi.

For more info on the restrictions of DVI (handy reading) check this link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Visual_Interface

But for specs of individual cards you'd have to check the details of the chipset used with nvidia or ati specs.

[DarkStar_GT]

@Pete

Thank you for your reply.

I looked around the manufacturers sites but Gainward is not providing much detail and nVidia focusses on its own products (not third-party manufacturers using their chipsets). I expect that the same goes for ATI.

For a non-gaming DAW system, is there any particular advantage of nVidia over ATI or vice versa?

[PeteG@Scan]

Catalyst drivers use to be fairly problematic in conjunction with some applications in the past but most of it seems to have cleared up these days. Nvidia itself is having some compatabilty problems with Cubase 5 and frame redraws (not common, but I've seen it twice in the last 3 months) which can be fixed if you roll back the drivers to around 180.

Personal experiance has always been that the nvidia drivers are more stable and better behaved at stock but the ati one's always manage to crank that much better when clocking the cards. As such I tend to stick with nvidia when working with pro systems where I'm not tweaking the gfx.

[neilh]

A timely question for me as well this one. It's probably a really daft question, but I haven't been able to find the answer with a bit of searching - but would the 768MB PNY Quadro FX1800 support two DVI LCD displays?

I'm not sure if you can connect a Display Port to a DVI device or whether a "dual link DVI" supports two devices?!

[PeteG@Scan]

Hi Neil,

A duel link dvi is for powering a single monitor in resolutions over 1920x1280. For more infomation on what it does check here ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Visual_Interface ).

If you check the top of this search page ( http://www.scan.co.uk/Search.aspx?q=display+port ) the's a number of options for conversion of a display port out. The's no dvi one without going for the active option currently through which I've been informed you don't need unless your working with eyefinity (ati). The closest looks like Display port to dvi I'm afraid.

[neilh]

Thanks Pete.

I guess I'll wait for the call about my 3XS configuration to discuss options then

[leepen@scan]

neilh,

If it's a DAW machine that you're speccing up then you needn't look at such a mid-high end card. We generally use 9500GT's or GT210's in DAW machines as they're passively cooled. If you were looking for the Quadro equivalent for a more workstation oriented machine, I'd suggest the following;

http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=992451

This does have a fan, but a lot of the lower end cards I mentioned above tend to have 1x DVI, 1x VGA and 1x HDMI.

Plenty of options then

[PeteG@Scan]

Rather than deal with a fan on the card through I'd say go with the nvidia 9500 or 210 options and fit one of these to the HDMI port:

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Labge...o-HDMI-Adaptor

Which should give you two dvi's in total.