Dual Cards

[sativa]

Is it possible to run dual cards on a pc and have each one driving a different monitor at the same time?

Example: GeForce-class card in AGP connected to a CRT & a seperate PCI card connected to an LCD...

or would it be easier to buy just 1 AGP card capable of dual display & hook up the lcd to the DVI port and the CRT to the other port?

my eyes are suffering from regular work done on the CRT & i want to use it for just games...


edit: or could i buy a switch and have it alternate between the two monitors? what would the complications be

[murray]

yes

maybe, really related more to how much you want to spend/what your current card is. the only thing to look for is to make sure your os supports one of the cards as a "secondary display," and if you're planning on gaming through the agp card, you'll want the pci card to be supported in that manner.

yes, but if it's a crappy switch you could lose signal quality through it; you also wouldn't be able to drive the lcd digitally

[murray]

link for supported card thingiebobs in winxp

[mattsteg]

There are a lot of other cards that work as well but are not on the list. Sometimes they have straneg issues or need to be tweaked a bit, but they work. check http://www.realtimesoft.com/multimon for more information on different configurations that people have used. Their database is invaulable. Also, realtimesoft has a program called ultramon that is really useful for operating multiple displays, especially for enabling and disabling various cards and such.

FWIW I'm running a GF2 and an old ATI Rage Pro Turbo card (Xpert98). The usefulness of the extra desktop space you get from dual displays is incredible. It's probably the best upgrade I have done in the last year as far as usability of my system is concerned.