that's what they said at '17' few years back. now look at us. at 30! next stop 40, then 50 and beyond
guys, Dual link is a format. Its one card, and it handles really high resolution. I've looked at one. It was a normal looking card, but had a slightly different port. They don't make em on laptops as far as I know, so the limit for an external on a laptop is a 24" monitor. I looked into this quite a bit as I wanted to have a 30" external as a mobile office.
An external PCIe setup could be the solution to this sort of problem - it allows you to plug an external video card into your laptop (or desktop). http://www.magma.com/products/pciexpress/expressbox1/index.html Is basically a box that you install a PCIe X16 card into, which connects to the laptop through an ExpressCard, or to the desktop through a PCIe X1 card. So the throughput is only X1, but you still get the rest of the features from your X16 video card. Also currently limited to maximum power of 55 watts - which presumably rules out the more powerful gaming cards like 8600GT, but perhaps is fine for the more sedate cards like 8500 - that are still capable of driving two 30" monitors.
Holy cannelloni! Didn't even know such a thing existed. Super cool. Thanks funky. Boy, those engineers just never stop dreaming up stuff. Jay
Speaking of 30" monitors, does anyone know of one that actually works well and does what it should? The 3008wfp is reported to have some serious backlight bleed through, the Gateway xhd3000 has reported intermittent blackout issues and very slow input lags, and the Samsung 305t has no HDCP support.
Not that many here can afford it, but after a little research I would answer my own question and say that the new 30" NEC MultiSync LCD3090WQXi may be the only properly functioning 30" monitor. It is brand new so a little too early to tell, but it looks promising. During my search I was surprised to find how much you have to pay to get truly quality monitor.