I am wanting to add a second and third monitor now, possibly another later, funds permitting. I've read a lot of stuff on this site about multi-monitor cards, but haven't seen much that compares Appian's 4-monitor controller to a Matrox option capable of doing the same. Is there anyone out there who can endorse one or the other based on personal experience? Plus, correct me if I'm wrong, but I was estimating a 4 monitor Matrox set-up would be about half the cost of an Appian card. Is this true, and if so, what justifies the big difference? Frantic screen changer, Brewey
I don't think the Matrox G200 4-port card is that much cheaper. On their site, they list it for $799. The closest Appian card to that is the AppianX, which is $899. One of the reasons for the difference in price is the fact is the fact that the AppianX has twice as much memory (64MB). Also, the Matrox uses a single 250Mhz RAMDAC, and the AppianX uses dual 330 Mhz RAMDACS.
Baron, Thanks for the reply, but I'm still getting up to speed on all this techno-lingo. Can I assume both the memory and GHz rating affect how quickly new images/charts are pulled onto the screen? Or, does picture quality at specific resolutions vary dependign on these ratings?
I have used both brands in my workstations. I prefer the Appian products due to configuration flexibility. I have one workstation with three J-Pro cards. You can expand the system as your needs grow. If your application is limited to trading, I'm not sure the speed or memory will make a lot of difference.
The faster the RAMDAC, the higher resolutions you can run on traditional monitors without the display flickering (which causes eyestrain). More memory enables you to run higher resolutions at full color. With the exception of video games, most applications don't use all of the memory that comes on today's video cards.