does anybody have anything to say (good or bad) about these two particular graphic cards in their use with Windows 2000, Windows NT or Windows XP Professional? If not...what dual-monitor setup do you actually use and how well does it work? I'm not interested in what someone "heard"...more interested in "actual personal" experience. Thanks. Nihaba Ashi P.S. I'm considering the ATI Radeon 8500 with either Windows NT or Windows XP...sales guy has been trying to convince me to go with XP pro.
I had a Matrox G450 in a box with Win 2k, and it worked great. I just got another box with Win XP Pro, and switched the Matrox card over to the new one. After getting the updated drivers from the Matrox site, I was good to go. Hope this helps!
Definetly, for the price, there is no question in my mind that the best dual card on the market is the Matrox G550 Dual DVI. This card, for $150 (street) supports dual digital monitors. What is better, if you ever decide to go with the G200 Quad mms, you can add it to the same system to give you _SIX_ digital outputs! I have this setup and had no problems whatsoever installing the cards/drivers. nitro
Nihaba, I've got two computers, one with Win2000 and an ATI Radeon VE dual card, the other with NT and a Matrox G450 dual card (both cards all analog). I find the ATI to be 100% stable, the Matrox coupled with NT to be iffy, sometimes solid, other times randomly freezing the video. Each card has it's quirks, software-wise, setup-wise, can't really distinguish any differences in the pictures (all 19" CRT's, Samsung and Viewsonic). With both cards the text is definitely sharper on it's designated Monitor #1 (confirmed that it was the cards, not the monitors, by simply switching 2 monitors between the two outputs on each card), acceptable on designated Monitor #2. Never tried XP, don't like any Microsoft operating systems until the first Service Pack...
I am running three 19 "crt monitors on a Pentium 2, 450 MHZ, with 256 Ram. My download bandwidth is 384 kilobits per second and the following configuration keeps up with the data flow. The original monitor runs off of the AGP card supplied with the computer. (I had to disable the Graphics accelerator card supplied with the computer and go directly from the AGP to the monitor because of stability problems with the graphics accelerator card.) The other two monitors each run off of their own aftermarket ATI Radeon 32 MB PCI card, which were easy to install. Even though the Radeon card says dual monitor, it's only set up to run one standard monitor cable without adding a converter kit, hence one card for each monitor. I have found that you can increase the settings on the ATI cards up to maximum performance and refresh rates without any stability problems on my particular computer. The only problem that I am now experiencing is that the original AGP is nowhere near as stable at high performance rates as the ATI Radeons are, and I will soon replace it with an ATI version.
driving FOUR 19" CRTS & FOUR 17" LCDS w/ one matrox 450 agp & 3 PCI in win2000 prof. works great, easy to install and configure, and have not noticed any difference in text quality from one monitor to the next. matrox makes a nice card.
I have 2X21" Intergraph monitors driven by ATI radeon VE 64MB DDR (bought at Ebay $70). Downloaded the drive for Win-XP from ATI site, it works good. ATI 8500 should be better and can overkill. The two monitors are used just as one big monitor. It is very flexible and I can drag charts all around. 1600X1200 pixels MAX.
OK guys now im exposing myself to laughter or whatever but heres my setup : until recently I used one (yes, 1) 17" monitor but it suited me well since i swingtrade and have the time to switch between applications. Just today I got this 15" monitor from a friend of mine and he also gave me an old ATI (/like 4 megs??) card and amazingly I got it all to work right off the bat!! I set my desktop and all but now on my primary monitor (NVIDIA, Vanta, 16megs) screen seems to "shake" a little arround the edges especially. Actually it quivers at some 120 beats /sec if i measured it well. Any thoughts or are you just laughing your a** off about my gear? Sincearly, Alex