Dell 8400 Video Card Question

I am looking at buying a Dell 8400 but want to be able to support 4-6 monitors.

The video cards they supply are all PCI Express x16 and support dual monitors. I just want to use my setup for trading and not gaming, but am concerned some cards may be worse than others in terms of conflicts with a 2nd PCI dual or quad card. These are the cards they offer:

128MB ATI Radeon X300 SE (cheapest - my preference)
256MB nVidia GeForce 6800 (+A$300)
256MB nVidia GeForce 6800 GTO (Dual DVI +A$400)
256MB ATI Radeon X850 XT PE (+A$500)

Any comments/suggestions appreciated

 

I have a Dell 4700 which is very similar in its set up. Got mine with the ATI Radeon card as well. I researched numerous forums and the consensus was to stay with the same chipset, i.e. a Radeon processor.
I ended up getting an ATI Radeon 7000 for about $40 new. XP recognized it right away and never had to install the drivers. I am currently running three VGA monitors and could add another VGA or DVI later on.
People on other forums have had good luck with Matrox G200 or G450. I was told that any Radeon, 7000 or newer should work fine and was told to stay away from a nVidea chipset for compatability reasons. I believe you have an extra PCI slot so you might even get away with two Radeon 70000s for six monitors.

Good luck.

 

Thanks for that.

Glad to hear the ATI Radeon 7000 worked for you no problems. The 8400 Dell comes with 3 PCI slots so it gives me space to add a couple of ATI cards as you suggest.

 

So you must also be looking at having 1.5-2 GB of DDR or DDR2 SDRAM?

 

Well, I was just going to start with 1G (2x512) Ram and 4 monitors, but it is upgradeable to 2G (4x512) if I need it. I would probably buy it from elsewhere as I doubt Dell is the cheapest for memory. Do you think at least 1.5G is needed for 4 monitors / 2 video cards?

 

The memory is NECC Dual Channel DDR2 533Mhz SDRAM.

 

Keep in mind that running 4 monitors - at about 200MB each - is going to use approx 800MB of your SDRAM...

 

Not true. 4 monitors will use hardly any RAM.

The software is another issue. 512MB of RAM may be enough. 1G is likely overkill.

 

i disagree with your nvidia comment. i only go with nvidia because of compatibility. i had radeon chipsets 9800 in my dell and installed the 7000. my pc crashed. had it restored and it crashed again. nvidia uses universal drivers. unlike radeon, where you have to search for specific drivers. i would never go back to the radeon.

 

Thanks, gnome. Guess I misinterpreted Baron's hardware tome.

Need to revise my own next computer requirements.