Hey guys... I'm asking this forum cuz dell is giving me mixed results... I have a dell t3400 using 2 Nvidia NVS 290 graphics cards. so running 4 monitors with 2D. I wanted to remove 1 nvs 290 and replace it with a quad card. it appears the most similar is the nvs 420 2 problems came up that I cant verify; the 290 is using DDR2 but the 420 looks to only use DDR3? I currently have all DDR2 Will the 420 run properly with ddr2 ? the 290 cards are 256mb and the 420 is 512mb the guy at dell say they need to be the same..ie 256 and 256 will it not work to run 6 monitors if I use 1 nvs 290 and 1 nvs 420 ? finally, if they are correct and its not compatible is there a quad card that is? thx
I don't think they are relevant - meaning that they should not cause compatibility issues. I would like to learn otherwise. The DDR2 versus DDR3 are reference to the memory speed of the memory that is onboard the video card, which serve as storage buffer holding whatever 2D/3D images the card is supposed to display. But the end output is the VGA or DVI video signals that feed your monitor. 2 different cards, whether which uses DDR2 or DDR3, at the end they produce the VGA/DVI signals that feed your monitor. That it... assuming... you don't interconnect the two video cards (like those SLI technology). (And business applications there really is no reason to. It is displaying the 2D charts.) Do you plan to use the same box for playing video games? Same goes for the buffer size, 256MB versus 512MB. Doesn't affect the output VGA/DVI signals. Theoretically the card with more memory should work faster, that's all. I have a mix of video cards with memory buffer varied from 256MB to 512MB to 1025MB on the same computer. No problem.
Dell guys in sales are notoriously under-schooled in multi-card displays. Boli is correct on all points. Alternative... instead replacing a 290 with a 420, you can run an NVS 285/290/295 PCIEx1 card in your x8 slot along with your 2, 290s.
I just put a 420 and a 290 in a Dell T5500 and a Precision 490 (sorry I don't own any T3400 or T3500's) and it worked fine. I also tried a 295 and a 420 and that was fine as well.