So I'm late to the party as usual... I'm finally using 2 monitors and it's great. I'd like to run 3 monitors, for flight simming and I trade options on indices. The local pc store kid recommended the ATI 5750. I see them on ebay used for around $100. Is this card OK? Thank you, Arnie
The ONLY card you should use is another of the exact same one you have... same model, same manufacturer. For trading it's best to use cards with passive cooling.. no noisy fans to cool them. Of course, you need to have an additional x16 slot on your mobo to accommodate it. If your computer is for trading and gaming, you need to satisfy the gaming requirements, noise be damned. There are ATI/AMD video cards with "Eyefinity 3" to run 3 monitors... might want to check into that.
Hmpf, I was kinda wondering if a person could do that, stacking cards... I currently am running an ATI X1900. I don't know if there is another slot to accept another card, I'll have to check that out. Thank you.
The easy fix is to use that x1900 in another machine or sell it on eBay/Craigslist. Then, buy 2, Nvidia Quadro NVS 295 video cards on eBay for about $35 each.. be sure to get the DVI-DP adapters, 2 per card. That's assuming, of course, that your mobo has 2 or more x16 slots. (If you have a "budget" mobo, it probably has only 1, x16 slot and you have a different consideration.)
There is an alternative approach. If you just want to add only a third monitor (but not the 4th, 5th, so on), you can buy a USB-to-VGA or USB-to-DVI adapter to drive the third monitor without having to change our your computer or your existing graphic card. The overhead should be small. The resolution may be smaller than 1920 x 1080, depending on the make you get. The cost is about $50 or so. But if you want >3 monitors down the road, it's better to support it via the motherboard and regular graphic cards, which may mean you need to change our your computer or at least the motherboard.
I don't think this is strictly necessary. I'm running a mix of cards with no issues. Most of them i got on ebay for $10 or so a piece. You just need a card that has adequate resolution for your monitor. I know some people have reported conflicts with different cards, so it probably is better to keep them in the family, but it's not inevitable.
No, not "strictly necessary", but one is unlikely to know with which cards it's OK to mix... find out by trial and error. No good reason to put yourself through that hassle unnecessarily. (Depends upon the age of your system, too. Older equipment is more tolerant of mixed video cards.) OTOH... if you've got various video cards lying around, the worst which can happen if they don't work together is to hose your system such that you have to reinstall the OS and all apps from scratch.... not the most LIKELY outcome, but it has happened before.
From my experience mixing different models from the same manufacturer with the same line of chipset (e.g. GeForce), that's not much of a problem. But mixing different makes or mixing the chipsets (e.g. mixing PNY Technologies with EVGA or ATI, or mixing NVidia GeForce with NVidia Quadro), that could be problematic and is best to avoid.