Looking for a Quad head ANALOG-capable video card. Running Win2K Pro. Appians seem really expensive. Anyone using the Matrox Quad Heads? Suggestions and places to buy online would be appreciated. Is having two dual-head cards a better alternative? It appears that ET'ers are split as to whether or not it is worth the expense and ease of having a Quad card v.s. two Dual cards. What are the possible problems with two Dual cards? thanx
i'm running 4 matrox dual cards 450s driving eight monitors with XP and in past with W2K WITHOUT ANY PROBS WHATSOEVER. so easy i fell asleep half way thru setup :-|
Generally, dual cards come with a dig-to-anal converter, don't remember if my G450s came with one or not. If not, you can buy em. Dual G450s are pretty cheap, good way to go, IMO.
Used cards on ebay are very cheap. Of course, you can end up with something that doesn't work with your system. Several threads here have recently gone through this problem. Unless you have some special considerations, I think it's cheaper and easier to use two dualhead cards. The quads are expensive. About the cheapest pci quad you will find is a g200 on ebay fro $150 (hint, make sure whatever you get has the proper cable). Of course, dualhead pci cards that are xp compatible are not easy to find. Plenty of old J2's for sale on ebay that are ok for win2000. Probably the cheapest quad option is to use a g450 agp dual and two pci single cards.
AAA, I've got Win2K Pro. I'm seriously thinking about just installing another dual-head Nvidia GeForce 4 MX440 since quad heads are expensive new and you have to really trust people to get a used one for a reasonable price. A rep at CompUsa told me that if you have two dual-head cards by the same manufacturer, you're going to have conflicts! Is that true?!? Sounds a bit off to me considering what you folks have said about having two G450's for example... Also, can you have one card that's AGP and the other PCI, or do both have to be PCI? Thanx.
I'm no expert but I can confidently say that the Comp USA rep is full of crap. There is no reason two cards by the same manufacturer should not work together if both are windows compliant for your o/s. I will caution you that it has been reported here that win2000 is not as good for multimonitor setups as xp, and I cna confirm that from personal experience. Also, you need to be aware that not all cards are compatible with all o/s's. xp in particular is not compatible with some older cards. But plenty of people run multimonitor setups under win2000 with no problems, so I owuldn't change o/s unless you run into problems. Your computer probably has one agp slot where the factory video card was installed, and some spare pci slots. I think you have to have a card in the agp slot, although honestly I'm not sure about that. It's perfectly ok to run both agp and pci cards at the same time. For example, you could run a g450 agp dual card and two pci cards to get four monitors. Assuming the cards are all compatible with your o/s and don't get in each other's way, that should work fine. Also, make sure you have enough room in the case for the card(s) you choose. Some are quite a bit longer than others. You might want to review the various multimonitor threads here for the past few months, as there is a lot of useful info. The appian website has a lot of useful info on compatibility. And ebay has great prices. Just be careful about getting the so-called oem cards that apparently won't work with some other brands of computers.
no agenda, Just to make sure I'm notmisleading you, I've never used the nvidia cards so I can't assure you there are no issues with using two of them. Before you spend the money it's probably a good idea to check their website out and maybe get assurance from them it'll work ok.