I'm getting ready to buy a Dell XPS 410 running Vista Home Premium with a pair of the Dell 22" FPDs. I'm not concerned about gaming so I'm not concerned about high end gaming graphics - just driving multiple applications including eSignal with lots of charts, Excel with links to eSignal, trading platform, and other applications. The base video card is a 128 MB GeForce 8300 PCIEx16 and they tell me it will drive the two FPD's with one connected to the DVI port and the other to the VGA port. Can anyone tell me if this should work OK? Any gotchas to be concerned about? They won't substitute the Quadro NVS 285 so if it's not OK then I'll need to either upgrade to their 256 MB Geforce 8600 card or get the Quadro 285 separately. If the 8300 will work OK I'd prefer to save the $ or put the $ into a better processor. Any helpful thoughts appreciated. Thanks
pay up for a video card that has dual DVI. Running DVI monitor on VGA port is bad. http://www.techmind.org/lcd/
You will be fine. Running one DVI and one VGA should be easily supported by your set-up. Don't let anyone try and SCARE you into thinking anything else.
once, you get your dual monitor on DVI & VGA, run this site on both screens. and then you will know exactly what i'm talking about http://www.techmind.org/lcd/phasing
http://www.techmind.org/lcd/phasing.html Out of curiousity, I've just tried this on two identical 19" LCD monitors each connected to seperate NVS 285 graphics cards. One is connected by DVI, one VGA. It is very difficult to see any difference. TExt may be marginally sharper on the DVI connected screen, but there is very little in it.
good for you... most of the LCD monitor connect through VGA will have these phasing problems. I have 3 LCDs on VGA. These monitors aint cheap back in 2004 read the section on for more explainations "Clock/phasing for Analog inputs" http://www.techmind.org/lcd/
If you must take the 8600, you could sell it on eBay and get a Q285. Don't be concerned about the diff between DVI and VGA on Quadro NVS cards. Just for kicks, I've run 4 monitors on 2 NVS cards.. one with DVI, the other with VGA. I can tell ZERO difference*, even with a magnifying glass. *not necessarily true with dual port cards where one is DVI and the other VGA. ATI is notorious for blurry VGA on such cards.
At one time I temporarily had an old PCI Vodoo savage III card (I think that's what it is called) connected a 19" LCD screen. The phasing problems were quite bad. IMHO the NVS28* cards are excellent for the sort of things traders do.
I am running two 20" dell fpd's on my dell inspiron 9400 laptop with a Nvidia Go 9700 GS 256mb video card (1 ea. VGA and 1 ea. DVI output) excellent performance... In addition, I believe you can purchase a DVI splitter from Dell and push 3 monitors from one card, but since you are configuring a desktop dual video cards would be more appropriate... Good luck and happy trading.