FYI - I just bought a new dell 530 for my charting. Ordered it with no video card, saved $50 and bought 2 nVidia NVS cards on ebay for about $70 total (could probably get them cheaper but I did 'buy it now". Anyways they set up very easy. I am running 3 19" monitors on the 2 cards. One card is a nvs 285 pcie x16 and the second is nvs 280 pci. It's an easy way to go if you want dual cards.
Wait to buy a computer with the new PCIe specification: http://www.pcisig.com/specifications/pciexpress nitro
Nice, I am thinking about getting the 530s. Was thinking the same thing though, order with no video card and just add 2 dual cards. I checked and it looks like the NVS 285 and 280 come in the small form fit, so they should work in the slim case. Thanks for the info!
Hmmm, would there be any cards compatible with the new spec? Or would the current PCIe cards still work with it?
Not quite. Video cards can be "full-height" and those probably won't fit into a Small Form Factor case. But all of the NVS cards are "half-height" (except for the 400 & 440 quads), and will work in virtually any ATX, BTX, or SSF case. The mounting bracket is removable/changeable to fit the case.
Any new spec mobo's will be backwards compatible with existing video cards. Probably none of the new cards have the new spec yet. However, overkill for anything except extreme graphics (gaming, CAD/CAM, 3D). Current version of PCIE has many times the necessary capability for trading.
Yeah, I just need it for trading. Thanks again for taking the time to answer my questions... gnome - 3 Dell guy - 0