2 monitors and 2 video cards vs. 2 monitors on 1 video card.

[LabShark]

Besides the obvious, what are some pros, cons and differences between the 2?

Thanks!

 

[LED]

Not sure what your asking but with 2 Vid cards there is a big difference esp if you like to play around but keep in mind that 3D will only be displayed on 1 Monitor. I use 3 or 4 depending on my mood and if I feel like headaches

I like to be able to control the drivers of each and set my own resolution without conflicts....bear in mind that if the Monitors are different then so will the visual

 

[LabShark]

Right now I have 2 monitors and 2 video cards

Ti4660 w/Sony 21"
G4 MX2 420 w/Sony 18" LCD

I'm selling my machine to a buddy and getting one with a Radeon 9700. I am trying to decide whether I ought to use the 9700 as it as dual outs or go ahead and by another card (Radeon 7000 or another MX 420). I'd like to avoid driver and control panel issues - I've heard there can be some with 2 different brands of cards on XP.

What would I lose by just using one video card?

 

[ProviaFan]

Using two monitors on one card may be slightly faster than a pair of cards with one monitor per card, but I've not really done any tests to confirm that. Either way, you're only going to get OpenGL on one screen, unless you go with a high-end professional card. One thing though, if you plan to use Windows 2000 Pro, you should go with two separate cards, because it has a "feature" that prevents most dual-output single-card setups from seeing each monitor individually. This means that (afaik) you can't have separate resolution settings on each monitor, and it messes up some programs like Powerpoint that like to be able to see and distinguish each display separately. Windows XP does not suffer from this "feature," fortunately.

 

[LabShark]

Thanks. I do have XP which will help.

Thanks for the input.

 

[SUOrangeman]

FYI, Detonators since 28.xx have been able to separate the displays in Win2K (run different color depths, resolutions, and refresh rates). I think nVidia specifically calls this DualView. It *seems* to take a quick registry hack to work (in both WIn2K & WinXP), but it does work.

-SUO