Best inexpensive card to run two additional monitors?

[Nebben]

Topic pretty much explains my question. I'm using a 21" IBM P260 for my main monitor, in the center, and have an IBM P77 and IBM P76 on the left and right sides, respectively. I want to run my two side monitors with a different video card than my main one, as, apparently, there's no way to use the secondary output on my 6600GT to run another screen independently. It makes me use clone, or span, neither of which works for my purposes.

Unless there's some workaround I'm not aware of... but then my next question, will using the secondary output of my main card for 2D windows stuff in the background while I'm playing a 3d game on my main monitor hurt performance much?

I am currently using two PCI Matrox Mystiques for the 2nd and 3rd monitors, but the card is pretty much junk. It functions, but there's visual lag in Windows. Not very pleasant


So I'm looking for the best PCI, or PCI-E, card to stick in my system that has dual-VGA outputs that will perform well, and is as cheap as possible. Like under 50 bucks would be good.

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: Nebben
Topic pretty much explains my question. I'm using a 21" IBM P260 for my main monitor, in the center, and have an IBM P77 and IBM P76 on the left and right sides, respectively. I want to run my two side monitors with a different video card than my main one, as, apparently, there's no way to use the secondary output on my 6600GT to run another screen independently. It makes me use clone, or span, neither of which works for my purposes. Unless there's some workaround I'm not aware of...

You can definitely run them independently. Just disable clone/span in the NVIDIA drivers. I did this just fine with my Ti4600.

...but then my next question, will using the secondary output of my main card for 2D windows stuff in the background while I'm playing a 3d game on my main monitor hurt performance much?

No, not particularly. I've found a few games that just really don't like running if you have more than one enabled monitor, and most fullscreen apps will not be happy if you move focus away from them (they treat it as if you hit alt-tab).

I am currently using two PCI Matrox Mystiques for the 2nd and 3rd monitors, but the card is pretty much junk. It functions, but there's visual lag in Windows. Not very pleasant

So I'm looking for the best PCI, or PCI-E, card to stick in my system that has dual-VGA outputs that will perform well, and is as cheap as possible. Like under 50 bucks would be good.

I'd suggest something like a RADEON 9200SE, or an X300SE if you want PCIe.

 

[Nebben]

Thanks for the reply. Is there any driver conflict issue with mixing Nvidia and ATI cards? My understanding is that ATI is generally nicer for 2d stuff, but if the difference is subtle I may want to go with another Nvidia card simply for the sake of my head when setting everything up.

Are the FX cards any good (5200, etc?) for this purpose? They are relatively inexpensive.

Another thing that may be an advantage with sticking with all Nvidia is that I could match my colors easily -- since all three of my monitors are similar as well. (IBM P260 is my main one, dual P77s are the side monitors)