Does the X300 SE with DVI and VGA support dual monitors?

[bamacre]

Anyone know?

< ---- Never messed with dual monitors before.

 

[batmanuel]

Definitely. You might have to go into the ATi Control Panel and activate the second display in the Displays tab, but dual monitors should work just fine with that card. You also might want to intall the ATi Hydravision multimonitor utility.

 

[Peter]

Yes it does. One digital DVI one VGA, or two VGA with the (included?) DVI-VGA adapter.

Hydravision is not required for dual monitor operation, it's just a helper that provides the applications some hints on where to put their windows.

 

[bamacre]

Thanks guys!

 

[Pluto]

some do some don't - I was looking at the cards from Asus and here is what I found out:

EAX300SE-X : The DVI is DVI-D, so you can't use a DVI->VGA adapter to view the image on a second VGA display. Also from one source I was told the card only clones the image, there is no ability to drag windows between screens etc.
EAX300SE/TD : This one has a DVI-I and if you look at the Asus product page you will notice the icons at the bottom list 'dual VGA' as a feature

I could be wrong about this but I was told that any card which has a 'cable' from the board to the VGA/DB15 plug is only doing a clone image.

 

[rbV5]

I could be wrong about this but I was told that any card which has a 'cable' from the board to the VGA/DB15 plug is only doing a clone image.

I think you may be wrong about this (although apparently correct about the EAX300SE-X having a single RAMDAC) :

Notice that both these X300SE have the cabled VGA connector (because of the half height PCB no doubt) Now look at the DVI connector for each card. Sure enough, the EAX300SE-X has a DVI-D connector, and the EAX300SE/TD has a DVI-I connector. Obviously, ASUS has pulled an 8500Le and ommitted a RAMDAC (dang, I thought both RAMDAC were intergrated into the core) for a measely $3.50 some buyers are going to get burned thinking they are buying a dual head video card. Neither ASUS page, nor the Newegg product pages identify it as a dual connector Single head card either.

Leave it to ASUS to Fark up another video card, christ now you'll have to be very careful picking a dual head value card .......I wonder how many others there are?


EAX300SE/TD

EAX300SE-X

 

[Pluto]

Originally posted by: rbV5
Leave it to ASUS to Fark up another video card, christ now you'll have to be very careful picking a dual head value card .......I wonder how many others there are?

I looked at a few and noticed any mention of dual head was conspicously absent

PowerColor http://www.powercolor.com/main_product_detail.asp?id=22
Sapphire http://www.sapphiretech.com/vga/x300.asp http://www.sapphiretech.com/awards/image/media_57.jpg (says it has DVI-I but does not mention dual monitors)

how do you tell if the card has a single or dual RAMDAC?

 

[rbV5]

how do you tell if the card has a single or dual RAMDAC?

The DVI connector used is an indirect indication. If they use a DVI-D connector, you'll have to assume there is no additional RAMDAC to drive it (I've yet to see an exception) If it uses a DVI-I connector, its likely got a seperate RAMDAC or 2 (AIW card 7500 up to 9800pro<excepting AIW9600cards>) up use dual RAMDAC and a single DVI-I connector so that TV-out can be independant of the Primary display for example)


DVI interfaces

 

[Pluto]

I received the Asus EAX300SE/TD today, interestingly it does not look like the one in the picture on the Asus site (full height card) it is the half-height card with the cable to the VGA connector just like the picture of the -X

But sure enough it does have a DVI-I Dual Link connector and comes with the DVI->VGA adapter. I'm headed off now to my customer's office to set it up in dual head mode, wish me luck