Dual Monitor setup + DLP tv

sphfaros

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May 17, 2005
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Hey everyone, i'm looking to purchase two 19 inch monitors for a dual screen setup. In addition I have a 46" DLP TV in the same room with a DVI cable running the stretch from the computer to the TV. I'd like to know how should I setup my PC, hardware-wise to work best with this.

I currently have a EVGA Geforce 6800 and it has one DVI and one VGA port. Bad to hook up two monitors in this way? When I want to watch a movie on my DLP being played from my computer, what's the best way to do this with the setup i have?

I'm going to read the LCD guide, but I've been looking at these 3 monitors? Good choices? Any recommendations? Going to be playing some games and doing website design / video editing.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductCo...01066%2CN82E16824002285&SubCategory=20

Thanks for all your time.
 

lifeblood

Senior member
Oct 17, 2001
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I assume your video card also has a s-video output your using for the DLP?

One monitor on the DVI and one on the VGA is fine. When you play games it will only show up on one monitor. The card can only have one display in 3d mode at a time. I have no idea how the DLP will work with this as I've never tried it before.
 

Matthias99

Diamond Member
Oct 7, 2003
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Originally posted by: sphfaros
Hey everyone, i'm looking to purchase two 19 inch monitors for a dual screen setup. In addition I have a 46" DLP TV in the same room with a DVI cable running the stretch from the computer to the TV. I'd like to know how should I setup my PC, hardware-wise to work best with this.

If you want to run three monitors at the same time, you either need a Matrox triple-head card, or you need two or more video cards. You might be able to clone the output from one monitor onto the S-Video output, but it will look like crap if you try to put that on a nice HDTV. Get another card so you can run the DLP over DVI.

I currently have a EVGA Geforce 6800 and it has one DVI and one VGA port. Bad to hook up two monitors in this way?

I'm not quite sure what you mean. If you hook up two LCDs to that card, obviously one of them will be on VGA instead of DVI, but other than that it will be fine.

When I want to watch a movie on my DLP being played from my computer, what's the best way to do this with the setup i have?

My recommendation would be to get a second (cheap) video card with DVI just for the DLP if all you want to do is watch movies on it, especially if you potentially want to be doing other things on the monitors simultaneously. A PCI card like a RADEON 9200SE or GF6200 would work fine.
 

sphfaros

Member
May 17, 2005
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Thank you for the response. I think a second video card would be a good idea.

My question about the GeForce 6800 was about quality. Hooking up one monitor to DVI and the other to VGA...would I notice a difference with the monitors side by side if I was video editing or web design (heavy on text).
 

sphfaros

Member
May 17, 2005
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It's possible that I will stay with my current computer setup (GeForce 6800) and add a simple PCI card with a DVI port for my DLP TV. But I might build a new computer in which case I would get an SLI board. My question is, if I'm not too concered with using SLI to combine my in-game video card power would this combo of video cards make sense?

eVGA 128-TC-2N27-SX Geforce 6200 LE TC Supporting 512MB (Onboard 128MB) DDR PCI Express x16 Video Card - Retail

eVGA 256-P2-N519-AX Geforce 7800GT CO 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card - Retail
 

lifeblood

Senior member
Oct 17, 2001
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I believe the two cards would work together well. However, I advise you not to get the 6200 as it will unnessasarily use 384mb of system RAM. If you can set it so it only uses the 128mb of onboard RAM then that will be fine.