Fast, cheap dualhead card to replace Matrox G450?

[Sir Fredrick]

I'm getting a little tired of my G450's poor gaming performance and I'm considering an upgrade...on a budget!
I mostly play games like diablo, starcraft, Civ III, and will probably play Warcraft III and Neverwinter Nights when they are available.
I don't need a top of the line card, it would just be nice to be able to run at a higher resolution and/or enable some of the more advanced features.

I haven't been keeping up with the video card market, and it seems a pretty crazy with all the different versions of the GeForce2,3 and 4 (GTS, Ultra, Pro, Ti, MX, etc...). I get the impression that the Geforce2 Ultra's performance should not be too far behind most of the GeForce3 cards and even some of the GeForce4 cards, although it is much much cheaper. Is this true?
If so, is it available in dual head? If not, what do you reccomend, while keeping in mind that I want to spend as little as possible, and also keeping in mind that the card I'm using now is probably the equivalent of a TNT2, so anything faster will seem better.

 

[SeanH]

8500 LE.. Great Performance, and sweet Dual monitor abilities..

Than again, you could try to find an old Radeon, with Dual monitor abilities..

 

[Peter]

3rd party Radeon cards I'd say, from 7500LE to 8500, whatever fits the bill. PowerColor and other companies make a full range of dualhead cards. Most of these have a CRT+DVI setup though, so you should make sure you get a DVI->VGA adapter along with it.

regards, Peter

 

[Sir Fredrick]

Is ATI really the way to go? I'm a bit wary because of all the people I know who've had problems with the drivers or just problems getting the cards to work in general. I also know that my dual processor board does not get along well with the Radeon 8500.

Is the GeForce2 Ultra not fast enough to see an appreciable difference over a Matrox G450?

I really wish that Anandtech had a performance database similar to storagereview, but for video cards.