What hardware would you need to run Dual Monitors??

[OverVolt]

My next rig i was thinking dual moniters, it would be so sweet! I was just wondering what hardware i would need. The vid card i'm going to be using is a ATI Radeon9700Pro. Can it run dual moniters and does the Ati drivers have good support for them?

What else would i need? A TV tuner would be cool too. but it seems complex to setup on dual moniters. Thanks for any help!

 

[Lord Evermore]

If your card has two outputs, then you can run two monitors, and the drivers designed for a card with two outputs would support it. Yes, 9700 Pro's can do it, easily. Just plug the monitors in and boot, Windows detects it, you change settings in the Display dialog.

A TV tuner wouldn't be any harder to setup with dual monitors. You drag the "TV" program to wherever you want to play it.

 

[anthrax]

just about any high end video card has dual VGA out now..

 

[ArmchairAthlete]

Speaking of dual monitors on the 9700 Pro, is it possible to buy one of those little DVI-VGA converters anywhere? I got an OEM 9700 Pro to save a few bux and it didn't come with one.

 

[ArmchairAthlete]

NEVERMIND. Just looked on ATI's website and you can get one for a measly $5. Good to know should I ever get ahold of a 2nd monitor so I can do dual-display.

 

[Lord Evermore]

Too bad there isn't a picture of the adapter. You may want to check other places where you can. The adapter that came with my Leadtek Ti4400 is absolutely a pain to work with. The screwdown knobs to attach to the card are very small, and placed terribly; you can't get a screwdriver onto them well enough to get more than a quarter turn at a time, and they're impossible to turn with fingers. You might want to try to make sure you get an adapter that's got that part well designed; you may not need to remove it often, but it's really annoying to spend 5 minutes with one connector.

 

[nemo160]

colorcase.com has them for $9.99
i ordered one for my ti4200, but had to have it shipped to my house not my dorm, so i'm waiting for the package from my parents to show up
i'll update tommorrow to say if it sucks or rocks

 

[acid16]

What if you want to run two LCD monitors?

 

[majewski9]

Two DVI outputs for dual lcds. You can always adapt them for CRT.

 

[acid16]

Originally posted by: majewski9
Two DVI outputs for dual lcds. You can always adapt them for CRT.

What video cards have dual DVI outputs?

 

[XBoxLPU]

Originally posted by: ArmchairAthlete
NEVERMIND. Just looked on ATI's website and you can get one for a measly $5. Good to know should I ever get ahold of a 2nd monitor so I can do dual-display.

newegg.com has them also

 

[stevewm]

You don't need to get a video card with dual outs....

You can get multiple video cards. Just avoid really old cards like S3, Trident or ATI Rage Series cards as these cards have issues with dual setups.


Put the addtional card in your system and hookup a monitor to it. When Windows boots just open your Display control panel, it will show 2 monitors, click Monitor 2 and tick the box that says "Extend my desktop to this display" and you're good to go

and make sure you download UltraMon! Its a must for multi-monitor setups (http://www.realtimesoft.com)

 

[nemo160]

well..got my dvi to crt adapter today...no problems attaching it and visual quality is great
as for using two cards for dual displays, i used to use an old s3 vision 864 pci card to run a second display and had no problems running it with an agp card
just had to set the bios to initialize the pci graphics first, then set the agp card as the primary in windows
the only problems with the card were that it only had 1 meg ram limiting resolutions, and it only supported 16 bit color (and even then only up to 800x600)