recommend vid. card for 2x monitors

[ph34r]

Boss made a comment the other day that my 17" FP monitor looked smaller than everyone elses. I made a comment back about it being the same size, I just had half as many. No one asked me if I wanted a dual monitor set up...

So... he told me to find a vid card, etc. for me since he can get 2 monitors no problem.

I want to go with NVidia (I don't mind the closed driver and they Just Work) but don't know exactly what model/card to go with. So, I'm looking for a recommendation.

Need to be able to drive 2 monitors at once, outputs can be vga or dvi or one of each, and it must cost less than $100 including shipping.

Any suggestions?

Thanks

[Konan]

Assuming that you have normal (i.e, not gaming or CAD) video requirements just about any version of a dual port Nvidia card will do. I have had no problems making any dual port adapter work for two standard monitors. Including Matrox, any Nvidia based card, a couple of no-name VESA cards and even ATI stuff. Or just plug in a cheapo PCI card and use that for the second monitor. Works fine.

Now, if you have one or a pair of Wide screen monitors, you will need to have a fairly late model card and for Linux I suggest you should stick to Nvidia. I helped set up an ATI AIW card on a Ubuntu system with one Wide screen and one normal aspect screen and it was a *****. The driver kept getting confused about which monitor was which and would periodically tell us that the small screen couldn't show 1650 x 1050 (or whatever it was), or setting the wide screen on the fly into 800 x 600 and so forth. A quick change to an 80 dollar Gforce card fixed the problems immediately.

Konan

[cybertron]

I've run dual setups on both a 6600 GT and a 7600 GT. I'm sure the former can be had for <$100 and the latter probably can be too. I suspect any nVidia card would work just as well, so it's mostly a matter of how much performance you need.

[mrrangerman43]

AGP or PCI E.x16 This (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127304) will give you an idea of whats out there.

[flukshun]

on the super low end of the spectrum, my PCI (not pci-e) GeForce 4 MX4000 runs dual-monitors fine using the nvidia legacy drivers. 1 dvi, 1 vga. could probably pick one up for ~$20.

7600gt/6600gt would be way nicer though :D

[xrx]

Hm, the x600GT models may be a bit too expensive. I've been pretty happy with my new 128MB XFX nvidia 7100gs (http://www.google.com/products?q=xfx+7100gs+128MB&btnG=Search&show=dd) that I picked up for $43 for my PCI-express motherboard in one of my computers. Although the 7100gs doesn't seem to have AGP models, you can probably get a new 6200 AGP for less than $45 (http://www.google.com/products?q=geforce+6200+128mb+agp&btnG=Search&show=dd&scoring=p). I'm guessing the 6000-7000 series would be not be moved into legacy support for at least 1-2 years.
Although, in your case, it'd be cheaper to just get a PCI video card to add to your current one. However, you will not be able to fool around with those Beryl/Compiz Fusion effects like you would with an nvidia card ;)

[je_fro]

I love my XFX 7950. It's passively cooled, so no extra noise...

[cybertron]

Hm, the x600GT models may be a bit too expensive.
Well, NewEgg has the GS version (slower, but still better than a low-end card) for well under $100, and even the 7600 GT can be had for very close to $100 (shipping pushes it like a dollar over) or even less if you're willing to deal with rebates. If you can find some place still selling a 6600 GT then it would probably be even cheaper, but those are a bit more difficult to find new these days.

[ph34r]

Just filled out the PO for a 6200... :)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127268


Thanks for the input. I'll let y'all know how it performs...

[ph34r]

Got it late Friday afternoon, got it all set up today no problem. Had to physically re-arrange the monitors (twinview option alignment did weird things to my desktop icon locations) but it works really nicely. Maybe later this week I'll mess with Beryl on it :)