Recomment Graphic Card for DAW Dual Monitor?

[CaptainJoe]

Hi Folks:

I have put together a homemade DAW and am in need of dual monitor graphic card advice.

MY configuration:
- Compaq Presario S6500NX Desktop w/AMD Athlon 2800,
- Win XP Home Ed.
- 1 GB Ram
- 2 Samsung HDs (120gb and 160gb)
- Audiophile 2406 sound card

The Compaq comes with built in graphic card on motherboard. I have one spare PCI and one spare AGP slot for another graphic card.

Plan to use the dual monitors strictly for 2d audio work, no 3d stuff required.


Questions:

With a new graphic card, does it share dual monitor duties with the built in card? Or does the new graphic card need to run both monitors?

Kinda of confused... do these new graphic cards with vga and dv outputs have dual monitor output support built-in already? Or does the graphic card packaging have to specifically say dual capable? (I saw a PNY graphic card for sale that advertised "Dual 350mhz Ramdacs", but all the other grahic card packaging doesn't mention dual monitor stuff?)

How much memory do I need on the new graphic card? 32? 64? 128? Does it make a difference?

Would it be better to get PCI or AGP card? Which slot is better to spare for a future audio-related hardware upgrade?

Any feedback and/or recommendations on dual monitor grpahic card would be great.

Thanks in advance!

CJ

[Sepheritoh]

I have the NVIDIA Geforce FX5200. It works for me. You have to sidable the onboard video card. This card has 2 out and 1 TV out. Memory? Who knows? I think it's 64MB. For DAW work you don't need masive MB. If you want to do graphics or video work you may want to go for the 128MB cards.

[Omnivox]

Hi Folks:

The Compaq comes with built in graphic card on Questions:

With a new graphic card, does it share dual monitor duties with the built in card? Or does the new graphic card need to run both monitors?

nope. i think you should disable the onboard card to use agp slot at all.

Kinda of confused... do these new graphic cards with vga and dv outputs have dual monitor output support built-in already? Or does the graphic card packaging have to specifically say dual capable? (I saw a PNY graphic card for sale that advertised "Dual 350mhz Ramdacs", but all the other grahic card packaging doesn't mention dual monitor stuff?)

all modern cards are capable of that.

How much memory do I need on the new graphic card? 32? 64? 128? Does it make a difference?

no, it doesn't. just for 2d you will be fine with 32 mb, the rest is used solely for the textures in games and 3d applications.
for instance, to run 1280x1024 in 32 bit you need
1280x1024x4=5242880 bytes, which is a little bit more than 5 mbytes. so, to run two such displays, you would be fine with 16 mb.

Would it be better to get PCI or AGP card? Which slot is better to spare for a future audio-related hardware upgrade?

get an agp card, it wouldn't suffocate your pci bus.

Any feedback and/or recommendations on dual monitor grpahic card would be great.

the cheap radeon 9000, 9100, or 9200 should be more than enough.

[anoke]

I, too, think you have to disable motherboard's built in graphics. (that's not bad as usually built in graphics are barely sufficiant; blurry and noisy output and they share memory with the rest of the system.) If you'd want a triad view latest Matrox cards support this.

Go for a AGP -card. A free PCI-bus can become useful at some later time (firewire card, network interface, DSP-card...). And as said already it doesn't take bandwith away from the soundcard.

I just bought a Radeon 9200ve (dvi+vga+shvs) myself. My only criteria was card being fanless. Along came a dv->vga converter and a shvs cable for tv. You can buy these converters later if one doesn't come already with a card. ATI cards are also being sold as a single monitor version (shvs and single vga or dvi - no dual monitors with these).

Works nicely with two monitors. Music on the left and web-browser on the right..

I used to have an older ATI -card but it had a fan on it and eventually it started to make a whinning high noise. And extra fans surely doesn't belong in to a DAW.

...though extra fans could later become useful when selling one's music.. (sorry for the pun..)

[DevonB]

The Compaq comes with built in graphic card on motherboard. I have one spare PCI and one spare AGP slot for another graphic card.

So is that a full height slot or not? You HAVE to take that into consideration when shopping for a card. If it's a half height slot, you'll have to use a low profile card. Fortunatelly for you, Compaq had a Matrox G550 card dual header which is for low profile slots, if it's necessary. Search EBay, you can find them.

My guess is it is a full height, but it's worth checking.

And yes, I'd recommend the G550. Fast 2D card, 32 megs of ram, works like a treat in my system.

Devon

[Alive In Chernobyl]

Matrox G550 is my suggestion too!