Dual Monitor Suggestion

[fleshie]

Hi Everyone,

I'm trying to get a dual monitor setup going. In my computer right now, I have a GF4MX-440 card with only VGA and TV-OUT. Can someone please suggest to me the most economical way to get a dual monitor setup going? Thanks a lot for any help!

[Todd a]

Just get another card. If you do not care about 3D performance, then you can find cards with DVI and CTR out for under $50. Just make sure it comes with the DVI to CTR convertor so you can use two CTR monitors. If you want something better than that GeForce4 MX 440, then there are lots of good ones, like a Radeon 9550 (not the SE version). The cheapest I could find that came with the convertor was $70 shipped here:

http://www.newegg.com/app/viewproduc...121-512&DEPA=1

A better performing one is this Radeon 9600Pro for $109 shipped:

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...102-408&depa=1

These are both DX9 cards and should have very good image quality. They also perform about 50% and 100% faster than your MX (maybe more). Something like this could play Half Life 2 just fine. Just sell the GeForce4 MX to someone for $25 (you can get them for $40 new) and get one of those other cards.

A quick look did not find anything with the DVI and convertor, but you might find something if you look (I checked NewEgg only and stayed away from anything slower than the card you have right now). I did find some Radeon 9200SE for $40, but they did not come with the convertor. Yuo could buy it seperately, but that would likely add another $5-10 to the price.

I'm assuming you already have a second monitor. Now you can do a dual monitor thing with a TV, but the image quality of a TV sucks. Reading text is imposible. If that is all you are looking to do then just enable nView and turn on Clone mode and use the TV for watching movies and such (set second monitor/TV to play full screan under clone options).

Oh... and welcome to HWC!

[Martin_89]

my sapphire 9600XT came with the DVI > Analogue connector, so i would think probably all sapphire cards with DVI would

[fleshie]

Thanks a lot Todd and Martin. I decided to just get a new card as suggested. I found a FX5200 with DVI (and converter) for only ~66$ (cnd). I don't play any games at all... so I hope that'll be good enough. Thanks again!