cheap 2D card?

[colombin]

My only need is AGP, and that it supports dual monitor, other than that is no matter because I dont play games.

what is a decent and CHEAP video card today? price and 2D image quality comes in first hand.

Sapphire Radeon 7000 64MB DDR does it support dual monitor`?

[Todd a]

Any dual monitor or dual DVI. Most come with TV out, CTR, and DVI and you can use any 2 at one time. Some ship with an addaptor to convert the DVI to a second CTR. If you are hooking up 2 standard monitors you will need to make sure the card includes the addaptor. The other thing is if you have an older AGP slot, you might not support the 3.3v of the AGP2.0 standard used in AGP 4x and 8x and still have the 5v AGP. Be carfull of refurbished ones as they generally do not include any cables or addaptors. Also stay away from any of the GeForce 4 MX lines as the image is not too good.

Here is a card with 2 CTR plugs (and TV out) for $32 +$3 S/H. It is a Radeon 7000, which is a DX7 card:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814161101



Or the same one refurbished for $24 shipped:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...2E16814161101R

This was the cheapest I could find that came with the addaptor and it runs $42 +$2.50 S/H. It is a Radeon 9250 and is a DX8.1 card:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814127169


The little whire block is the addaptor.


Here is a GeForceFX 5200 based one for $43 +$3 S/H. It also includes the addaptor. Is far as I know the 5200 are pretty much on par with the Radeon cards for image quality:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814170065





They all will perform pretty bad in 3D games, particularly the 700, but you said that was not important. The one thing I was not sure about is if any DX levels would be important. I know the next level of Windows.. LongHorn/Vista requires a DX9 card to do a lot of the special desktop effects, like transparencies and faster switching between applications. I'm not sure if DX8.1 can do this, but I know DX7 can not. Likely this all does not matter to you, but I figured I would add it just in case.

[F_A_L_C_O_N]

if you need dual DVi support you can get cards with dual DVI as well, so you dont need the converters.

Otherwise Radeon 7000 is a decent card, just make sure its from either ATI or Sapphire, if you want to be certain 2D quality is decent.

BTW Matrox still has better 2D quality than most of the cards out there, including some very expensive ones.

[colombin]

Any dual monitor or dual DVI. Most come with TV out, CTR, and DVI and you can use any 2 at one time. Some ship with an addaptor to convert the DVI to a second CTR. If you are hooking up 2 standard monitors you will need to make sure the card includes the addaptor. The other thing is if you have an older AGP slot, you might not support the 3.3v of the AGP2.0 standard used in AGP 4x and 8x and still have the 5v AGP. Be carfull of refurbished ones as they generally do not include any cables or addaptors. Also stay away from any of the GeForce 4 MX lines as the image is not too good.

Here is a card with 2 CTR plugs (and TV out) for $32 +$3 S/H. It is a Radeon 7000, which is a DX7 card:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814161101



Or the same one refurbished for $24 shipped:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...2E16814161101R

This was the cheapest I could find that came with the addaptor and it runs $42 +$2.50 S/H. It is a Radeon 9250 and is a DX8.1 card:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814127169


The little whire block is the addaptor.


Here is a GeForceFX 5200 based one for $43 +$3 S/H. It also includes the addaptor. Is far as I know the 5200 are pretty much on par with the Radeon cards for image quality:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814170065





They all will perform pretty bad in 3D games, particularly the 700, but you said that was not important. The one thing I was not sure about is if any DX levels would be important. I know the next level of Windows.. LongHorn/Vista requires a DX9 card to do a lot of the special desktop effects, like transparencies and faster switching between applications. I'm not sure if DX8.1 can do this, but I know DX7 can not. Likely this all does not matter to you, but I figured I would add it just in case.

Thanks a lot for the very detailed information. I will consider those options you mentioned if I cannot get my old card working. The thing is that I have an old Matrox G400 DH AGP (I think 4X, it has a 4A extention on the board). Now, I am getting a new motherboard, and I want to keep this video card since I was happy with how it worked. But someone told me that the old Matrox card will fry the modern motherboards because of voltage? incompabilty? And I did some seach on the net and found this http://episteme.arstechnica.com/grou...m/419006624731

The mainboard I have considered is Asus P4S800D-X

http://usa.asus.com/products/mb/sock...x/overview.htm

The question is can I use my Matrox G400 card on this mainboard without frying/destroing the entire mainboard?

if not, are there any other mainboard I can use for this card? (that support dual channel)

[colombin]

http://www.msicomputer.com.au/html/e...tect/page1.htm

[F_A_L_C_O_N]

I belive you have another thread going on about that dont you, which was BTW allready merged