About Chris Morrison Expertise Installation of cards. Difference between card types. What card is best for your purpose. Driver problems. All video issues.
Experience 15 years experience with building, repairing and upgrading PCs. Technical support experience.
Organizations Help on the Net
Education/Credentials Associates Degree in Information Technology
A Certified
Expert: Chris Morrison Date: 6/2/2008 Subject: choosing video card
Question QUESTION: Hello, I'm having trouble deciding just what card/cards I should use in a new system I'm going to purchase. It will be used for trading so 3D quality is no concern. I'll be running 3 monitors and figure I'll go for a 4 monitor capability in case I'd like to add a forth in the future. The system will be new and fairly powerfull so I guess it's PCI express? Basically I'm looking for speed and clarity in 2D for many moving charts and what not. Seems like I can't go wrong with the Quardo NVS 440, but I'm wondering if there's cheaper options or if that's the best way to go. I'm looking at $425-450 on that. Would something like 2 gf 7300GS work? 2 gf 8600GT? Somewhere in between? In those suggestions I'm assuming it's ok to use two seperate cards which I'm not positive on. To wrap up my rambling here, what do you think? Would performance of the NVS 440 be superior? 2-4x price superior? Thanks in advance.
ANSWER: First PCI express is a must for what you want. The speed, banwidth and power is superb.
As far as the multi monitors - that depends. Each monitor is going tax the video card more. Running two Nvidia cards gives you the options of SlI or not (if the motherboard supports it). But even here more monitor tax the card more decreasing performance.
It also depends on it you want to run the monitors as clones, extensions (one continuous desktop) or as individual screens.
As far as functionality I would think you want as many options as possible without loosing any performance. When running multiple applications on multiple monitors you'll need something really good.
If you choose Nvidia stay with the 8600 or above.
There is another option I don't know if you thought of:
Matrox. They have been doing this for a long time. The card has nice resolutions on all four monitors and as far as performance I love them.
They have a quad support card for PCI express. It only has 128 megs of memory but this baby was built to support 4 monitor from day one. Its worth looking into. http://www.matrox.com/graphics/en/cadgis/products/qid/qidlppcie.php
They also have 256 megs cards that have dual monitor support that can be joined to support 4 monitors.
Matrox software for thier cards is great and leaves alot of room for functionality and different configurations.
As far as nvidia - they can run usually two monitors per card. If your board has two PCI 16 slots you can run two card giving you the 4 monitor support.
You can also run on Nvidia card and use a triple head - giving you support for 4 monitors (one on card and three on triple head). http://www.matrox.com/graphics/en/gxm/products/th2go/home.php
As far as the Quatro 440 yes it supports 4 monitors but alot of people have had problem with the software. And as with any Nvidia card you gotta watch who is making it. Many companies offer nvivia cards under certain models with different specs.
For best support I would go with four monitor support right out of the box - the quatro or the matrox. Both companies have been around for a long time and know what they are doing. Just compare the cards and see which one you like better. Also check Online reviews> Check alot of reviews and remember that a bad review is not always bad - sometimes it is made by people who don't know what they are doing.
Check Newegg.com for best prices and more reviews.
As for me I am running a Nvidia 7600GT with dual monitor and a FX5500 in a PCI slot for a third and it works, but then again i don't play games on it. I do see some suffering with applications like photoshop and such but for the most part it meets my needs.
I hope this helps and i just didn't add more to your worries.
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QUESTION: Thanks for the timely response. It helps a lot. I'm excited to get up and running! I was overwhelmed by the number of cards available when I started my search and most comments I found related to 3D/gaming and dual monitor setups at most. I'll likely go with the quadro or Matrox. For what It's worth, the unit I'm looking at is a PNY part # VCQ440NVS-X1-PB which I can pick up locally @ $435. Now on the specs it says x1. I thought I was looking for something x16. Is this not an apples to apples comp in this case? Also, if I go this route I may need/opt to install myself and I've never done such a thing. Would this be simple or a bad idea for a rookie? It'd be going into a HP Workstation xw4600. It lists mainboard as Intel X38 Express 1333MHz bus speed. Thanks again
Answer Stay away from the 1x. Its works fine and should have enough bandwidth for your application, but the 16x will have more and more is better. Especially if you upgrade someday.
Here it is at newegg. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814133165
Be aware that it seam that the PNY cards although they have DVI out the splitter cables are VGA. Keep this in mind when looking at monitors. best thing for monitors would be ones that have both VGA and DVI inputs, that way you're set no matter what.
Installing a video card is cake. Just pop it into the slot (while the computer is off). Make sure the latch towards the front snaps in place in screw it to the rear card holding bracket.
Best practice with the driver is to not use the CD. The driver on the CD is already out of date by the time you get it (sometimes by more than a year). Get the best driver from Nvidia's website. You can download this ahead of time and burn a new CD. That way your up to date right away. You'll be able to get video until the driver is installed, it just doesn't look to pretty.
If the motherboard has onboard video you may need to disable this or enable the PCI-E slot in the Bios (sometimes called setup) when the computer boots - before windows.
That workstation is pretty nice I think you'll be happy with it. Stay away from those quatro Fx cards they are offering with it as they are junk compared to what your looking at.
Anything else I can help with just let me know, and keep me post of your setup. I'm interested to see how it turns out.
