ATTN modern video-card geeks
 

At my desk, I have a Dell Optiplex 760, in the "Desktop" form factor: http://support.dell.com/support/edoc...sm/dtindex.htm It accepts only low-profile cards

In it, I have a cheap GEforce video card installed into the one PCIe-16 slot, and I have two monitors plugged into this card (one VGA, one DVI-D). In this configuration, the computer's on-board VGA port is disabled.

What is the most elegant solution that will allow me to run a third monitor?

I have seen devices which plug into a USB port and provide a video output, however I question their performance. I'm not playing games or watching videos here, but I need a clean, fast refresh as I work in AutoCAD quite a bit.

There's also the fancy Matrox DualHead2Go box, which is quite expensive and would require me to run one of my two video ports at 2048x1024, which is not a resolution that I am sure it supports.

I have one free PCI slot. If I install a cheap PCI card into this slot, will it drive a third monitor in the customary fashion?

As I understand it, yes.

If you had 16 free PCI slots, you could put 16 gfx cards in and drive (in theory) 32 monitors (assuming each card can drive 2).

i could check on this since we do a lot of this type of thing but that means getting up.

actually I take it back. we dont have much need for more than "two eyes" worth.

for everything else, we use custom made splitter-repeater-DA/AD boxes.

Yes.

Just make sure it's nVidia, or you could run into some odd driver-related hiccups.

/Thread.

this thread reminds me I need a new CPU/MB so I can get a better video card.

richy got it right, bestbuy has PCI cards for older systems that don't have an AGP or PCI-E slot. They are about $50 and should do the job just fine. They also support the same outputs as yours, analog and digital. Probably s-video as well. They look pretty simple, no fans or anything fancy, just a heat sink. So it won't take too much power and you won't have to worry about your PSU being able to handle the extra load or not.

Thats how I would do it. I run two monitors, with two nVidia 8800GTS on a SLI motherboard, but they aren't running SLI. Kinda outdated cards.

Those cards used to be pretty badass, but theyre getting seriously old at this point.

You can get PCI adapters for really cheap now, like under 40 bucks. Itll have piss poor 3D capability (obviously), but it should do a fine job just for adding an additional monitor for random stuff. I think about how much 512mb of DDR cost 6 years ago and I cant believe I can get 4gb of 1600mhz DDR3 for under 40 bucks


I just went through this process recently. It had been a while since I had built a new computer and my setup was getting pretty sad, but I was pleasantly surprised by what I could build on a budget.

Yeah they where pretty bad ass when I built the thing 4 years ago, I just haven't brought myself to redoing it. It runs what I want it to pretty well. iRacing has been maxed out and haven't had any problems yet. I have been tempted to run SLI but never did that either. I kinda want to go water cooled...maybe one day.

I have a dual core that's maxed. my PS and MB is only capable of 60watts so I'd need to upgrade both in order to run a quad core that fits and/or a better video card.

Well, normally I don't either. But sometimes when I'm working on a large wiring design, I need to have two punchblocks visible side-by-side, plus the sheet with the actual wirelist on it.

Right now, I wind up either printing out one of the blocks and making pencil-notes on it as I go, which I then have to transcribe into the excel sheet later, or just toggling the left monitor back and forth between the blocks, which can be a pain if I want to see them both at the same time because then I have to drag one over to the right monitor where it covers the wirelist sheet.

I wasn't aware of this. Why would it be any different from running one of those external USB -> VGA boxes? Wouldn't that unit need to install a graphics-card driver as well?

BB lists one card, which is a full-height unit so it won't fit into my computer. Fry's only has one PCI card, and it's an ATi. Geeks has several Jaton cards with either the GeForce 6200 or MX4000 chipset- is that close enough? (Mine is an 8400 GS).

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_no...ia+low+profile

Are you amazon prime? you could have it in < 24 hours.

I am unfamiliar with USB->VGA devices. However, I run 4 monitors on my development PC, and running ATi+nVidia always results in big headaches for me.

Any PCI card will work fine and drive a third monitor for 2d-only work. Don't expect 3d out of it, and you'll be fine with even something as old as a GF6200.

Id put a riva 128 in it. Load up quake 2 and smile.

ComputerGeeks.com is just up the road in Oceanside. I could have it by lunchtime.


They've been around for a while. Simple idea, I've just never used one. I have to wonder about the bandwidth of a USB port as compared to even an old-school PCI socket.

Examples:
http://www.geeks.com/products_sc.asp?cat=958
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_no...%2Ck%3AUSB+DVI
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...SB+DVI&x=0&y=0

3d? Heh. I occasionally run a flash game on this PC if I'm bored.



Sidebar: what ever happened to Midwest Micro? Weren't they the ones with the cute little raccoon on the front of the catalog? Or was that PC Connection before they went all upscale?

Sorry, I just went to BB online store and saw they only have that one. I know for sure I have seen a few nVidias PCI cards at the actual store. The brand of the card doesn't matter as long as its the same chipset manufacturer. eVGA, ASUS, PNY, MSI and probably a few others sell nVidia cards, they all do their own tweaks to it, overclocking and such. As for ATI I have no idea about there cards. I have always preffered nVidia and have always used there cards and motherboards.

Although the last PC I built I used a Gigabyte motherboard with an Intel P35 chipset, one of the more stable systems I have built. I use an old Intel Q6600 Quad Core, bought it when it was brand new, $600 or so. I think it was clocked at 2.39GHz from Intel, I run it at 3.11GHz.

Money, money, money. Gets tiring and expensive.

http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:A...yx1PsjOvWtoqRQ

usb video adapter are slow. get an ati and ignore every one else. they are better, cheaper and you will not have driver problems. both ati and nvidia have gotten to the point where each others driver packs will not conflict, i have even ran 1 ati pci-16 and 1 nvidia pci-16 at the same time to get 4 monitors.

I'm not at work to check the knowledgebase, but I don't believe the newer Optiplex systems will even recognize a pci video card.


You'll want to look into an ATI "eyefinity" type card to run 3 monitors:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814102875

If the work you will perform is not very graphics intensive, then the USB adapter will be fine. I had one at work for a while. It uses a lot of processing power though. Our IT guy changed mine out to a dedicated card because I was having trouble with some programs crashing when I would move from screen to screen and click on different programs. Something about how the screen has to refresh.

Hmm.

I spent some time browsing the documentation, but couldn't find any reference to video cards at all. That might be a problem. (If only I hadn't thrown out all those old PCI cards...)


Interesting...

So to use my two existing monitors (which are VGA / DVI), plus a third monitor, I'd need an "Active Displayport Dongle", so total of $170 for the card and the dongle.


That kills that idea. I already have one very database-heavy app that damn near crushes by processor all by itself.

It doesn't come up that often, but i'm pretty sure i've taken calls where a PCI video card didn't work.


Or a monitor with a displayport.

i'm really curious to find out the final resolution........................................ .....

1280 x 1024.

(j/k)

I actually grabbed a third 19" monitor and put it on my desk, and determined that trying to work between monitors 1 and 3 was unwieldy. The documents really do want to be next to one another, so I decided to stick with just two monitors and swap pages on the left one as needed.

Triton VGA to USB adapter.

I've installed them on a few Radiologist PCs. They view medical shenigians with three 19" monitors turned vertical.

There's been 0 complaints and some of the doctors are pretty picky.

I wouldn't mind having a "Swordfish" type setup as a friend enjoys.

Nah, there's a difference between that which looks cool from 10 feet away and that which is ergonomically convenient while sitting in front of it. The mockup I did with three monitors demonstrated that was too much to deal with assuming that the content across all three was associated.

Eight monitors would be cool if I was displaying the realtime status of Soviet armed forces across the globe, not so much for working across multiple sheets of the same document.

My friend uses a large central monitor. With a smaller one to either side of it. And then three more in a row above those. This is all integrated into a fancy desk and shelf setup at his home. So he may have stock screens going on one, work right in front of him, car forums on another etc. Banking, Sports, etc. This is just a home setup so it does not have to be rational or justified. Although he is a dentist, he used to be a computer hacker and still makes money for some old encryption arrangements.

What is the nature of your use exactly, that multiple screens would do you right?

At the office, I do a lot of systems-level wiring design for radio stations. You know what a punch-block looks like? Imagine a couple hundred of them all mounted to a single wall, with several thousand individual wires running between them.

One of my jobs is to design and document all that wiring. As an example, I have the design for WCBS-AM up on my system right now. That station has 3000 pair on the wall just by itself, and it's being integrated into a facility with five other radio stations. Once this one is added in, the wall as a whole will have appx. 17,000 pair on it. That's a lot of documentation. And each one of those wires has an "other" end that also gets documented. The Phone Company is about the only place where you'll find more wiring in a single room. I would dare say that any one of my facilities has more cross-connects in it than all of Google, and I crank out about one of these per year.

While I use AutoCAD and Visio to do the conceptual designs, I use Excel to crank out the detailed documentation, one wire at a time. I typically have one sheet per block. So to document a wire between Block A and Block B, I will have the sheet for Block A open on the left screen, and the sheet for Block B open on the right screen.

I'll also have a third document, which is a master layout of all of the blocks in any given room, and sometimes a fourth and fifth document as well, containing detail as to what is happening on the "other end" of whenever the two blocks that I'm working on at any given time go.

The master layout I always print out on actual paper, so I can jot notes on it. It'd be nice to be able to pull up the detail documents on a third and fourth monitor, but the ergonomics of it just don't seem practical in this case.