Dual-Head Video Card Recommendations???
 

Hey guys, i believe it is about time to get a new video card! I have been running (don't laugh!) a Duron 800@880mHz 768MB ram with an ATI Rage Pro 128 32mb SGRAM 4x AGP & two Voodoo3 PCI 16 MB's (not to mention all the other crap loading in this box). My ATI is about 3 years old and the performance is slipping like an old man's memory. I ran 3dmark03 on it and came up with a whopping 446 score, then borrowed my lil bro's Nvidia Gforce MX400 32MB 4xAGP and came out with a 1336 score! I have tweaked and fiddled with all i can, but its probably going to be better to get a dual-head card (get one of the voodoo's out of the pic too, PCI slots running LOW).

Anyone have a dual-head or have recommendations on one? there are so many out there, and i personally like to hear from others what they have had good experiences with/used. I'm pretty tech-savvy, but it is awful boring to read through umpteenth reviews on tweak3d.net and other sites. I have gone back and forth between ATI and Nvidia over the past several years, and i want to get something good, but not necessarily brand new top of the line big $$$$. Definately want the dual-head though...i like a lot of displays! Thanks for any help in advance, its the beauty of having these online forums...sharing all this info with one another!

What NLE are you running? I use a Matrox g550. Lot's of people are having good luck with the Parahelia card.

I was using Premiere, but now i have started using Vegas 4. I know some cards have "real-time" effects built in or included in their features for certain NLE's. i have not heard of the parahelia card, ill have to look it up.

The Parahelia Card is Matrox's newest multi monitor card. It retails for something like $599 but you can pickit up from a computer show for about $300. Atleast that's how much I saw it for here in Vallejo, CA. It supports up to 3 monitors. Only thing with this is that you will not get a better 3Dmarks2003 score. Why don't you you pick up an ATI Radeon 9700 64/128 MB all in wonder and ditch the Voodoo 3 cards since it will not help with 3DMarks. If money is definitely tight, ATI will cost you ~$330, get a Gainward Nvidia card with dual display option. This will be ~$200. With the ATI or the NVidia your 3DMarks scores will be better and at the same time you will get the dual display ability.

im not especially concerned about the 3dmark scores, i just put that up to show the HUGE difference in performance im getting with the ATI opposed to the GForce...I am not a gamer at all, but this performance is causing seriously degradated DV playback issues. My ATI card is dropping mad frames on playback (and getting progressively worse). I started looking around online today and saw the ATI 8500DV which i could run to my flat panel and 17 inch, also to my 32 in sony tv, and then i could keep one voodoo in for my lil 15 inch monitor. being able to output to the tv would be a big plus though. the 8500 also has 1394 bulit in so i could yank my adaptec card out. This looks good now, but ive only spent about 30 minutes looking. I prob wont get anything for another week or maybe even two (depends on how long i can steal my bro's card for..hehe) I will definately be looking around. The ATI radeon 9700 does run at AGP8 and has double the RAM, but from the info ATI has online doesnt appear to offer the dual mon support, or at least it isnt advertised in the manner the 8500 is.

The parahelia sounds sweeeeeeeet. will check it out later tonite when i get some xtra time...gotta run but thanks for the input!

Talked to folks at Matrox recently and they suggested that setting a CRT monitor next to a LCD Flat panel is a bad idea because of different refresh rates. Anyone have any thoughts on that?

the only issues i have run into when running dual mon setups is setting two CRTs next to each other...i have a 17inch LCD nestled between a 17 and 15 inch CRT no prob...at least not visually. before i got the LCD and i just ran the two CRTs i did have visual confirmation that they didnt like each other completely