PCI Video Card

[mnelson07]

Where I work, we have small form factor desktop (Dell Optiplex 755).
The video cards currently inside the machines are Radeon X1300's which of course are small form factors with the DMS-59 Adapter for two monitors.

Well, I want to be extra evil and have a 3rd monitor. So I suggested we buy PCI video cards to achieve this. However, my boss doesn't want to spend more than about $200 on it total, and ATI chipset PCI video cards start at like $80 a pop.

However, there are some nVidia 5x and 6x series that were more in the $40-50 a pop range.
Now I know you don't want ATI and nVidia drivers on the same computer, however since this is a PCI card isn't it kind of "plug and play" so nvidia drivers may not be necessary?

Any other thoughts/ideas?

Thanks in advance!

 

[mnelson07]

*bump*

I'd like some input if possible.

 

[35g700]

I don't think you can do multi video cards without SLI/Crossfire.

 

[GFitz]

Not sure if your issue is resolved but I thought this might be helpful.


- You generally need a second video card installed to get more than TWO monitors connected.
- Yes, standard PCI video cards *usually* work fine as secondary video cards in tandem with a primary AGP or PCI express video card. Note that I said *usually*.. there can still be compatibility issues, typically at the BIOS level! One thing that has helped me in the past is setting the boot order of the video cards to favor the PCI card in the BIOS, so the system boots off the PCI card first. If that doesn't fix it, you may be hosed; I've sometimes had to go through multiple PCI video cards before I found ones that would work.
- I strongly recommend sticking with video cards from the same vendor (ATI/ATI or nVidia/nVidia) so you can use a single video driver. I've had problems running two different video drivers at once.

As ever, the very best place to look for detailed compatibility information or get detailed help is at the multimon site:

Multi-Monitor Resources at www.realtimesoft.com

and the multimon site forums:

http://www.realtimesoft.com/multimon/forum/