Help with my new multitabling setup

[Focused]

I'm multitabling on one monitor(4 0r 5 tables). I'm upgrading to two new dell 2001fp monitors. What else do I need to run them apart from the monitors themselves. At the moment I have just a mediocre graphics card with one monitor input. Cheers

[Hornacek]

There's an FAQ on this, but since you're halfway there already with owning the monitors, all you need is a new video card that has two inputs.

My video card is just a crappy $60 one that has a DVI input and a SVGA input (I think). Just put them together, and voila, plug and play should work. If you want to change the layout of them (say, one on top of the other instead of juxtaposed) just go to System Settings by Right-Clicking on your Desktop.

[Focused]

Thanks for the reply /images/graemlins/smile.gif

[Nomad84]

If I were buying a new video card for two LCDs, I'd get one with dual DVI outputs instead of DVI+VGA. I've never run a setup like this myself, but I've read that there is a noticible difference in quality between the two output types, and I'd hate to get a picture out of a $450 LCD that was less than it was capable of because I decided I wanted to save $50 or less on the video card. JMO.

[smoore]

Any monitor that can use DVI probably wants DVI. I don't have current experience with the hardware but matrox (http://www.matrox.com) has historically made the most kick-ass 2d cards in existence.

Thier support is also top-notch. I'm going to be moving to a couple of 1600x1200 LCD panels (one at a time) and my plan is to simply contact matrox and buy one of thier cards that are recommended.

As an aside, I'm also a part time flight sim geek and apparently the matrox parhelia is nice for 3-screen flight simming.

[astroglide]

2d has been basically perfected for some time. ati's been there for a while, nvidia stopped the low-pass filter crap from cheap manufacturers at the geforce3 series, etc. i'd challenge anybody to tell the difference between a mid-range ati/nvidia card and anything matrox has. anybody can tell the difference between them in 3d, because matrox is out of the race in that department. i don't see any reason to buy their products.

[smoore]

cool enough. astroglide sounds like he's completely up to date on the hardware.

What would you recommend for a flight sim guy who likes general aviation aircraft? Military fighers look best on three screens, since it's a tandem aircraft but GA aircraft are typically side by side. My ultimate 3d card would run two monitors and allow me to modify the point of view such as it looks like I'm looking out the driver's side of a car... american for pilot, british for co-pilot. The software thinks 180 degree POV, I'm actually only viewing the right 120 degrees. I know it'd be a waste of rendering power unless the card was smart enough to not render those polys.

[astroglide]

if you do general gaming too it seems like an athlon64 board with nvidia sli would be a good choice. you could get a couple of relatively inexpensive cards like 6600GTs or 6800s with dual outputs. run in sli mode (treating both graphics cards as one) for horsepower on normal games, and run in regular mode for 3+ monitors with flight simulator. ati has crossfire for multi-card stuff but it's not as good as the nvidia implementation. if you want a svelte box, shuttle does have an sli small form factor system - http://global.shuttle.com/Product/Barebone/SN26P.asp .

if you go sli you're going to pay a healthy amount of money but it would be a nice setup for you. probably one of the better justifications for its purchase that i could think of.

Went to a 4 monitor system, installed, all for less than one Matrox card. Put in two ATI radeon 9250's cards, but for only 2 monitors you could get by with one, about $125 each (A Matrox card for 4 monitors was $700 but most likely you could find one cheaper for 2 monitors). I am not going into great detail here, but I could expound further if anyone was interested. With a little research it is easy to do.

[astroglide]

cool. i was talking about sli/crossfire, which is different than simply installing multiple video cards.

[smoore]

I'll look into the athlon 64 w/sli, thanks for the advice.