>2 monitors

clv101 · 14 Jan 2008 at 19:58

I have a 20" TFT (Samsung 205BW) and a 21" CRT (Sony Trinitron E530) at the moment. A nice combination - I do photo/video work on the CRT and text/web/email on the TFT. I'm thinking however of adding a 3rd or even a fourth. Maybe move the CRT up a shelf and us almost exclusively for video and TV (and have a TV card) leaving two or three TFTs on the main desk level.

Anyone do this? What are the issues?

Hardware wise I use a nVidia P5N-E SLI motherboard (2 PCIe x16, 1 PCIe 1x and 2 PCI 2.2) and (ATI 1950PRO (two DVI). So far just have the ATI card in one PCIe and the TV card in one of the regular PCI slots.

Can I just get something cheap like the £30:
Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 2400 PRO SILENT 256MB DDR2 HDTV/DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (11109-01-20R)

The 1950PRO is a Sapphire version with a large low-noise HSF.

clv101 · 14 Jan 2008 at 23:51

Skyfall said:
Not sure about using both PCIE video card slots for two different cards, was under the impression you couldnt do this.

Can anyone confirm this? Can I use something like a 2400 PRO along side my 9800PRO in an nVidia SLI board? I don't want to do anything more fancy than run three or four monitors.

clv101 · 15 Jan 2008 at 00:09

I'm tempted to have a 20" WS on the left, a 20" WS in the middle - portrait and and the 21" CRT on the right...

Plenty of room on the desk.

clv101 · 16 Jan 2008 at 00:11

teaboy5 said:
You not worried about all that power you will be wasting ?

Who says it's wasted - it's to improve my productivity when creating studies like this: Nuclear Britain

Which by raising the energy debate will have more impact on the future supply/demand balance when whether I run two monitors or three.