2D Graphics - What is really needed?

[crazyswede]

As I have mentioned before I am building a pc with 4 displays. They will not be displaying much or no 3d. There will a lot windows showing text, moving graphs, maps and graphics. All these windows show non stationary stuff, e.g. 2 windows will be showing a vessel moving over sea charts with different layers.

What is really needed for something like this? Is memory important? will any card do?

I was thinking 2 nvidia 9500 512MB cards...

 

[Trunks9486]

Are the applications using the GPU at all? If not it wont really matter and what you have chosen will be more than enough.

RAM should also be more important than VRAM if the GPU is not used.

 

[crazyswede]

Still waiting for a reply from the company, but I don't think it uses the gpu...

 

[iamTakeo]

Just curious as to how you will run 4 displays? I know theres a matrox something or other.. external adaptor of some kind..

 

[PiKe]

Just curious as to how you will run 4 displays? I know theres a matrox something or other.. external adaptor of some kind..

2 dual head graphics cards

 

[crazyswede]

I am going to use 2 dual head cards. The Matrox with support for Matrox cards are too expensive.

I do have on my shelf a matrix box which makes the computer think that it has one big screen, but you output to 3 monitors. However I need backups so I would need 2 of them and you need special software. I want to keep it as simple as possible.

 

[ian|Squared²]

go for the best offer, a 9500gt may even be over kill.
perhpas see if you can find a couple of 8600GTs from the bay i bet they're about £40 and its a better card.

 

[unknownsock]

Tbh, if the sofware even uses the GPU power, just get one GFX card and use your Matrox triplehead adaptor..cheaper and its simple anyway.

Also if you get 2 cards, only the primary card will be used, and if you SLI it, only your primary port will work, SLI disabled's the rest